And where the play of the foals,
For kind as is the new father,
He is not the old father to me,”
the bride answers to the youths who sing the “Jarjar”, the song of consolation to the departing bride, referring by the words “Foal-play” to the time of her first love.
The wealth of a man is expressed in the number of horses he possesses; payment for a bride is made in the value of so many horses; the maiden who is offered as a prize to the winner in a race is held as being worth a hundred mares; horses are given as mutual presents; with horses atonement is made for assassination or murder, limbs broken in a struggle, an eye knocked out, or for any crime or misdemeanour; one hundred horses release from ban and outlawry the assassin or murderer of a man, fifty, of a woman, thirty, of a child. The fine imposed by the tribe for injuring any one’s person or property is paid in horses; for the sake of a horse even a respectable man becomes a thief. The horse carries the lover to his loved one, the bridegroom to the bride, the hero to battle, the saddle and clothing of the dead from one camping-place to another; the horse carries man and woman from yurt to yurt, the aged man as well as the child firmly bound to his saddle, or the youthful rider who sits for the first time free. The rich man estimates his herds as equivalent to so many horses; without a horse a Kirghiz is what a man without a home is among us; without a horse he deems himself the poorest under the sun.
The Kirghiz has thoroughly studied the horse, he knows all its habits, its merits and defects, its virtues and vices, knows what benefits and what injures it; sometimes, indeed, he expects an incredible amount from it, but he never exacts it unless necessity compels him. He does not treat it with the affectionate care of the Arab, but neither does he ever show the want of consideration of many other peoples. One does not see anything of that careful and intelligent breeding of horses which is practised by Arabs and Persians, English and Germans, but he does constantly endeavour to secure the improvement of his favourite breeds by only placing the best stallions with the mares, and castrating the rest. Unfortunately his choice of breeding-horses is determined solely by form, and does not take colour into consideration at all, the consequence being that many of his horses are exceedingly ugly, because their colouring is so irregular and unequal. The training of the horse leaves much to be desired; our wandering herdsman is much too rich in horses for this to be otherwise.
We found the Kirghiz horse a pleasant and good-natured creature, although it by no means fulfilled our ideal of beauty in all respects. It is of medium size and slender build, with a head not ugly though rather large, decidedly ram-nosed, and noticeably thickened by the prominent lower jaw-bones, a moderately long and powerful neck, a long body, fine limbs, and soft hair. Its eyes are large and fiery, its ears somewhat large, but well-shaped. Mane and tail have fine, long hair, always abundant, the hair of the tail growing so luxuriantly that it sweeps the ground; the legs are well formed, but rather slim, the hoofs are upright, but often rather too high. Light colours prevail and very ugly piebalds often offend the eye. The commonest colours are brown, light-brown, fox-coloured, dun, and bay, more rare are dark-brown and black, and one only occasionally sees a gray. The mane and tail greatly increase the beauty of all the light-coloured horses, because they are either black or much lighter than the body hairs.
The temper of the animal is worthy of all praise. The Kirghiz horse is fiery, yet extremely good-natured, courageous in the presence of all known dangers, and only nervous, skittish, and timid when it is bewildered for a moment by something unusual; it is spirited and eager in its work, obedient, docile, willing, energetic, and very enduring, but it is chiefly valuable for riding, and requires long breaking-in to make it of use as a draught animal, in which capacity it is much less valuable than as a riding-horse.
Fig. 67.—Life among the Kirghiz—the Return from the Chase.