Notes on divine and intelligent horses

Note: this text is extracted from Book III, chapter 18:

“When the horse heard that, he was full of regret, remembering his former birth, and mentally acceded to the king’s request; for excellent horses are divine beings. Then the king mounted again, and the horse set out by a road bordered with clear cool lakes, that took away the fatigue of the journey; and by evening the splendid horse had taken the king another hundred yojanas and brought him near Ujjayinī.”

Grimm in his Teutonic Mythology (translation by Stallybrass, p. 39 2) remarks:

“One principal mark to know heroes by is their possessing intelligent horses, and conversing with them. The toucing conversation of Achilles with his Xanthos and Balios finds a complete parallel in the beautiful Karling legend of Bayard.”

(This is most pathetically told in Simrock’s Deutsche Volksbiicher, vol. ii, “ Die Heimonskinder,” see especially p. 54.)

Grimm proceeds to cite many other instances from European literature. See also note 3 to the twentieth story in Miss Stokes’ collection, and the remarks in Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, p. 237.—Owing to the great value of war horses among the early Aryans we find them an object of worship from Vedic days. See Ṛg-Veda, iv, 33. For notes on horse-worship and horse-sacrifice see Crooke, Folk-Lore of Northern India, vol. ii, pp. 204-208 and the numerous references given on those pages. When horses were first introduced to the Central American Indians by the Spaniards, they were regarded as supernatural beings and worshipped as such. For the horse in mythology see Negelein in Teutonia, ii; de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. i, pp. 290- 296 and 330-355; Pauly-Wissowa, under “Aberglaube,” p. 76; and Crooke, “Some Notes on Homeric Folk-Lore,” Folk-Lore, vol. xix, 1908, p. 65.— n.m.p.