Morning everyone. Here's a fantastic piece by Miriam Bibby on the subject of dialect - an area which continues to fascinate and engage. Miriam's core field is equine history, and I couldn't be more delighted to share her work on why the "gallowas" term endures - a word some may have heard in the coalfields.
Many people who have lived or spent time in North East England will have come across the term gallowa to describe a horse or pony. This word was familiar in the years when I was growing up in Newcastle. I heard it on the yards of riding schools, in conversations in mining communities, and from proprietors of donkeys and ponies working the summer season on Northumberland beaches.
The term wasn’t confined to North East communities either. Upland farmers in Cumberland and Westmorland also called their Fell and Dales ponies gallowas. Travelling folk called their striking piebald and skewbald cobs gallowas. The working horses of the few, all too few remaining goods traders, and the hard-worked and popular little ponies of the now iconic rag and bone men were known as gallowas.
I guess I can say that all those largely working-class folks, whether long gone or still here, can take the credit for creating the first research question of my subsequent career as an academic: why do we call them gallowas? When I went off to university to study archaeology and geography, and then to pursue postgraduate studies in Egyptology and teach the same subject at the University of Manchester, somewhere at the back of my mind the question remained.The chance to really explore the subject in depth came in 2016 when I was working at Beamish Museum, and being constantly reminded of how this term was still a living part of my own heritage. Every time I heard it used by a visitor or staff member, the question tapped me on the shoulder – excuse me, I’m still here: why do we call them gallowas? You already know quite a bit about the topic; why don’t you find out more?
I knew by this time that there had been a type of Scottish horse called a Galloway, or Galloway Nag, and that it had been very famous in its time though largely unknown today. I knew that it made appearances in Shakespeare and other authors of the period. I knew that Daniel Defoe had referenced it as one of the best horses of its type in Europe in his day. Even accounting for Defoe’s flair for story-telling, this was a horse that clearly had something special about it, otherwise why did we still use the term centuries later when the breed, or landrace, no longer existed? The Galloway was also credited with providing foundation stock for a number of modern breeds, including the Fell, Dales, and Clydesdale, the Newfoundland Pony, and probably America’s first horse breed, the Narragansett Pacer.
I also knew that the name of the Galloway was involved in a controversy over the origins of the Thoroughbred racehorse, and that in the first half of the twentieth century there had been a very heated debate over its contribution. Two broad schools of thought had emerged. One supported the idea that it was the Galloway landrace that had provided key elements for the creation of the Thoroughbred, particularly through Galloway mares. The other school fiercely adhered to the belief that it was imported “Oriental” stallions, and in particular the “Big Three”, the Byerley Turk, the Godolphin Arabian or Barb, and the Darley Arabian, that had essentially “created” the breed. Without them, the TB would not have existed.
“Heated” doesn’t even begin to cover the ferocity of the debate, which took place in print in the equestrian press and was still quite fiery in the 1950s. One of the main protagonists on the Oriental, or specifically Arabian side was Lady Wentworth, and I was well aware of her excoriating comments on the “commonness” of the Galloway “ponies”. (They should really be classified as small horses, just like Arabians; but just as importantly, pony doesn’t need to be a pejorative term either.) On the other side championing the Galloway, we had journalist and veterinary surgeon J.B. Robertson, and later, equine historian (or as he called himself, hippologist) Anthony Dent.
Armed with this knowledge – and little else – I decided to take the plunge and attempt a PhD on the topic of the Galloway. I’d already gained an MPhil on the subject of the horse in ancient Egypt. Recruiting the help and advice of probably the UK’s leading historian on equine matters at that time, Professor Peter Edwards, I was accepted by the University of Glasgow in 2016. (I can’t thank Peter Edwards enough – his support was outstanding and I am now the proud possessor of his remarkable research archive.)
The research was accompanied by sceptical comments from other historians about the likelihood of finding anything new. The handful of references that were already known about the Galloway were probably all that anyone was going to know in their opinion. Six years of research, a PhD, and one 170,000 word monograph later, I think I can justifiably refute that. The Galloway name became a generic because it was a type of horse that was widely admired far beyond Scotland. Speedy, enduring, easy-to-keep and beautiful, at the time of their emergence into wider consciousness, the people who raised these outstanding little horses in the uplands of Galloway were probably largely Gaelic-speaking. It has been all too easy for later, more influential commentators to set aside and overwrite, even dismiss, their remarkable contribution to global horse breeding.
I’m not in any doubt that the Galloway did provide the key element of speed in the Thoroughbred racehorse, and as late as the reign of Charles II, the horses that were running in the races he enthusiastically supported were essentially Galloways or Galloway hybrids. That’s what my research indicates. Another aspect of horse racing that has been overwritten is the major contribution to horse racing culture made by Scotland and the north of England. (Ireland too, but that is a whole other research field, though strongly related to Scottish equine history.)
You perhaps won’t be surprised to hear that the iconic racehorse Whistlejacket was foaled at Belsay Hall in Northumberland, and of course two of those so-called founding fathers were standing at stud on the Co. Durham-Yorkshire border (The Byerley Turk and the Darley Arabian). According to one scholar (Richard Nash), the Byerley Turk may have been foaled in Yorkshire, though a whole Orientalist mythology, including capture at the Siege of Buda, has been created around him. That’s because the north, and the Durham and Yorkshire dales in particular, was the crucible of the modern Thoroughbred racehorse. Yes, they had imported stallions; and yes, they were drawing on centuries of horse-breeding knowledge and the remarkable horses they were already producing, including the desirable Scottish Galloway and its derivatives. What paid for all the TB development was that other symbol of the North East: coal and the wealth it produced.
The roots of northern horse knowledge and breeding go back a long way, and are an essential part of the story of Anglo-Scottish relations over the centuries. In this relationship too, I discovered the Galloway Nag had a part to play, becoming a key satirical element in literature in which the English explored their complex relationship with their northern neighbours.
In Defoe’s day, the use of the term “galloway” as a generic was much more widespread than it is now, confined as it is largely to the north of England. It later became associated with a small horse of a particular type, speedy, enduring, reliable, and usually between 14 hands and 15 hands high. Also, a utility horse, capable of doing many things. Interestingly, the term is also in use in Australia today and applied in much the same way.
So that’s at least part of the story of why we call horses and ponies gallowas. There’s so much more to it of course, and that’s all in my book, Invisible Ancestor: the Galloway Nag and its Legacy. The main thing to know is that if you use the term gallowa to describe a horse today, you are the inheritor of a long history of usage and can say it with pride. Let’s keep it going!
Miriam was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and is a historian, author, editor, and broadcaster. She specializes in equine history and is the co-editor-in-chief of Cheiron, the International Journal of Equine and Equestrian History. She has edited and contributed to many equestrian, archaeology, and history magazines, journals and books. Miriam was a tutor and course developer for the University of Manchester’s networked learning course in Egyptology for twelve years. Her PhD was on the topic of the Galloway horse, and a monograph, Invisible Ancestor: the Galloway Nag and its Legacy was published in 2024. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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