Barbaro. Now Eight Belles.

My father comes from a place where the old men and old women still consider horses to be gods who came to earth.

In Hungary, every tiny village had a council of elders: the old men in their szurs, long wooly white shepherd’s capes, the old women in their red boots with the black heels, the fine leather pleated and stitched with red thread all the way up to the knees… the old men who smoke pipes with drawing bows 18 inches long… the old women who if need be, could still swing up into the saddle of a stamping stallion…

These one of a kind people, these last-of-their-kind people in our family, say this about horses: “Never force a horse to run relentlessly, for a horse is made of Love and Courage on four legs …

…and the horse will literally love you so hard, it will run its heart out for you until it is dead.”

This is not just a saying. The old ones are serious. Descendents of the Huns and Swabians, the horse tribes of mountains and plains, they have their own ancient forms of knowing.

The old people have another saying, jokingly said…but not really:

–“You want to know the secret of the determination of the Hungarians? They are in all their dreams, fully human, and fully horse.”

–”You want to know the secret of the determination of the horse? They are in all their dreams, fully horse and fully god.”

In the United States this weekend, at the Kentucky Derby, a horse race of long standing… Eight Belles, a filly, was running against the boys.

Coming out of the race, she suddenly dropped her heavy body to the ground. Two broken ankles. She was ‘euthanized’ where she lay.

From a piece by Beth Harris: Louisville, Kentucky.

“Winning jockey Kent Desormeaux and Big Brown galloped by Eight Belles in her waning moments.

“This horse showed you his heart[Big Brown], and Eight Belles showed you her life for our enjoyment today,” he said. “I’m deeply sympathetic to that team for their loss.”

Big Brown, the favored horse, had won the race.

But so much was not won. So much that is not about horse races and horse owners, but about Equus, the god of the horses…

Those as ancient as the Greeks, but unrecorded by stylus, are said to have held that the god-horse, the king of the horses of heaven, arrived on earth when time was still only fog… that the godly horse arrived on earth with the silver reins made of nebula on him, and with the bit made of stars in his mouth.

He who is known by many ancient names, came in order to teach humans the beauty of the world beyond their small and squalid ways of life.

Thus, the oldest Hungarian horse people say the horse god came to earth out of

compassion for humans, to teach, to show, to help.

“The horse god was never meant to be led by humans, but to lead humans…”

in the ways of strength, loyalty and running in some way, like the Boreas, the winds gods that all horses are cherished by. The horses were to teach humans to run toward something that makes life larger, not smaller. Something that sustains life. Not, kills it.

The old people of our gaggle, love to gamble and relish contests of all kinds. And, they would nonetheless, because it is about ‘horses’– to them, a category of the Divine— they would squint their eyes sadly, and have many sharp opinions about racing horses into grave injuries, racing horses to death…

They would decry those humans who have none of the old knowing and ancient skills to determine what is ‘enough’ and what is ‘too much…’

But somewhere in trying to come to terms with a huge force of the Divine being unknowing led to die… and not with rage, but rather in a whisper, one or the other of the old people would say something like this about Eight Belles and other noble horses like her…

‘For those who can see between the cracks of two worlds, the old horsemen and old horsewomen who walk in the stars will run to catch the halter of this horse… “Don’t vorry: de horzez alvays know de vay back to de schtarz.”

Long ago and far away when all my elders were still alive, they’d likely, then, tell one more time, their story of how the horse gods came to earth. Here it is for you… a tiny story, but sometimes the smallest carries the most numen…

“The horse gods came to earth when they saw that humans suffered so from not knowing how to live with one another under the sky of blue, field of green, mountain of black.

“But once the horse gods arrived on earth, they saw that humans were in far worse condition than they’d thought, that their mission to earth would not be a mere sighting, but a living with the humans.

“The horses promised to stay with the human beings until all humans could grow to be as loyal, enduring, as deep and peaceful as the horses themselves.”

Thus, it was said by these old Magyar tribes people, that people treat their horses only as well as they recall why the horses came to earth to begin with…

–by how well they recall what the horses came to teach…
–and by how much that particular human has since learned…

from the horses… made of Love and Courage on four legs, the ones who wear the star bridles …visible only to those, the old people say, who have learned–and deeply loved– the lessons, as well as the teacher.

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CODA, please also see Shaun Mullen’s excellent article on “Why It’s Long Past Time to Clean Up U.S. Thoroughbred Racing, here.