Now to even the smallest child in the tinker’s encampment, maybe only three or four years old, the daddy would say, ‘Look, son, I bought this pony today and it’s your job. I want you to take that pony and lead it along the verge side, give it enough grass. Feed it on as much green grass as it can get.’ And the boy would enjoy this. Now the man knew that this pony had never seen a bite of grass for years because there was no way he could get any. And then after the horse had his fill of grass the man would say, ‘Bring him back and I’ll inspect his feet.’ He would look at his feet and say, ‘Oh, he’s stood a long time in hot manure in a stable. His feet are overhet. We’ll have to get him in a damp place.’ And I’ve seen a man going to a puddle, a pool of water and telling his son, ‘You’ll take that pony and stand there and hold that pony in that pool of water two hours,’ till his feet got soaked with the water, soaked through and through. And that traveller boy would stand by that pony’s side for two hours till it got its feet completely soaked. The pony’s feet had never seen a taste of water and that’s why his hooves were so bad.
That was the secret of traveller trade: if the non-traveller people or non-traveller dealers were selling something, ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘we’ll keep it and we’ll sell it to the tinks.’ Now the tinks hadn’t got very much money in these days and they had to buy all the cast-off things that nobody else wanted. And if a pony was lame they had to make it workable. And a traveller was ashamed of a lame horse. There’s no traveller in the world would ever take a lame horse to a dealer or to a market. So he had to make this horse as sound as he could really be. According to the travellers, if you owned a lame horse and you couldn’t do something about it, then you weren’t fit to have a horse. Because the travellers had their own cures. And they stood by these cures. They stood by their idea that they could do anything for a horse. They would take a horse in any condition, and they always had a way that they could make this horse comfortable in his complaint.
Travellers were animal doctors in their own right, and a good doctor is a good man. I’ve cured my own horses. I’ve bought horses with grass sickness, horses that were bone-spavined, ringboned, that had founder, callous pastern, drawn tendons in their fetlocks, and they had all these troubles. Foot rot, cancer in the hoof; but we had to treat them for these troubles, because if we didn’t then we could never sell them again.
Now I would buy a horse with hidebone, with a bed of worms in his stomach that nothing could cure. And it doesn’t matter how much he ate, his skin was tight on his bones, and you couldn’t get him to fatten in any way. In other ways he was healthy, but his skin was sticking to his bones. So we would pull his skin a wee bit back from his ribs, touch it and say, ‘Look, this horse is hideboned.’ We looked at his teeth. Maybe he was six years old, eight years old. Now there was no reason in the world for that horse to be hideboned at that age. It was a mistake of the people who had previously owned him. Now they had given him to us and said, ‘Oh, he’s poor; we’re jist fed up wi him.’ So we have to cure him.
We went and gave him a dose of broom. We cut the tops off the broom, boiled it till the bark disappeared and there was nothing left but the centres, the tenions inside the broom. We boiled it till it came into a thick mixture. Then we added some oatmeal to make it tasty for the horse. And if he wouldn’t drink it, well, we had to make him. So we cowped him and bottled him. This idea about bottling a pony is a thing that the country hantle had never known about. We took a lemonade bottle and filled it full of this boiled mixture of broom and oatmeal. This was a secret among the travellers. The broom was boiled till the twigs were completely clean, and the mixture was black like tar. The bottle was filled with the mixture and some oatmeal shaked into it. The oatmeal didn’t do any good, but made it palatable for the horse. Then we put it in a pail and added a couple of spoonfuls of treacle, in case the horse would take it straight from the pail. But if he put his nose over it and he, ‘hunnnng’, blowed his nose and didn’t want it, we said, ‘You’re gettin it!’
We put a rope round his front feet. Never mind his back feet! We tied his front feet close together. And then we put our shoulder to his and gave him a shove. Now he tried to separate his front feet, but couldn’t, so naturally down he went on his front end. So we sat on his head and we got one of our legs over the back of his neck, pulled up his ears between our legs and laid him on his back. Now he’s lying on his back, and I’m sitting on the side of his neck. The idea behind this is that any other animal, a deer or a cow, for example, rises end first. But a horse rises front end first. So if you’ve got his front end conquered, then there’s no way in the world he can do anything. He can kick his hind legs, but he’s not going to do any harm.
So we would get a leg round the back of his ears and pull up his head right to our belly, and put our hand at the back of his neck. And then with this bottle full of boiled broom and oatmeal, we’d pull out his tongue through the side of his mouth and shove the bottle down the back of his tongue, empty it. He would drink that! We gave him maybe three bottles of this material. Then we would loosen his legs and let him up. I’ve done it many times because I had to!
It was like you wanting to sell something and you are going to paint it up. This was all I had. You had to make it good, take care of it and make it bonnie.
Now we came across some beautiful animals who were suffering from neglect of the previous owner, neglect from the people who had said we travellers destroyed animals, neglect by the non-traveller people who were ‘supposed to know it all’: the pigmen, the farmers, the horse dealers. And we could only buy them when they were finally finished with them. And they ended up with the traveller and the traveller doctored them. The traveller led the horse along the roadside, fed him on the tiniest grass and only walked him every day on his cart. Pulling the cart was good exercise for the horse. And that horse grew! And he cast his coat, he got fat, and two months after that the owner would never even recognise the same animal. And we were the persons who weren’t fit to take care of a horse, the tinkers who couldn’t look after an animal, who cowped the pony and bottled it.
I’ve seen me buying a horse that was loaded with lice, lice boiling off it. At that time I was only young and had no understanding. After I’d bought this horse and led it along the roadside, my jacket was crawling with lice. I was only newly married and had to gain the experience. But I thought these lice were going to attack me because my jacket was plastered with lice, in the thousands. I threw my jacket away and led the horse in my bare arms.
My mother-in-law said, ‘Laddie, what did ye dae with yir jacket?’
I said, ‘Granny, I threw it away.’
She said, ‘What for?’
I said, ‘It was lice. That horse I got is loaded.’
She said, ‘Their lice’ll no do ye any harm. They couldnae live on you.’
I said, ‘Granny, what am I gaunnae dae?’
She said, ‘I’ll get ye something fir yir lice. I’ll go and buy ye some pooder. You take the horse and make a strip doon the horse’s back, right doon from the horse’s tail. Shake it along the horse’s back in just one single line. It doesn’t matter what he does, he cannae shake it off. During the night these lice will try and cross, cross this line o powder. And they’ll never get across. And I’ll bet ye within two days there’ll not be a lice left on yir horse.’ And that’s what the horse lice did: they crossed from side to side and all got caught in the centre. This was a beautiful white pony I’d swapped for in Kilmarnock. And the wife wasn’t very happy about it because it was poor, very poor.
But I had looked at its teeth and saw that it was only about seven years old. And I’d said, ‘There’s no way in the world that a seven-year-old horse should be as poor as this.’ I knew there was something wrong, something that could be cured. Traveller people bought these poor horses and bought them cheap, and they knew they could cure them. Ringbone is a sinew that gets hard. In the fetlock of a horse there are about twenty-one bones, and the main sinew that leads to
the movement of the hoof gets hard. For no reason, or no one understands, there’s no cure for it.
Now I’ve seen in the market myself this bonnie pony come up. It was going kind of shan, kind of lame. And the dealer would say, ‘Oh, that’s ringbone.’ There never was a bid. This pony was suffering and it was limping. The other dealers walked round, pressed their fingers round the horse’s fetlock and said, ‘Oh, he’ll no mak much the day.’ They were not going to bid on it. But the travellers didn’t worry about this, you see. They couldn’t actually cure it, but they could soften it. They could make it easier on the pony. The travellers had something to cure it.
So this beautiful pony, maybe it was a hunter, it could be anything. The travellers bought everything in the market that was cheap. A traveller man bid seventeen pound on this pony. She had a touch of ringbone. This horse is worth fifty pound if it didn’t have this complaint. The man bought it.
After the sale the travellers met together and said, ‘You got that pony? Ah, Jesus, it’s a bonnie cratur that. Pity she had that complaint.’
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I knew what she had. That’s why I bocht it. But she’ll no be goin the same the morn. She’ll no be gaun very lame the morn when I get her hame.’ Now all the travellers knew the pony was suffering with ringbone. It was a certain kind of limp, a certain kind of twist in the foot. Once she was heated up and had a run, you would never hardly notice it. The traveller man said, ‘I paid seventeen pound for it.’
‘Well,’ another traveller said, ‘look. I’ll gie ye three pound profit onto it.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘no. you’ll no! You’ll no gie me three pound profit the night onto it. It’s going back to the tent with me and when I’m finished working on it, and I take it back to the market next week you can gie me ten pound on it if you want to!’
You see, this was the idea. They would take it and put a hot poultice on it, right? And they would take a stocking . . . now this was a secret you never tell in your life! Travellers always kept things that were needed for their horses. You’ve seen old women’s stockings? Not the nylon ones, but the old woollen ones that come to your knee. They would fill this stocking with baking soda and oatmeal, and they would put the horse’s foot into it. And they would pull it up to its knee, pad it right to there and tie it tight. That pony was never allowed to move one bit! Food was carried to the horse with a pail and he was fed with cut grass. He was treated to everything, cleaned and brushed and a hap put over his back. But he was never allowed to walk one single bit. And this old-fashioned granny stocking filled with oatmeal and baking soda, more soda than oatmeal, right to his fetlock and tied under the knee. It stood there for three days.
And the man who owned the horse would take it off, take the horse for a walk and see the horse was a wee bit better. Then he’d say, ‘Get it on again!’ Back on again, the same thing for another three days. This time he would make it a wee bit stronger, maybe put a wee touch of washing soda into it. The soda would take a wee bit of the hair off, but this was the softening of the ringbone, the softening of the tendon, just up from the coffin bone a wee bit. Now the old farmers took an iron and they burned the tendon, but the travellers would never do that. The travellers’ cure was easier. After another three days with the soda and oatmeal poultice on the horse’s foot, the man would take it off.
Ringbone only happened in the front feet, never in the back. You got a callous pastern or a spavin in the back, but these things were never very hard to cure. You rubbed them with horse linament and made them go sound. So the poultice for ringbone was put on for six days. And when the traveller man took the stocking off the pony’s foot, he said, ‘I’ll take you out today.’ He groped the foot up and down. The hardness was gone from the tendon. It would be gone for three weeks or a month. The heat from the baking soda and oatmeal had completely softened the tendon, so when the horse pressed his foot and lifted his hoof there was no pain, and he could lift it right tidy. It would be that way for a month or so. That’s what the traveller man wanted. He had relieved the horse of its pain. After he sold the horse it was none of his business. But he didn’t do it for profit. He did it to prove that he could really do it. If he kept the horse, he would put the poultice on every three weeks. I’ve seen people keeping a horse for two years with the same complaint.
Now I’ve seen a traveller buying a horse from a pigman that was foundered. Its hooves went completely soft and you couldn’t put a shoe on because the nails wouldn’t hold. This is being too good to the horse, too kind. The people fed it all these scraps and things, and its feet began to curl up, turn up in the front. And the poor beast was in agony. After the traveller man dealed for the pony from the pigman, he would take it back to the camp. Its four feet were rocking with founder and it couldn’t go another step. He’d tie it close to his tent. Now this pony had never been out of the piggery for weeks, months, maybe a year; it had never seen a taste of grass in its life. Now he wouldn’t let it get too much grass because that would do it an injury. So it would be tied short.
The man would have his tea and go back out. And all travellers always kept a good knife. After his tea he’d say to his woman, ‘I’ll have a look at this pony, this wee pony I’ve bocht.’
She would say, ‘Oh, it’s a bonnie wee cratur. What’s wrong wi it?’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s feet’s foundered. I’ll have to do something about his feet. It’s a sin that the non-traveller folk who condemns us for being cruel to animals would keep a wee animal in that state, and mak its feet like that. Its feet’s nearly boiled.’ They were curled up, back and front. He took his knife and he pared its feet. Then he went to his wife and he said, ‘Put me on a pot of oatmeal for a poultice.’ And he took four wee bags and tied them on the horse’s feet, filled with oatmeal and salt. And he said to the horse, ‘You’ll stand there!’ It was tied right close to the door of his tent. ‘You’ll stand there the night!’ These things like muggins or snowshoes were tied round the horse’s feet. There was no way the horse could kick them off. But the hot porridge and salt were covering its hooves, and it stood there for maybe four days. It softened the feet completely. And then after four days were up, the traveller man would take them off. He would take his knife and trim the hooves right till they were short, as close he could to the frog, the quick.
And he would say to one of his weans, ‘You tak that pony doon and walk it doon the old road, keep it in all the soft gutters and everything you can get. Keep it in all the soft water you can get. Every night take and walk it in the muck, in the gutters.’ And all this muck on the horse’s feet, and all this water, being far apart from the hard dry dung that the horse stood on in the piggery; in four or five days the horse’s feet were clean. And he would take it to the smiddie.
He’d say to the blacksmith, ‘I want to shoe my pony.’
‘Mmm, shoe your pony? What kind of pony have you got?’
‘Oh, this is it here.’
‘But,’ he says, ‘it’s got a wee touch of founder on its feet.’ Oh, the blacksmith hated to shoe a foundered pony. Because when you chopped a nail on, it was like putting a nail into dry rot. There was nothing to hold it. Now the blacksmith could put a type of shoes on, what you call clamps. The shoe had a clamp on the side that was folded over and pressed down on the top of the foot. He had to be a special blacksmith to do this.
So the traveller man said, ‘I want you to put on a set of clamps!’ Now when the old blacksmith put on the shoes, he never put one nail in the horse’s foot. He made his shoe and left a wee bit steel on the top of the shoe and wee pieces of steel stuck up around the shoe. And when he heated the shoe and put it on the horse’s foot, he tapped these wee clamps into the side of the horse’s foot. So the traveller man took his horse back. And I guarantee you, when that pony walked the road it was going just as if it had come out of a circus! There was no pain in its feet. Its hooves were soft and it had new shoes on, and no nail holes in its feet.
He’d take it back and say to
his wee lassie or laddie, ‘Tak it doon and lead it among all the muck and gutters you can get!’ And they led it among the soft ground and all the muck they could get. And all the wee cracks in the hooves would get filled up with earth and muck. The pony enjoyed this because it was like you walking on a spongy sole, ken, if your feet’s sore. The horse was going as level as could be! And he gave it a good grooming. The next day he would take it in behind his cart. Or maybe it was the market day. And you could defy anybody to know that that horse had founder! The horse was going as sound as a shilling. It would stay like that till the pony’s feet grew again, about three months. If it was eating all right it would be fine, providing it got plenty of moisture and no dry food. And the travellers knew this. As long as it was fed on green grass it would be right.
But if you took that pony and put it back, sold it to a piggery or back into a farm where it stood in its own manure and the heat got it again, naturally the feet would just go back worse. If the travellers saw this, they wouldn’t buy it the second time around. But if the traveller man sold the pony to a man who hawked fish on the street, he would tell him, ‘Keep it tied in some place where its feet wouldn’t get in any soft manure.’ Then that pony would go on for years.
Why I want to talk about this is to give you an idea what the travellers had to face. It wasn’t that they could go and buy a pony like buying something from a shop. They had to compete against people who really thought if they sellt something to a traveller, they were giving an animal to a cruel person. There were those who hated to give a horse to a traveller, even suppose they needed the money. There was a stigma attached to the traveller.
The Horsieman Page 36