Skewbald, the New Forest Pony

by Allen W. Seaby

Of the other ponies, several showed the attempts at improving the breed practised of late years. One had the short leg of the Exmoor pony, another the tiny ear of the Shetland, others the shapely line of the polo and even of the Arab, for at one time or another all these, and others, have been used as sires. In some cases the importation threatened to improve the race off the forest altogether. It is no land of milk and honey, for the green pastures and lush spots are not in themselves extensive enough to support the stock of ponies, and only those which can exist on the coarse tussock grass, the sweet but prickly shoots of gorse, and the astringent heather tufts, are sure of surviving. Also a good proportion of the ponies stay out in the forest all the winter; and though snow does not fall frequently or lie long in this locality, yet the weather is often colder than in the Shetlands, where the little pony of the far North, his ears buried in his shaggy mane, and a doormat-like thatch on his back, winters without difficulty.

But here, at the other extreme of Britain, if there come a long spell of bleak wet weather, and especially if sharp frosts intervene, the younger ponies are likely to suffer, and a man, seeing his neighbour’s yearling looking “seedy,” will think it his duty to inform the owner, who, unless careless and improvident, will have the creature “caught in,” and give it shelter and food.

Perhaps the most striking in colour of the group on the hill was a chestnut mare, of that rich hue known as “liver” chestnut. In the sun her coat flashed bright orange-red, while by contrast it appeared deep purple in the shade. Her foal at the moment was lying in the heather, out of sight. When at length he arose, one saw why he could lie hidden so completely, for he was so small and evidently had not long been born. Compared with the other foals, which were now well grown, though still leggy, the colt seemed absurdly disproportioned, and with his big head, long ears, and bent hind-legs looked, apart from his colour, more like a fawn than a pony in the making. His body was so meagre that it seemed merely a connecting-link between his fore and hind quarters. As he stood up he swayed to and fro. His little napping tail looked exactly like the strip of goatskin nailed on to form the tail of those wooden steeds which were being made, not so far away from where the ponies stood, in the toy factory at Brockenhurst.

But the interesting thing about him was his colour, for he was a “skewbald,” patterned boldly in chestnut and white. Nearly all the other foals were dark, and it was as yet almost impossible to foretell their exact adult colour. Alone among the youngsters, the skewbald foal showed what his coat would be like when he was full grown. Although so young, he possessed the agility of young creatures which have no period of sheltered repose, unlike fledglings in the nest, or the young fawn hardly able to stand, and hidden by its mother while it gathers strength. In his way the foal was as nimble and alive as young partridge or lapwing chicks. He trotted to his mother, took nourishment with the curious twisted neck characteristic of the attitude of a foal when feeding, and relapsed from sight among the heather.

Nearly all the mares had shaggy manes and tails, and the hair hung down over their foreheads so as almost to conceal their eyes. The foals had manes standing up along their necks as if they had been “hogged,” and their fore hair rose in a curious tuft between their ears.

The ponies, to all appearance, were as tame as any stable animal, and they would not have retreated if a man had quietly approached them or gone past at a distance of a few yards; unless, of course, he had used a binocular or camera, when the flash of light from glass or metal would have caused them to start and make off. A horseman, however, would be a different matter, and they would have been on the move long before he reached them.

At a nearer view the branding marks on the mares and yearlings could be seen, mostly on the back where a saddle would cover it, but sometimes on the shoulder. These marks indicated the initials or devices of their owners, commoners of the forest, or Crown tenants, who have the right of pasturing their ponies, the Crown demanding a small annual sum for each animal put out in the forest.

These marked ponies had the hair of their tails cut curiously. This had been done by the agisters, forest officers with numerous and complicated duties. The forest is divided into three districts, each served by an agister, and each district has its own way of marking the tails of the ponies registered by him. In one district the lower third of the hair is cut away, leaving a centre tassel; in the other two half the lower third is cut off on the right and left respectively. Thus an agister can tell at a glance whether a pony belongs to his district or not. The cut tail is, in effect, a receipt, testifying that the pony’s owner has registered it and paid the dues.

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The lord and master of the herd on the hill, the stallion, was not, for the moment, in sight. He might have been cooling his heels in a stream, dozing among the gnarled, ingrown hollies, which, with their twisted branches, look fully as grotesque as any of Mr. Rackham’s picturing, or have gone off to turn back a mare wandering away down the valley.