The Shetland Pony

by Charles Douglas; A. I. Douglas

It is beyond doubt that a Spanish ship, the Gran Grifon, Capitana (flagship), was wrecked on the Fair Isle, and that this was the flagship of the Armada de Urcas, commanded by Gomez de Medina.[9] But “John de la Conido of Lekit in Biskey marriner,” under examination, “saith after the English Fleet parted from them, the Spanish Fleet cast out all the horses and mules into the sea to save their water, which were carried in certain hulks provided for the purpose.”[10] These hulks (urcas), therefore, contained the horses of the Armada; and the fact that their flagship was wrecked on the Fair Isle seems to bring the Spanish horses to the very coast of Shetland.

Whether they landed on that coast or not we may guess almost as we please. But if they did attain it, what kind of horses were they? The Spanish war-horse of that time, as we find it in the pictures of Velasquez, is much more Belgian than Arab, and by no means a likely source of Oriental type or of any good pony strain. On the other hand, there is considerable weight of legendary evidence in support of the view that horses carried by the Armada made an improvement in British breeds. “The fame of Newmarket,”says Sheardown, “begins soon after the destruction of the Spanish Armada. Some horses which had escaped from the wrecked vessels are said to have been exhibited at that place and to have astonished those who beheld their extraordinary swiftness.”[11]

This record suggests that Spanish horses were the source of a distinct improvement in the races with which they were crossed, and especially in the matter of speed; and it is hardly possible to think that this should have been the case unless they were themselves of Eastern breeding.

Apart from these possible sources of an actual Oriental cross in the Shetland pony, there remains the possibility that the original pony of Celtic Shetland was itself similar in type and origin to the Oriental horse, and was, in fact, derived from the same stock which, in other conditions, has given rise to the Arab and the thoroughbred. The investigations of Professor Cossar Ewart[12] and Mr Ridgeway[13] point to the strong probability of a triple origin of the horse as it is known to history; and the fact that the Shetland pony, as we have it to-day, is sometimes of a purely Scandinavian type, sometimes of an Oriental type, may perhaps be explained by regarding it as a composite of two distinct races, one having a common origin with the Oriental horse, and the other being identical with the Scandinavian pony. Force is lent to this explanation by the fact that the pony depicted on the pre-Scandinavian Bressay Stone is wholly different in type and character from those represented in Scandinavian rock-drawings, and much more resembles the Oriental horse, with a high carriage and fine type of head, and a short back.

Whatever its earlier history may be, the Shetland pony begins to emerge in definite records during the sixteenth century. Ubaldini wrote in 1568—“Their horses are very small and tiny in stature, not bigger than asses, nevertheless they are very strong in endurance.”[14] In the same year Jo. Ben. (John the Benedictine?) speaks of “alia Insula inculta nomine Auskerrie [presumably either the Orkney Island of Auskerrie or the Shetland Island Osse Skerry] ubi equi ferocissimi sunt.”[15] These “very wild” horses of the Auskerrie are without doubt progenitors of the Shetland pony of to-day.

THE HORSE ON THE BRESSAY STONE.

In 1576 we find the use of horses by the laird matter of dispute in Shetland. “The Parochinaris of Wais ... deponis that quhen the Laird come throw their parochin, giff the worst boy that was in his companie got not ane horse to ride upon, the Laird wold gar thame that refusit pay 40 babeis thairfair of Zetland payment.”[16] In 1614 it is recorded by Mackaile that “the horses are little in Orkney”;[17] while at the same period we have an Act to restrain the grazing of “wyld horsis”;[18] and shortly afterwards, in 1628, an Act “anent ryding and cutting of other men’s horsis taillis.”[19]

Within a few years after this the Shetland pony is clearly identified; for Captain John Smith says in 1633: “Their Horses, which they called Shelties, some of which I have seen, are little bigger than Asses, but very durable.”[20]