The Horse in the Furrow

by George Ewart Evans

  This is the reason why so much primitive literature is in verse: the rhythm of verse makes it so much easier to remember; and didactic verse at first did the service of prose which was in most literatures a much later development. And though in England not much traditional material—apart from the ballads and the nursery rhymes—has come down in verse, enough remains of the old gnomic verses and aphorisms dealing with agriculture and the weather to suggest that they are fragments of a much larger corpus, and that at one time this was one of the main methods of handing down farming experience. When Tusser wrapped his precepts in durable home-spun verse he was, therefore, guided as much by the need to fit them to the actual limitations of the country folk, most of whom must have aspired to hear rather to read his numerous Points, as to conform to a long-standing literary convention, dating back to Virgil and Hesiod.

  Much of the oral tradition has been centred in the plough and the horse and we have evidence that there was in Britain a very ancient craft brotherhood connected with them both.2 Lady Wentworth in her study of the Arab horse has shown3 how the horse played a great part in the traditions of Islam; and some of her remarks are apposite to our subject if only to illustrate how two separate cultures similar to those postulated above existed in Arabia:

  ‘It must be insisted on that, as Lady Anne Blunt explained, all later traditions founded on Islam must be treated in a totally different class to the primaeval unwritten tribal traditions unknown to townsmen and scribes. As a Muteyr bedouin said to her, “these things are written in books but we took them with our hands,” meaning that books were unreliable, but the firm traditions which were passed word for word from generation to generation and sung to the “rebab” over the camp fires are those which remain unaltered. This may seem strange to our ideas in which stories passed from one to another are proverbially incorrect as “Russian scandal”, but in Arabia the poet-singer to the “rebab” (lute with one string and a bow) is a recognised authority who dare not for his life deviate by a word from the known facts. Should he err, he is forever disgraced. No one reads or writes, therefore their memories are acute to a degree practically unknown in Europe.’

  The present writer has met in Suffolk at least two countrymen whose memories, while not perhaps as well trained as the Arabian bards’, were in their way equally remarkable. One of them was Joe Row, of the village of Blaxhall. His memory was so acute that Tom Jay, another Blaxhall man, said of him: ‘We allus used to say owd Joe fare to remember things that happened afore the day he were born,’ implying that like Tristram Shandy he had knowledge of events that happened at least as far back as the time of his conception. The other was Robert Savage of the same village: the information he gave about old farming practices, as known to himself and as told to him by his father and his grandfather, is continually being re-affirmed in every detail by researches into agricultural records dating back to the eighteenth century.

  Herman Biddell found the same amazingly accurate memories among the grooms and horse-leaders he interviewed while getting material for the first volume of the stud-book; and he admitted that a large proportion of the earlier material came by word of mouth. He said: ‘To this class (the grooms and the leaders) more than any other the Association is indebted for the material which has made the Suffolk Stud-Book something more than a mere registry of pedigrees.’4 He first got together a number of these old grooms and leaders in 1862, as already stated; and he realised that the information they had was invaluable. He started discussions and took notes, but it was not until after the Association had been founded and the project of the stud-book given its blessing that he began systematic and detailed inquiry throughout the county. One of his first jobs was to visit the old grooms on their own ground, painstakingly to go over the descriptions of horses they gave him and check them with newspaper advertisements and horse-cards wherever possible.

  The most outstanding of these men was one who gave Herman Biddell much of the information for Volume One. He was John Moyse of Framlingham. ‘Barber’ Moyse was born in 1789 at Stradbrooke, the centre of ‘High Suffolk’ and a big breeding district for horses; and he was later apprenticed to a barber at the nearby town of Halesworth. Not long afterwards he started a business of his own at Earl Soham; but here, in addition to barbering, he took up colt-breaking, later giving up the barber’s business altogether and becoming a horse-dealer. He settled in the town of Framlingham, but his horse-business failed and he was forced to put up his barber’s pole again. He lived until he was nearly ninety, and the Suffolk horse was his study and his passion throughout his life. His memory was so marvellous that Herman Biddell characterised him as, ‘literally speaking, a walking stud-book’. And he goes on to say: ‘It was not, however, till a search through the files of the county papers of the last seventy years had tested his accuracy that the full force of his memory became apparent.’ Descriptions of many of the early horses in the stud-book are supplemented by Moyse’s memory of them. He liked a horse with sound feet, and however attractive a horse otherwise looked, he counted him of little worth if he failed to come up to his standard of ‘good fa-et’. He gave great help to Herman Biddell but unfortunately when his task was in its later stages, ‘Moyse was mortal and Moyse died’, and Biddell was forced to leave many blanks which would have been filled in had the old man lived to see the stud-book’s completion.

  Another of the old grooms contacted by Herman Biddell in 1862 was Charles Row, the groom at Butley Abbey. Charles Row was the man at the Abbey; and it was said at the time that the fame of the Butley stud was due as much to the skill of the head groom as to the judgment and resources of his master. Charles Row was in charge of two horses already mentioned: Duke 296 and Ripshawe 294, two of the stable kings of his day:5 ‘but the crowning point of his glory was when, in 1851, Duke was first, Ripshawe second, and all the world behind the pair; and this under the very eyes of her Majesty from the castle walks of Royal Windsor. There it was the judges caught a lecture. “Trot on, my man.” Row was no athlete: nothing of old Mr Catlin’s was ever put out of its pace, man or beast, and so Row kept his charge well in hand. “Run on, you with No. 407.” “What d’ye want to trot him for? Why, you mayn’t run such horses as these.” And the merest apology for a trot was all they got out of the pair. But judges in those days were not quite so bent on action; Duke passed muster—won—and Row was in ecstasies. The castle grounds were thrown open for the men. Those marble types of perfect form—the human figure in classic beauty—pleased him not. “Proper nice place,” but he “wondered the Queen let such things as them be in her garden”.’

  Daniel Pattle of Catawade was another outstanding leader Herman Biddell visited. He was a cheerful, broad-shouldered but rather stooping man of eighty-five when he first met him; and in spite of his age and the fact that he had three years previously ‘burned a thousand’ of the horse-cards that would have assisted his memory he gave a great deal of valuable information. He was able to tell Biddell about Smith’s Horse 1110 of Parham. Like Crisp’s Horse of Ufford he was another powerful ‘father of his nation’. Daniel Pattle had been at Thomas Coke’s famous sheep-shearings at Holkham in Norfolk, the precursors of the agricultural shows; and he had travelled a horse for three seasons in that area. The horse was a good one, and he did well with it in spite of the fact that it was quite blind: ‘Yes, sir, he was blind as a bat of both eyes, and no one ever found it out but a boy. When we came along the road the little rascal sung out, “Master, your horse is blind!” “Go away,” said I, “he’s all right.” He saw me chuck the bridle when we came to the stones.’ Daniel Pattle also travelled a Suffolk horse in Yorkshire for three seasons, and ‘brought his master home a fortune’. But he, too, died before Biddell had finished his task. The day he went to call on him for the second time he found the hearse at the door; ‘and they buried the old man while I waited at Manningtree Station for the train back to Ipswich.’

  John Lancaster was another of the grooms Herman Biddell interviewed; and this name is
a further example of the continuity of the families connected with the horse in Suffolk: a descendant of John Lancaster, and his namesake is groom at Morston Hall today.

  Herman Biddell repeatedly affirmed his debt to these old grooms who gave him the information on which he was able to build the intricate structure of the stud-book, and his great regret that he had not been able to take down all the relevant memories of some of these old men is a measure of the value he placed upon them. Horses were their life and the horse-pedigrees had become absorbed into the already rich folk-tradition that had accrued around the horse. To remember a pedigree came as naturally to them as remembering a process and was not so much a conscious task as an effortless conforming to an age-old practice. William Groom has given one of the ways the old horsemen used to identify a horse and confirm his pedigree: ‘My father could tell a horse’s stock by looking at him and sizing him up for a couple of minutes. He knew the Suffolks so well and all the horses that were travelling in these parts that he could pick out a horse’s breed by studying him. Then he’d tell the leader: “This horse has got So-and-so’s and So-and-so’s breed in him”; and when they looked at the horse’s card they always found he was right. The eyes used to tell him, chiefly—the way they were set in the horse’s head. If he sold a horse he could tell the new owner the pedigree off by heart—back for generations; and he’d always be absolutely right.’

  The pedigrees were added to the other secrets of the old horseman’s craft, not to be discussed with anyone not of ‘the brotherhood’, but freely given to a man like Herman Biddell who was a ‘horse’ man himself and was sacrificing three years of his life to collect the pedigrees and verify those that had never been written down. He took down memories that went back to the late eighteenth century, to the time when the ‘old breed’ was just beginning to emerge from the initial stages of a grooming that was to take it to the show-rings and parade grounds of the world. It may, in fact, be said that to a large extent the Suffolk breed of horse today is a vindication of the accuracy of the old oral method of handing down factual knowledge, and to Herman Biddell’s skill in recognising and verifying it.

  After his tremendous labours6 the stud-book appeared in 1880; and although he served as secretary for a further nine years, this was the high point of his achievement—one might say the high point of his life. When he retired from the secretaryship the Society made him a presentation7 and in his speech of thanks he gave a glimpse of his feelings while he was preparing what was to become his most lasting monument:

  ‘If there is one thing which goes to a man’s heart straighter than another, or affects him more deeply than the love and gratitude of his own family, it is the appreciation of the men he has known all his life, socially and in business. You don’t know what my feelings are on this occasion. It was often said to me in the days when I was hard at work upon our first publication: “How can you give up three or four years of the best part of your life to a job like that for other people?” But I remembered then, as now, the grand words of Scripture—“No man liveth unto himself”.’

  He lived until 1917. Raymond Keer remembers him in his later years. He kept his interest in Suffolk horses right up to the end, and often visited the Red House stud at Rendlesham: ‘a gruff, kind-hearted man—tall, and always wearing a long black coat that was almost touching the ground in front owing to his stoop and his bent shoulders’. Yet in spite of all his good qualities, his stubbornness and strongmindedness had a negative side, and in themselves would prevent any attempt to paint an ideal portrait of the man. Ultra-conservative in his outlook and intolerant of views he did not share, his part8 in the 1874 dispute with the newly formed agricultural unions must be set against the breadth of his understanding and his farsightedness when he was dealing with the purely technical aspects of agriculture.

  Before leaving Herman Biddell mention must be made of a remarkable piece of oral tradition he himself was responsible for preserving and later writing down. As a young man he was driving his father around one of the Playford farms where there had once been a flourishing brick-kiln. Arthur Biddell observed: ‘The Senate House at Washington was built with bricks made at this kiln: they were shipped there from Ipswich.’ Herman forgot about the incident until, after his father’s death, he had a visit from an ‘American Ranchman’: the year was about 1865:

  ‘One evening without previous notice a visitor was announced as having come from America. At that time I had begun to get used to these sudden appearances. Some led to business, and if they did not there were few to whom I was not under obligation for an hour or two’s most interesting after-dinner conversation. Whether this especial visitor came after pedigrees or whether like others of his countrymen he came to learn something of Playford Hall and the man who had made its name famous, I do not remember. During the evening he asked if he might have his bag. This article when forth-coming proved to be a not over-large hand-bag which to the astonishment of the domestics was found to be the entire extent of his personal luggage.

  ‘This was nearly fifty years ago, and judging by the deck loads of the cabs which one now sees at the steps of the Langham the travelling American does things differently at the present day. From this hand-bag my visitor brought to the surface a well-made white brick. He handed it to me and said: “This came from the Senate House at Washington (then under repair, I expect); I am led to believe it was made in the county of Suffolk. Can you tell me where it was made?” “Well,” I said, “it is very curious but there are only two men on the face of the earth who can answer your question. I am one of them, and the other is a brother to whom I will introduce you tomorrow.”

  ‘Now the American landed at Liverpool, I think, on the Saturday and on the Monday he came to me. The first man he inquired of was the one who could answer his question. It struck me as a very curious co-incidence.’9

  The brick was probably a white, very hard brick once made in certain districts of Suffolk. It was known as a Woolpit brick and is to be seen in many Suffolk buildings, notably Great Glemham Hall, the home of Lord Cranbrook.

  There are numerous entries relating to the carting of bricks in Arthur Biddell’s early Day Book; and Robert Sherwood, the Blaxhall farmer who was brought up in Playford, remembers the exact site of the brick-kiln. It was on Kiln Farm which was one of Arthur Biddell’s farms, rented in his son’s, Manfred’s, name in the early years of last century. Robert Sherwood has said: ‘I have not seen the brickyard for about forty years, and then only one wall was standing. I doubt if anyone could find it now, unless he knew exactly where to look. The farm is always known as The Kell which, as you know, is true Suffolk.’

  1 Lewis Spence, Myth and Ritual in Dance, Game and Rhyme, Watts & Co., 1947, p. 158.

  2 Thomas Davidson, ‘The Horseman’s Word,’ Gwerin, Vol. 1, No. 2, Basil Blackwell, 1956, and sources cited.

  3 B.O.H., p. 141.

  4 S.H.S.B., Vol. 1, p. 10.

  5 S.H.S.B., Vol. 1, p. 13.

  6 His writing work and his serving on deputations and committees must have cost him dear. One of his old workmen told the writer: ‘Herman Biddell wasn’t much of a man about the farm: they used to call him a spear-grass farmer.’

  7 S.H.S.B., Vol. 5. (1890).

  8 For the full story of this see the Ipswich Journal for March and April, 1874.

  9 Thomas Clarkson and Playford Hall, 1912, p. 57.

  14

  The Suffolk Horse Society

  The Suffolk Stud-Book Association, later known as the Suffolk Horse Society, was the first of the heavy horse societies in Britain: it was founded in 1877 and sponsored by the Suffolk Agricultural Association—chiefly by Lord Waveney, Richard Garrett and a handful of prominent breeders. Herman Biddell was its secretary until 1889; then came Fred Smith, son of Alfred Smith, a well known breeder of Suffolks with a stud at the Red House, Rendlesham—in ‘The Sands’. From him his son-in law, Raymond Keer the present secretary, took over in 1924. Herman Biddell’s first job, as we have seen, was to co
mpile Volume One of the stud-book; and nearly every year since an additional volume has been added—none, however, equalling the first either in scope or in dimension.

  But in addition to publishing the stud-book the Society has always been concerned in popularising the Suffolk and in encouraging breeders and helping them wherever possible. For instance during the nineteenth century the feet of the Suffolk came in for much criticism. Herman Biddell reported: ‘they were said to be brittle and otherwise defective’ and ‘side-bone’ was a prevalent nuisance. Side-bone is the ossification of the side cartilages in a horse’s foot; and this hardening eventually causes the horse to become lame, especially if he travels on hard road surfaces. A stallion with side-bone is almost certain to transmit the defect to his progeny. Therefore the natural remedy was to prevent the suspect stallion from breeding. The Suffolk Agricultural Association, and later the Suffolk Horse Society, adopted the method of stringent examination of all show horses by a veterinary surgeon: and however good a horse, he would not be awarded a prize if the ‘vet’ found any suggestion of side-bone in him. Even today it is rarely that a heavy horse passes out of the show ring without at least one of the judges bending down and feeling round the coronets of his feet for this defect. The ‘vet’ later makes a more stringent examination still. This ‘Show’ examination is in addition to the routine one conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture under the Horse Breeding Act of 1918: this demands that before a stallion is licensed he must satisfy the Minister’s examiners he is free from hereditary defect.

  This side-bone fault has now been almost completely stamped out; but the Society still continues its encouragement to breeders to keep up a good standard by awarding a special prize for the horse with the best feet at their Spring Stallion Show at Ipswich. ‘No feet: no horse’, as the traditional saying is; and later the testimony of a blacksmith will be given to bear out the truth of this. The award is given by the Suffolk Agricultural Association, and is called ‘The Arthur Pratt Memorial Prize’ after the Trimley breeder who did so much to improve the Suffolk’s feet at the end of the last century and the beginning of this: he did his best to get a better quality horn by ‘breeding out’ brackly or brittle feet. One of his stallions, Morston Golden Guard 4234, had particularly good feet: all his progeny inherited this trait and helped to disseminate it over the whole breed.