The Wife of Bath, on the other hand, with her “great spurs,” sat astride an “amblere”; the Ploughman rode “a mere”; the Shipman from Dartmouth rode “a rouncy as he couth”; while the Reeve “sat upon a fit good stot that was all pomely gray, and highte Scot.” In the “Knight's Tale” we find the King of Ynde riding “a horse of baye.”
Apparently at this time greater attention was paid to the breeding and rearing of horses for war than for hunting or for “speed competitions” or any other purpose. Evidently King Richard had become more fully aware of the possibilities that existed for the use of powerful cavalry than any of his predecessors had done. Indeed he is said to have expressed upon one occasion a strong wish that his army might one day consist of cavalry only.
He believed, too, that the heavier the chargers were the more formidable the regiment must be, and so wholly did this belief obsess him that upon occasions he betrayed a tendency to overlook the fact that the heaviest horses in the world, the most finely trained—in short, the best—must necessarily prove comparatively useless unless their riders, in addition to being brave and well armed, were thoroughly trained horsemen and well disciplined.
Referring again to Chaucer, we find in the “Squire's Tale,” which he did not finish, the well-known story of Cambuscan's wooden horse, and we find this also in “The Arabian Nights”—that series of delightful narratives said to have been first made known by Antoine Gallard, the French Oriental scholar. The famous brazen horse of romance is the same, for it was Cambuscan's, and Cambuscan was King of Sarra, in Tartary. Cambuscan possessed, so it was said, all the virtues that are popularly attributed to a king, yet withal none of a king's vices; also he was said to be passionately devoted to his queen, Elfeta, who bore him two sons, Algarsife and Cambalo, and one daughter, Canace.
We are further told that the King of Arabia and India presented Cambuscan with “a steed of brass, which between sunrise and sunset would carry its rider to any spot on earth.” To make the horse do this all that was necessary was that its rider should whisper into its ear the name of the place to which he wished to travel, and that he should then mount the horse and turn a pin set in its ear.
This done, the “animal” would go direct and at great speed to the place required, whereupon the rider turned another pin and descended. By turning a third pin it was possible to make the horse vanish and not reappear until its presence was again needed.
Aligero Clavileno was the full name of the winged horse with the wooden pin, the horse which Don Quixote rode upon the memorable occasion of his rescue of Dolorida and her companions.
But enough of fairy tales and nonsense. Coming to the subject of horse races in early times we find it gravely stated that “the earliest description of a horse race per se occurs in 1377,” though we know that race meetings of a sort were held long before that date. The whereabouts of the track where the races in 1377 took place has not been ascertained, but it is known that some of the horses which ran belonged to Lord Arundel, and some to the Prince of Wales, so soon to become Richard II.