‘You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make him drink.’ Before the invention of the internal combustion engine it was laminitis rather than a leaky radiator ensured the production of expletives in the daily round. Horses resisted a bridle, trod on a groom’s foot, bit the hand that fed them and bolted when they felt like a bit of a gallop – up to Ware with John Gilpin, for example. That has a personal touch for me but there are horse tales galore. ‘How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix’ is about the best of them. Dick Turpin’s ride to York told by Alfred Noyes is another. And everybody knows ‘For want of a nail’.
Horses have a mind of their own. Thelwell knows this and so the girls lucky enough to own a pony and to teach it Lippizaner-style tricks like dancing. A mettlesome horse may earn a curb rather than a snaffle and a hunter may prove too much for a cautious rider. Masefield wrote a lengthy poem about a hunt from the point of view of a fox.
The point of the saying is to recognise one’s limitations. We may have a liking for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but we may not altogether like Millais. Tastes differ. Sometimes they differ on account of restricted opportunity --- lack of galleries, for example. Sometimes they differ on account of unhappy former experiences.
In the days when the horse was supreme, it came to be associated with top hats. That tradition lingers on so that state occasions make great demand on horses.
The sturdy cart-horse, crunching his way uphill with a cart loaded with sacks of coal made leisure possible – for some – and by doing that enhanced country-houses and civilisation.
The point of the proverb is the same as the point that we find in the story of the Prodigal Son. ‘Then he came to his senses’ (Luke 15.17). The penny dropped. A change came about.
That is something we cannot and must not rush. God is more patient than we are. The grace of God is more persuasive than all our arguments.
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