Horsey Horsey Capal,
Black and Blue,Open the Gates,And let me through!
I loved that game when I was a kid and I love playing it with kids now. It guarantees giggles. Ive been sprawling out on the grass in the sun while it lasts and oddly I found myself thinking about Horses and that old rhyme and even though Ive never been on a horse in my life I felt the lack of them today. It was odd... but thinking about it I associate warm sun and soft grass with horses because my sunny days were spent in the phenix park as a kid. Horses go by regularly on the trails there. Thinking about it now what the horse means to me leads me to think about what the horse meant to people traditionally and what a horse association in myth might imply about a deity. There might be a problem in that area... my oddball association with the sun and the horse is genuine James madness but is the horse association in myth representative of a genuine belief that we neopagans could look at to gain an understanding of a deity or are horse associations when they appear a literary invention?
There was a famous king of Ireland of the race of the Tuatha De, Eochaid Ollathair his name. He was also named the Dagda [i.e. good god], for it was he that used to work wonders for them and control the weather and the crops. Wherefore men said he was called the Dagda.
In Medieval literature the name Eochaidh (that might mean Horse Lord) is applied to a lot of kingly characters who dont seem to be fleshed out at all. They are usually a king or more appropriately a father of a prince who is the main character in the story. As far as meanings for associations go that makes the horse association a hard one to penetrate. While the name Eochaidh might have had its origins in a totemistic role for horses by the time we see it in the medieval it might just be a metaphor for kingship or kingly ancestors. Even the Dagda, a significant deity, is only around in the narrative as a kingly ancestor for Aongus in the story above. Its hard to say that it implies a genuine totemistic association when the Eochaidhs seem to exist only to serve a literary function and the name instead of describing the person with the name only exists to flesh out the character of his son or daughter.
... and that makes it hard to say what Eochaidh imparted when the horse was a totem animal...
The Wooing of Emer.
A foal was cooked for us on it. A foal is the ruin of a chariot to the end of three weeks [...] and there is a gess on a chariot to the end of three weeks for any man to enter it after having last eaten horse-flesh. For it is the horse that sustains the chariot.’
What did the horse mean for people, was it just a means of transport? It was that but it was more then that because the tabu above may represent a genuine belief. All animals occupy a space in the spiritual life of a traditional peoples but the horse being a creature that was both domestic and wild may have been extraordinary enough to be a totem animal for one or more peoples or type of person. The volumes of Irish myth dont open the gates of understanding wide enough for me to get through with the same rush I felt going through adults legs as a giggling little kid. But I suppose there are other sources of information and importantly other options for us as neopagans. Personal meditation and understanding can sometimes provide a leg up over the gate if it wont open up...
And theres always the wonder of wondering sprawled out on the grass if the doors never open up.
