Skewbald, the New Forest Pony

by Allen W. Seaby

How pleasant the colts found the water, enjoying the splashing of their hoofs as they walked in the stream, the while their elders stood fetlock-deep! How refreshing to take a deep drink, head and neck inclined at just the right angle so that the nostrils were clear of the water, followed by a snort of content!

After whiling away the hotter hours thus, the ponies would take the tracks towards the hill. As they got higher, the white stones showed in the thin crust of soil, and the heather grew more sparsely. One August afternoon, while rounding a gorsebush which shaded a patch of bare blackish soil, strewn with dead sticks and gravel, the colt almost touched with his nose what looked like a piece of dead wood covered with grey lichen and spots of orange fungus, when, on the moment, the thing came to life. The lichen and fungus became grey-tipped and barred feathers, the stalk-like projection opened in half, disclosing a great, rose-pink, frog-like mouth—a mouth so enormous and menacing, that Skewbald shrunk back. Then the mother nightjar appeared from nowhere, and croaking and spluttering she fluttered right before the foal’s nose, so that his attention was distracted from her young one. If he had looked again he would have found the gaping mouth and widely spread wings gone, and the young chick again reduced to the semblance of an unattractive lump.

Sometimes the ponies would take the open moor with its coarse grass, scanty tufts of heather, and sweet-scented bog myrtle. Much of it was swamp, and the mare watched her offspring to see that he did not venture into one of the deep bogs known only to the forest men, and to the ponies and deer. If he were rash, she called him on to safety, while if he were obstinate, she butted him with her forehead on to drier ground.

In places the moor was curiously patterned, like a chessboard, a tuft of heather next a patch of bare soil. This was owing to the peat-cutting, a right possessed by the commoners, who, however, are required “to cut one and leave two,” so that the soil should not be deprived altogether of vegetable growth.

In early September the colt may have seen the forest gentian, a single blossom of a beautiful violet-blue on an erect stalk, while the seed-pods of the bog asphodel close by, of a vivid orange-yellow, formed a perfect colour complementary. But do ponies see colours? They apparently see well by night, which would seem to show that a large part of their retina consists of structures adapted for nocturnal vision, just as the outer part of the human retina only is used at dusk, the inner being practically blind at this time, and therefore green foliage and grass turn grey, and red flowers appear black, red and green being seen only with that part of the retina concerned with diurnal vision.

About this time, too, as he crossed a sandy forest path, he may have seen the brilliantly green caterpillar of the emperor moth, its sides spotted with pink, full fed, and wandering about seeking a site for its cocoon. Was he able to detect the same creature on its natural resting-place, the heather, practically invisible to human eyes, when motionless; its green merged into the leafage, and the pink spots simulating heather buds?

Certainly the heather the year of Skewbald’s birth was of a brilliance such that the oldest forest man declared he had never seen equalled. Especially was this the case on the most barren gravelly spots, where instead of the usual magenta, clumps of the brightest crimson blazed in the sun.

In the warm September days life passed pleasantly. Through the cold, clear nights, while Vega blazed above, he paced on with his mother, ever nibbling, for, like his kind, he did not spend the long nights in sleep, but towards dawn lay down for an hour or so. His coat, fast thickening, kept him warm, even when just after sunrise a white frost covered every blade of grass, heather tuft, and fern frond. As the sun rose higher, the frost turned to a heavy dew in which the colt wandered, the wet bog myrtle washing him to the shoulder, while the rays, shining through the mist, enveloped him with a golden aura.

Later in the day he plodded up the hill on to the “plain,” and while his mother dozed in the shade of a clump of holly, he would roll in a patch of brilliantly white or golden sand. Once as he bent his knees to lie down, a grey-brown thing like a dead furze branch suddenly galvanized into life with a hiss. As the viper moved, the colt, with a snort of astonishment, jumped all four feet in the air at once, and the mother rushed towards him. She saw the reptile gliding along the path, and turned sharply away, calling the colt to her.

So Skewbald learned to avoid a snake, and incidentally that he could jump. He practised this on occasion, leaping over fallen stumps, across streamlets and shallow pits, not knowing how useful an accomplishment it might prove to him in after-life.