Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Old Poland Horses



Czolem,
this time I am posting my own two, rather old, illustrations intending to continue my discussion about the so called Old Poland/Polish Horse:
one (color one) could be a 'bachmat' - from Tatar/Turkish language  (but the root of this word is old Iranian, another proof that Turkish people were taught all about horses by the Sarmatians and Saka - themselves Iranians) word for a smaller, but muscular yet fast and faithful warhorse; and the black and white drawing is an attempt to portray a rumak  with typical tack of mid XVII century that was a preferred mount  of our winged hussars and richer nobles - originally from old Persian 'argamak' which is a word for a splendid, noble warhorse. Both types were present in Old Poland, while the names are still in use in the modern Polish language.
There was one more 'horse word' used to describe war and parade horses: dzianet. This name was used for especially beautiful parade horses, and later on, during the XIX century came to denote  a noble and very beautiful horse, often used in poetry or novels, eg. Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz's "Trilogy." The word itself comes from Spanish - yennet or jennet or gennete, whether it meant a ridding horse or horse ridden in a special manner, with short stirrups (a la jineta) still remains an answered question. From Spanish this word passed into Polish language via Italian language with the arrival of our good queen Bona Sforza, wife to His Royal Majesty and Grand Prince Sigismund I (1467-1548). In 1518 Queen Bona brought to our lands many Italian horses, of Neapolitan extraction, trained in then fashionable Italian horsemanship and they were most likely ridden a la jineta, and thus we have dzianet name for this highly trained and beautiful parade horses. Dzianet is not used in everyday Polish language to describe horses  anymore.

to be continued

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