PBOTD 9th September: Patricia Leitch - Night of the Red Horse

-
Epona, the Celtic Goddess of the Horse, bursts onto the scene in the fourth book of the Jinny seies, The Night of the Red Horse (1978). Epona takes the form of the terrifying Red Horse that stalks Jinny’s dreams and communicates with Jinny via the equally terrifying man, The Watcher. The story starts with with archaeologists visiting Finmory to look at the mural of the Red Horse on Jinny’s bedroom wall. 


A statuette of Epona was found many years ago and given to a small collection in Inverburgh: the Wilton Collection. The archaeologists want that statuette, and if they can’t have it, are keen to take whatever else they can find, particularly as they are convinced there is another statuette still buried. Once they have visited, Jinny starts to see the Red Horse; staring, alive, from her mural, from the fire, and in her dreams. 


Jinny’s utter terror of the Red Horse is contrasted with the safe, comfortable world of most pony stories. Night of the Red Horse is a genuinely disturbing book, unlike the placid, fluffy unicorn adventures which were to succeed it as the pony book attempted to combine the mystical with the pony. The Red Horse is ferocious, relentless; night after night it haunts Jinny’s dreams. One particularly dreadful night, Jinny cowers by the Aga, reading her favourite pony book, using it as a sponge to soak up her terrors.

“No danger. No dreams. Only summer days filled with riding school ponies. They held back the terror of the Red Horse.”




Unlike those many, many pony books where the major problem is whether or not a rosette will be won at the gymkhana, Jinny’s problem is the Red Horse, and the haunting, screaming, nightmare that awaits her when she sleeps.
“The need for sleep was a lead weight inside her head. In a moment of total terror, Jinny knew that she must sleep, and that in her sleep the Red Horse was still waiting for her.”
Jinny’s fear of the Red Horse is worse than its reality: Jinny eventually manages to face her fear, and finds that fear has been stopping her from achieving what she has to. The Red Horse leads Jinny to find the missing statue, and eventually, to reunite the two statues in the Wilton Collection. For Jinny, this means peace, of a sort, though the Red Horse will never be comfortable; never be tamed.

This piece was adapted from my book, Heroines on Horseback

~  0  ~

The Jinny Series
For Love of a Horse
A Devil to Ride
The Summer Riders
Night of the Red Horse
Gallop to the Hills
Horse in a Million
The Magic Pony
Ride Like the Wind
Chestnut Gold
Jump for the Moon
Horse of Fire
Running Wild

More on Patricia Leitch

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more