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izzy's playlists!
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@thesuspisciousone
Hi there
This will essentially be my blog wherein I post weird notions, thoughtless theories, and fanatical fanworks. Essentially, this will be a work bin.
Let us just hope that I'm actually productive. (´。＿。｀)
links:
I have an ao3, keep in mind I don't do many fan-works and mainly do original works.
Wikipedia Is Battling for the Soul of the Internet
The internet’s largest stockpile of free knowledge is under threat from MAGA, A.I. and foreign autocrats. A bibliophile ex-ambassador is here to help.
"Wikipedia is in peril.
In a world where trust in truth is crumbling, the grande dame of collective online fact-gathering is under threat on every front. The MAGA right, with Elon Musk at the fore, is slinging accusations of political bias and antisemitism and has even questioned the site’s nonprofit status. Artificial intelligence is raiding the encyclopedia’s resources and draining attention. Repressive governments have hauled its volunteer editors into penal colonies.
In Wikipedia’s 25-year history, it has never had to fight this hard." -----
Interesting, alarming article.
tl;dr: If you use Wikipedia every day, like your sobsister, or even regularly, and you have a few bucks to spare, think about a donation to help it fight off MAGA/Musk, AI, and authoritarian governments around the world.
my grandfather was an famous actor, famous scout leader (no srs, I meet old people that still talk of him fondly as being the best leader they ever had 70-80 years on), turned broken and previously tortured veteran (its literally a documented fact that they let him go early because he was so annoying and just continued doing what he wanted despite what they did to him, with the added fact that he broke a transfered officers face after the dude tormented him for 2 months straight. The dude literally wasn't allowed to torture him anymore because apparently my grandfather just became more purposefully annoying after every time. Plus he kept on endearing people.), turned beloved worker at psychiatry wards (once again, old colleagues, patients, etc. Still call him up to chat lr send letters to this day, despite them all being ancient at this point). He and my grandmother, who was a primary school teacher bought a house, had 2 children, traveled regularly several times a year, bought a second peice of land in the outskirts of my grandfather home town, built a house there, hosted family get togethers, etc. I am so thankful that my grandfather kept up to date with economics, modern generations, politics, and the world at large, because it means you get the occassional gems such as [translated] "you know, if I was yong now instead of when I was, I would likely still be homeless when I got to the age I am now" (he was homeless at 14 after being sent to the big city to work and slept on some chairs at his workplace).
If he was 14 now and homeless, sleeping on chairs in a restaurant, then he would likely never get out of his homelessness and would definitely not be owning a house in a good area with a pension bigger than he could ever use.
yesterday i made a beetle out of soda tabs and wire. we took the bus home.
I thought about just tagging this 'nuff said, but it's not.
I want to say something to all of the women under 50 on this site. Ready? You do not have to be over 50 to start taking up space.
Can I make that blink? Is that a thing Tumblr can do? Because, seriously. The sooner you believe you are allowed to take up space, the better life will be.
crazy how i find myself thinking i've got a handle on it all finally and then i see the ways that other people tangle their lives together so easily and live so easily together with their friends and i feel like that girl at the top of the stairs painting by norman rockwell
i'll always be here
cant stop thinking about this video its driving me insane. scariest object ever made. looked it up w friends in a discord call and found out its like fucking eight feet tall and made of solid metal
imagine visiting someone's house for a party, it goes late. 1 in the morning. you're drunk and high. you have to go to the bathroom before going home. hallway lights are off, its like a train tunnel. this thing is at the end of the hallway
One year retrospective
fun phenomenon
One thing I love about modding is seeing streamers have one sided conversation with people that literally don't exist. It's even more funny if I brought my set-up to a friend of mine's house and see them irl have this none-existant convo.
"Oh, but big streamer's don't-"
yes they do. and I find it so funny, but I admit it is smart.
Flashback to that time I was sick and my bones hurt and I couldn't straighten any of my limbs without excruciating pain, all my ribs felt like they had been thoroughly bruised, I couldn't breathe well, and my head felt like someone was trying to stab needles through my skull, I was woozy and every now and then became intensely dizzy for no reason, even if I was lying down/sitting the whole time, but was asked to stop looking distressed/in pain every now and then (when the mask slipped) because it was apparently distressing for this dude to see a woman in pain/not smiling.
I don’t think we talk enough about how, despite the presence of multiple globes, PotC takes place on a flat earth, ice wall included.
I'm gonna need some elaboration here
They literally sail over the edge of it after passing through a hole in a wall of ice. They fall off. They get back to the other side by passing through the whole ocean.
But also there’s a globe on, like, everyone’s desk.
#it's like lord of the rings#it's only flat for pirates
You get it.
No, but this is actually (sort of) canon.
See, part of the conceit of the PotC trilogy is that all myths are true. Nearly every supernatural element in the franchise has a root in some real world mythology or pirate lore, although some of them are mashed together.
Another thing is that they take place at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, and the more the map gets filled in, and the more the Royal Navy takes power, there less room there is for the mystical and supernatural in the world. This is explicitly called out in At World's End with the death of the kraken:
Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place. Jack: The world's still the same. There's just... less in it.
The only way to access the world of the supernatural is through the supernatural itself. You can only get to the Isla de Muerta with Jack's compass that points to whatever you desire, or if you already know where its is. You need Tia Dalma's map to find the edge of the world. To access the supernatural, you need to already be immersed in it.
The pirates world isn't flat, it's round - but because the edge of the world exists in myth, it therefore exists in reality. The pirates are able to find it through supernatural means, but if, say, someone like Norrington just sailed in the same general direction, he wouldn't end up in the same place.
“Pirate” is a mage subclass fueled by word of mouth, rule of cool, The Power of Belief/Love/Friendship, and rum.
If you look at it in a particular way, the Pirates specifically function by FAIRY RULES: obscure codes of law and formality that they are irrevocably bound to abide by...except when you get the wording wrong.
When we go to Tortuga (or any pirate controlled space) we leave behind the sensibilities of the real world and enter this bizarre perpetual revel of debauchery and violence that could never sustain itself in a world bound by sense.
That makes Jack our Puck character, a trickster of tricksters who can invert your fortunes just by letting him talk to you.
It also makes Will into a changeling, born of the fairyworld, adopted by mortals, and fated to return to it in what makes for a doomed love story. Hell, one might say that the reason Will's swords are SO GOOD is because they contain an element of myth about them: they're the IDEA of swords, true to how they would be in myth.
Ngl, so many people saying that English food is just disgusting both makes me sad for their ignorance of just how good English food can be, but it gives me the same discomfort as when people say that all Danish food is smelly or too strongly salted, or that all Indian food tastes like dirt, or that all Greek food has the consistency of puke.
Lets all just admit what it really is, it's simply just xenophobia.
We've lost a lot to the onslaught of enshittification but I can think of none more brazen than Discord getting rid of the send button
Oh, you've typed a message? You've typed a message? Would you like to add a sticker (server stickers available with Nitro Boosts(TM).) Would you like to add an emoji (more custom emojis available with Nitro(TM).) Would you like to send a gift (gift your friend Nitro(TM) for only $9.99 a month.) Would you like to add an app (more apps available in the Nitro Store(TM).)
They got rid of the send message button. On the send messages to my friends app. In order to make room for a 5th button that sells you something. The parody is too bold people will roll their eyes you have to scale it back.
I would like to gently point out that the send button can be enabled or disabled under accessibility,
Also, if you're someone who'd like to customize your discord further, or remove nitro garbage or bypass it, better discord (an open source project) can be used on desktop for a lot of fun results:
BetterDiscord extends the functionality of DiscordApp by enhancing it with new features.
Plugin options can entirely replicate nitro stuff, and enhance privacy, such as:
Remove annoying buttons like the Gift button from the chat box.
"Fuck those buttons"
Enhanced version of silent typing.
"Hey maybe I don't want you to know when I'm typing"
Allows you to enter larger Messages, which will automatically split into several smaller Messages
"Fuck the character limit"
Adds extra Controls to the Friends Page, for example sort by Name/Status, Search and All/Request/Blocked Amount
"Can I see my friends in a normal manner please"
Improves your whole experience using Discord. Adds highly customizable switching animations between guilds, channels, etc. Introduces smooth
"I would like navigating discord to be like a powerpoint please"
And many other features that range from helpful to profoundly useless but fun.
Enshittification sucks, but the first step to undoing it is taking control of your experiences and helping others do the same. So hopefully this helps a little?
decentralize and clean up your life!!!
EDIT: THIS IS A CARRD NOW! it's updated and organized!!
EDIT EDIT: this is on my website now! this is the version that will be somewhat regularly updated. the carrd will remain, but will no longer be updated.
use overdrive, libby, hoopla, cloudlibrary, and kanopy instead of amazon and audible.
use firefox or librewolf (open-source fork of firefox) instead of chrome or opera (both are made with chromium, which blocks functionality for ad-blockers. firefox isn't based on chromium).
use mega instead of google drive
get rid of bloatware
use libreoffice instead of microsoft office suite
get free stuff with the help of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH, r/piracy and r/roms
use trakt (for shows and movies), letterboxd (just movies), or TMB instead of IMDB (owned by amazon).
use storygraph instead of goodreads (owned by amazon).
use darkpatterns to find mobile game with no ads or microtransactions
use mediahuman or cobalt to download music, or support your favorite artists directly through bandcamp
make youtube bearable by using mtube, newpipe, or the unhook extension on chrome, firefox, or microsoft edge
use search for a cause, ecosia, or ocean hero to support the environment instead of google
use thriftbooks to buy new or used books (they also have manga, textbooks, home goods, CDs, DVDs, and blurays)
use flashpoint to play archived online flash games
find books, movies, games, etc. on the internet archive! for starters, here's a bunch of David Attenborough documentaries and all of the Animorphs books
burn your music onto cds
use pdf24 (available online or as a desktop app) instead of adobe
use thunderbird, mailfence, countermail, edison mail, or tuta instead of gmail
remove bloatware on windows PC, macOS, and iOS X
remove bloatware on samsung X
use pixelfed instead of instagram or meta
use project gutenberg for free public domain books, and librivox for public domain books and audiobooks
use the seal app (android only) to download video and audio
use ellipsus instead of microsoft word or google docs
use mastodon instead of twitter
use peertube to create a network of small video hosting providers (disclaimer: not a 1:1 alternative to youtube)
use threema and signal for encrypted communication, on mobile and desktop
use qwant and startpage for secure internet browsers
use syncthing to securely transfer files between devices
learn how to jailbreak your kindle/ereader if you have one (wiki and video walkthrough)
use riseup’s email and VPN for secure communication (aimed towards activists)
use cryptpad and collabora instead of the microsoft office suite
use google takeout to export the data on your google account
use library extension to look for books on online stores and find them at your library
remove paywalls with removepaywalls
install the open-source adblocker ublock origin
install sponsorblock to skip sponsored segments on youtube videos
use bookfinder to look for the cheapest available listings of books, including textbooks
learn a language through mango (duolingo laid off some of its employees and now relies on AI translations) for free with a library card or through your school
edit photos with photopea
edit pdfs with foxit and sumatrapdf
download music with doubledouble
take notes offline and collaborate securely with obsidian
for android tv, use smarttube and cloudstream (ad-free, open-source)
change your OS to linux
@dimonds456 @wil-reblogs-things @lentils-for-you
And one amang, an Iyrysch man,
Uppone his hoby swyftly ran…
WAIT HANG ON - slamming the brakes on drawing this stupid picture - do you nerds even KNOW the etymology of the word “hobby”? The thing you do for pleasure? The thing you have too many of? The thing you spend too much money on and share with your friends? The thing tumblr probably is to you? Those hobbies?
It comes from a now-kind-of-extinct breed of Irish pony-horse. It was called the Irish Hobby. Supposedly the hobby got its name from the Gaelic word obann, or swift. They definitely were. They’d obann your pants clean off.
Fast tough little bastards, built for rough terrain and renowned for their speed and stamina, hobby horses belonged to the Celts, and their highly annoying style of mounted warfare. but their conquerors liked hobby horses a lot, kept them, used them for themselves, and found them useful enough, despite the fact that they also had famously useful things like mounted knights or horse archers. A lightweight Irish warrior, mounted on a hobby horse, was called a hobelar.
Reportedly and in depictions, hobelars rode without stirrups. Or saddles. Or bridles. Or - well - this is all sounding very improbable, because the hobelars COULDNT have just been charging around basically bare-assed on naked ponies, screaming, and somehow in the process undoing the composure of actual mounted armoured knights. Knights who, I remind you, had stirrups. Stirrups are useful! It’s quite likely the hobelars had some gear. And clothes. and weapons. And the ponies probably had some tack - I am picturing a bellyband that you could at least hang a saddlebag on, and a neck rope for catching the bloody thing, even if not a saddle. But the overall impression, somehow created by people on darling little ponies, was apparently quite striking and fearful.
I mean. God Forbid People Have Hobbies.
Anyway after a while, whatever people became the British had eventually conquered all of the rough terrain that hobbies were best at, and horse archers just got sexier, and mounted knights became aristos, and all the bog and forest people had been subdued, so it was time to sunset the hobelars. but WAIT! Hobby horses are still tremendously fun and appealing! They’re so fast! and you can ride them without a saddle! Sure, they’re not up to the weight of a mounted knight, or indeed a lot of guys… but surely we can still find a use for a hobby or two? In the back garden? Somewhere?
At which point an English king decided to keep hobby horses just for fun. No military application. No further development of the technology. Not for fun. Just as expensive, pleasurable, pets. Just for the joy of the thing.
And that is how hobby (activity done purely for pleasure) comes from hobby horse (small horse) possibly from obann (swift.) they’re very interesting and you should look all this up for yourself! because it sure sounds like Elodie doing a bit, doesn’t it?
Today, Irish Hobbies are functionally nonexistent. References for drawing include the Kerry Bog Pony, the Connemara, and (I personally think) Dartmoors and Exmoors. They’re said to have lent their speed to the Irish Hunter/Sport Horse and from there to the Thoroughbred, but every damn horse in the world claims relation to the Thoroughbred, and they can’t be THAT thoroughly bred.
At any rate - you can never have enough hobbies. Just be glad that yours aren’t expensive beasts with minds of their own, eating their heads off in the pasture! …Unless they are. In which case, you’re part of a proud tradition.
Also if anyone is a Wikipedia type of person, or a historian who thrives on this kind of thing, the quote at the beginning of this post: And one amang, an Iyrysch man, Uppone his hoby swyftly ran
is misattributed in the Wikipedia article for the Irish Hobby to John Barbour, the quote currently reading:
The breed was mentioned in 1375 by the poet John Barbour, who called them hobynis in his poem, The Bruce. He also mentioned them in his work Reliquiae Antiquae, noting their speed.[3]
Barbour does refer to hobynis twice in "The Bruce," but the source in the Wikipedia goes to the phrases.org.uk page: Hobby-horse - Meaning & Origin Of The Phrase
In Reliquiae Antiquae, a poetic work of Barbour’s from around 1400 and republished in 1841, he referred to them again, this time with a little more context...
This doesn't appear to be correct. Reliquiae Antiquae is a bunch of random scraps of things, like falconry tips and recipes, not to do with Barbour, and with no hobbies in it. the guy writing that was confused. Instead, this is from a collection called "Political Poems and Songs Related to English History, Volume 2" which someone has kindly archived on the Internet Archive. the full passage, describing a siege of Calais, goes:
And one amang, an lyrysch man, Uppone his hoby swyftly ran; Hyt was a sportfulle sygthe, How hys darttes he did schak ; And when him lyst to leve or tak, They had fiiUe gret dispite.
I don't know much but I can take a stab at translation:
And one among, an irish man, upon his hobby swiftly ran. it was fun to watch, like sports. he was definitely playing darts. not arrows or a javelin. definitely darts. and when he was either fighting people or running away, it was extremely annoying. and they all wished he wouldn't. stop doing that, they disputed, and he disputed: god forbid women have hobbies.
so yeah you can fix that if you want to - or not!
Some sixteenth and seventeenth century mentions of the Irish hobby that I have come across over the years.
John Major, 1520, Historia Majoris Britanniae (p. 38):
Equos quos Haubinos vocant, ſuaviſſime incedentes, gignit. Aſturcones antiquitus vocabantur, eo quod ex Aſturibus Hiſpaniæ venirent. Illos equos de Hiſpania ſecum attulerunt. Hos equos Haubinos ſeu Hobinos de Anglia Galli vocant, eo quod ab Anglis in Galliam veniunt.
Being lazy and using A. Constable's 1892 translation:
The island produces a kind of horses which the natives call Haubini, whose pace is of the gentlest. They were called Asturcones in ancient times, because they came from Asturia in Spain, and indeed the Spanish colonists brought those horses along with them. The French call these same horses English Haubini or Hobini, because they get them by way of England.
Cf. Stanyhurst (below) on Asturcones.
Thomas Blundeville, 1561, The fower chiefyst offices belongyng to horsemanshippe (p. 11):
THe Iryshe Hobby is a pretye fyne horse, hauinge a good head, and a body indeferently wel proporcioned, sauing that many of them be slender & pin bottocked, they be tender mouthed, nimble, light, plea∣saunt, & apte to be taught, and for the most part thei be amblers, & therfore very mete for the saddle, & to trauel by the way, yea and the Iryshe men both with dartes & with lyght speares, do vse to skyrmishe with them in the fielde. And many of them do proue to that vse very well, by meanes they be so lyght and swyfte, notwythstanding I take theym to be very neashe and tender to keepe, and also to be somewhat skyttishe and fearefull, partlye parhaps by nature, and partlie for lacke of good breakinge at the first.
Stanyhurst (below) mentions different types of Irish horses, namely nags or hackneys, used for travelling, horses of service, or chief horses, which are gallopers used for skirmishes, and the hobby, smaller than the horse of service, a good traveller, an ambler and a runner. His information contradicts that of Blundeville, with regards to which horses are used in battle. He also specifies, in contrast to Major, that the horses of service are the Asturcones, not the hobbies.
Richard Stanyhurst, 1587, 'Description of Ireland' in Holinshed's Chronicles, p. 20:
The horsses are of pase easie, in running woonderfull swift, in gallop both false and full indifferent. The nag or the hackeneie is verie good for trauelling, albeit others report the contrarie. And if he be broken accordinglie, you shall haue a little tit that will trauell a whole daie without anie bait. Their horsses of seruice are called chiefe horsses, being well broken they are of an excellent courage. They reine passinglie, and champe vpon their bridels brauelie, commonlie they amble not but gallop and run. And these horsses are but for skirmishes, not for trauelling, for their stomachs are such, as they disdaine to be hacknied. Thereof the report grew, that the Irish hobbie will not hold out in trauelling. You shall haue of the third sort a bastard or mongrell hobbie, néere as tall as the horsse of seruice, strong in trauelling, easie in ambling, and verie swift in running. Of the horsse of seruice they make great store, as wherin at times of need they repose a great péece of safetie. This brood Volaterane writeth to haue come from Austurea, the countrie of Hispaine, betwéene Gallicia and Portugall, whereof they were named Asturcones, a name now properlie applied to the Hispanish genet.
Volaterane is Raffaele Maffei, whose description of the Asturian horse in his Geographia quotes both Pliny's Historia Naturalis 8.166 (or 8.67, depending on how you like to organise your Pliny) and Silius Italicus' Punica 3.332-7. Pliny says:
in eadem Hispania Gallaica gens est et Asturica; equini generis hi sunt quos tieldones vocamus; minore forma appellatos asturcones gignunt, quibus non vulgaris in cursu gradus, sed mollis alterno crurum explicatu glomeratio, unde equis tolutim carpere incursum traditur arte.
The Bostock and Riley 1855 translation, from good old Perseus:
Gallicia and Asturia are also countries of Spain; they produce a species of horse known to us as thieldones, and when smaller, asturcones; they have a peculiar and not common pace of their own, which is very easy, and arises from the two legs of the same side being moved together; it is by studying the nature of this step that our horses have been taught the movement which we call ambling.
The phrase about the gait - mollis alterno crurum explicatu glomeratio - is a little tricky to translate, "a gentle gathering of the limbs by alternate extension", and tolutim is given as "on a trot, full trot" in Lewis & Short, neither of which are a clear-cut reference to gaiting. (Also, a quick look through the Packard Humanities Institute texts on Diogenes suggests that glomeratio is a hapax in our surviving texts.) However, the modern Asturcón pony of Asturies is gaited, and is believed to descend from the horses mentioned by Roman authors. See further Camden (and Holland's translation) below.
While on the tangent about Asturian horses, Martial has a nice little epigram on them (14.199):
Hic brevis ad numeros rapidum qui colligit unguem, Venit ab auriferis gentibus Astur equus.
Loeb translation:
This little Asturian horse that picks up its fleet hooves in rhythm came from gold-bearing peoples.
Which sounds a bit like a paso fino, with the emphasis on rapidity, but there is no way of knowing.
Silius Italicus describes the Asturian horses in Punica as not jostling their riders (3.335ff.):
his paruus sonipes nec Marti natus, at idem aut inconcusso glomerat uestigia dorso, aut molli pacata celer rapit esseda collo.
A. S. Kline's translation:
Asturian horses are small, not notable in battle, yet pick up speed without rattling their rider about, or with docile manner draw a carriage quickly in peacetime.
The emphasis on the smoothness of their paces is certainly more typical of a gaited horse than of a horse that trots.
I don't know whether Major and Stanyhurst link the hobby to the Asturian horse because there was a genuine Irish tradition that the horses came from there, or whether they ran with the idea that the Irish horses must descend from the Asturian horses mentioned in antiquity on the grounds that both of them ambled. I have certainly seen hippological texts from around this period which catalogued breeds of horses according to Greek and Roman writers, rather than describing the horses of their time.
The internet says - though I have found no reliable sources on this - that due to the belief that horses from Asturia were used to create the Irish hobby, efforts are being made to recreate the hobby using Asturcóns. Given that the Asturcón is itself endangered, I am not sure that the internet is correct.
For what it is worth, while Radovic et al. 2024 did not include Asturcón ponies in their Y chromosome samples, the Kerry Bog ponies and the Connemaras clustered under sub-haplogroup Ad_b, while the Iberian breeds belonged to the Ao and Hs sub-haplogroups. Luís et al. 2007 also had no Asturcón ponies, but they did find that the Garrano ponies they sampled clustered with Connemaras, so there is some shared ancestry between Portuguese and Irish pony breeds.
Thomas Carve, 1666, Lyra sive Anacephalaeosis Hibernica, 2nd edition (p. 43):
Sunt etiam in hâc Inſulâ præſtantiſſimi equi adeò ut Munſterus, l. 2. Coſmograph. indeſcript. Hibern, aſſerat, gignit Hibernia multos equos, qui gnaviter incedunt, ſtudentque velut data opera mollem facere greſſum, ne inſidenti moleſtiam ullam inferant: Et Jovius, equi tota Hibernia incorruptá ſobole gignunt, mollissimo inceſſu Hobinos Angli vocant, & ob id à delicatis expetuntur, ac in Galliâ, Italiâque nobilioribus fœminis dono dantur. Ex hoc genere duodecim candoris eximÿ purpurâ, & argenteis habenis exornatos in Pompam ſummorum Pontificum ſeſſore vacuos duci vidimus.
Translation:
There are in this island most excellent horses indeed as Munsterus, l. 2. Cosmograph. indescript. Hibern, claims: Ireland produces many horses, which go along carefully, and take pains, as if given the task, to step softly, lest they bring any trouble to their riders: And Jovius, in all Ireland horses are produced of a pure race, with the softest pace, which the English call Hobini, and on account of this they are sought by the pampered, and in France and Italy they are given to noble women as gifts. We have seen twelve white horses of this race, distinguished in purple and adorned with silver reins, led in the Pope's procession with empty saddles.
Munsterus is Sebastian Münster, whose Cosmographia was first published in 1544; the earliest Latin translation was published in 1550. In the German text, he says something like:
Es bringt Hibernia vil pferd die gar ſenfft ghan un ſich darzů flißen daß ſie nit hert ghan und dem rütter nit überleſtig ſihed.
My German is not strong enough to be certain of every word there, especially given the age of the text and the differences in spelling between it and modern German, e.g. vil > viel, ſenfft > sanft, ghan > gehen.
Jovius is Paolo Giovio; I have not located the work Carve is quoting.
Gervase Markham, 1607, Cavelarice (pp. 9f., pp. 16f.):
Againe, for swiftnesse, what Nation hath brought foorth that Horse which hath exceeded the English? for proofe whereof wee haue this example: when the best Barbaries that euer were in my remembrance were in their prime, I sawe them ouer-runne by a blacke Hobbie at Salisburie of maister Carltons, and yet that Hobby was more ouer runne by a horse of maister Blackstones called Valentine, which Valentine neither in hunting nor running, was euer equalled, yet was a plaine bredde English Horse both by Syre and Damme ...
Next and last, I place the Irish Hobbie, which is a horse of a reasonable good shape, hauing a fine head, a strong necke, and a well cast bodie; they haue quicke eyes, good limbs, and tollerable buttocks: of all horses they are the surest of foote, and nimblest in daungerous passages, they are of liuely courage, & very tough in trauell, onely they are much subiect to affrights and boggards. They will hardly in any seruice ioyne with their enemies, the reason I imagine to bee these: first, they are for the moste part bredde in wilde races, and haue neyther communitie or fellowshippe with any man till they come to the Saddle, which many times is not till they come to seauen, eight, nine, or ten yeares olde, at what time the countrie rysing, doe forciblie driue the whole studd, both Horses, Mares, Colts, and Fyllies into some bogge, where being layde fast, they halter such as they please to take, and let the rest goe. This wilde bringing vp, and this rude manner of handling, doth in my conceite ingender this fearefulnesse in the Beast, which those ruder people know not how to amend. This Horse though he trot very wel, yet he naturallie desireth to amble: and thus much I thinke sufficient, touching these seuerall kindes of Horses, and their generations.
William Camden, 1607, Britannia:
Equi item optimi (hobies vocamus), quibus non idem qui in caeteris in cursu gradus, sed mollis alterno crurum explicatu glomeratio.
Philemon Holland's translation of Camden:
They have likewise excellent good horses (we terme them Hobies) which have not the same pace that other horses in their course, but a soft and round amble seting one legge before another very finely.
Note that Camden has lifted in cursu gradus, sed mollis alterno crurum explicatu glomeratio directly from Pliny, but applies it to the Hobby, rather than to the Asturian horse of the original text. Holland uses 'amble' in his translation, which is consistent with Stanyhurst and Markham's description of the Hobby as an ambler.
The fact that they were amblers, i.e. gaited horses, is interesting, as gaited horses are often considered to have weaker canters and gallops, though when gaiting they cover a good deal of ground at high speed. Gaited horses, however, were prized for being a smoother ride than trotting horses; see the tangent on the Asturian horse above.
Lady Wentworth, who should be treated with caution due to her bias towards the Arab horse and her liberality with the truth when it suited her interests, mentions in The Book of the Horse (1949, ed. Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, p. 131), that "There is a description of a race between pacers, A.D. 1170 , outside London. The races of these noble horses were not run at a gallop but by the fore and hind feet moving in pairs together." Unfortunately, she does not care to share with us where she found this description. However, it is evidence of a sort that gaited horses were historically raced.
I do wonder to what extent the Hobby was a landrace and to what extent it was a type associated with a particular function - was it, in effect, an Irish term similar to palfrey, courser or rouncey? Stanyhurst's division of Irish horses into nags and hackneys, chief horses and mongrel hobbies certainly looks to be drawn up according to function, with the added details that the chief horses do not amble, but hobbies do (and that the chief horses do not hold up to being ridden on journeys). The softness of their paces and Jovius' statement that they are gifted to noblewomen are attributes associated with palfreys.
Barbour places hobbies in battle in his 1375 poem The Brus 14.63-70 (the invasion of Ireland by Edward, younger brother of Robert the Bruce):
Thar mycht men se a gret melle For Erll Thomas and his menyhe Dang on thair fais sa douchtely, That in schort tym men mycht se ly Ane hundreth that all bludy war. For hobynis, that war stekit thar, Rerit, and flang, and gret rowme maid, And kest thame that apon thame raid.
The term hobelar also indicates that in the Middle Ages, hobbies were war horses. The earliest surviving citation of hobelar is from 1296, according to Morris 1914:80, possibly from the Exchequer Accounts: two hundred and sixty hobelars accompanied Sir John Wogan as part of a force attacking south-west Scotland. Jones 2018 also discusses the hobelars and their horses, and points out that Ayton 1994 pp. 63f. has observed that most horses taken on campaign were not destriers, but coursers and rounceys. Given their use both in battle and on journeys, as well as their speed, I am leaning towards hobbies not being a landrace as such, but the Irish equivalent of a courser or rouncey. See Forster 2022 and Oliveros Calvo 2021 for descriptions of the various types of mediaeval horses.
References
Ayton, Andrew. 1994. Knights and Warhorses: Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward III. Woodbridge.
Barbour, John. 1909. The Bruce. Ed. W. M. Mackenzie. Adam and Charles Black.
Blunt-Lytton, Judith. 1949. 'The world's Horse'. The Book of the Horse. Ed. Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. Nicholson & Watson.
Forster, Loïs. 2022. 'The Typology of Horses in Burgundian Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century'. Echoing Hooves: Studies on Horses and Their Effects on Medieval Societies. Edd. Anastasija Ropa and Timothy Dawson. Brill.
Jones, Robert. 2018. 'Cum equis discoopertis: The "Irish" hobelar in the English armies of the fourteenth century'. Military Communities in Late Medieval England. Edd. Gary P. Baker, Craig L. Lambert, David Simpkin. Boydell & Brewer.
Luís, C., R. Juras, M. M. Oom and E. G. Cothran. 2007. 'Genetic diversity and relationships of Portuguese and other horse breeds based on protein and microsatellite loci variation'. Animal Genetics 38:20-27 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2006.01545.x
Morris, J. E.. 1914. 'Mounted infantry in mediaeval warfare' Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 8:77-102
Oliveros Calvo, Cristina. 2021. 'Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: A Study of Horse Type Terms in English, French and Spanish'. The Liminal Horse: Equitation and Boundaries. Edd. Rena Maguire and Anastasija Ropa. Trivent Publishing.
Radovic, Lara, et al.. 2024. 'The global spread of Oriental Horses in the past 1,500 years through the lens of the Y chromosome'. PNAS 121 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2414408121
This literally deserves academic praise and recognition for being, like, an absolute REFERENCE ESSAY on a type of horse. I wish I was a better person to give it the recognition it deserves.
Places where I nodded sagely and said “same”:
- I’m neashe and tender to keep
- I’m a little tit that could amble all day without a snack
- I’m very brave but perpetually afflicted by boggarts and frights
- I have a soft and round amble 😚
I’m sorry, I’m doing jokes to displace how impressed I am. Was anyone planning to read about enchanting extinct horse breeds - TOO LATE! THIS IS YOUR HOBBY NOW
Ooh I wonder if Irish hobbies have any relation to Icelandic horses (small and thrifty and gaited!)
They might have! Jansen et al. 2002 looked at mitochondrial DNA in domestic horses, and found that Icelandics, Fjords and certain British native breeds clustered together:
The clearest association between cluster and breed is evidenced by cluster C1 (n = 48): in our sample, it is geographically restricted to central Europe, the British Isles, and Scandinavia, including Iceland (Fig. 1). A total of 17 of 19 documented horses with C1 are northern European ponies (Exmoor, Fjord, Icelandic, and Scottish Highland). Additionally, 14 of 27 undocumented horses (3) with C1 are ponies, including Connemara ponies. The cluster is younger than perhaps 8,000 y (Table 1), but definitely older than 1,500 y, because C1 was also found in two ancient Viking horses. Furthermore, mtDNA cluster E (n = 16) consists entirely of Icelandic, Shetland, and Fjord ponies. Taken together, this suggests a common late glacial or postglacial origin for these pony breeds.
Radovic et al. 2024, though, found that the Icelandic horses have a completely different patriline from most of the British native breeds, as they belong to what is currently called the non-Crown group, while the majority of the British native breeds belong to the Crown group. The non-crown British breeds are the Eriskay pony and the Shetland. As the Shetland Isles and the Hebrides were both under Norse control for about four hundred years, ending in 1266, it makes sense that their pony breeds would be more similar to the Icelandic horse.
Most of the Connemara and Kerry Bog ponies tested by Radovic et al. 2024 belong to a British sub-haplogroup, labelled Ad-b. The draught breeds, both pony and horse, mostly have the Y chromosome haplotype Ad-bS, most of the Dartmoors have a unique haplotype Ad-bF, and the Connemaras and Kerry Bog ponies share the haplotype Ad-bA with Welsh ponies and cobs descended from Old Welsh Flyer. (Some of the Connies and Kerry Bog ponies did return a Thoroughbred sire line instead of the British one, which is no surprise.)
So, according to genetics studies, the Connemara and Kerry Bog pony, descendants of the Irish hobby, share maternal ancestry with the Icelandic horse, and paternal ancestry with other British breeds.
References
Jansen, Thomas, et al.. 2002. 'Mitochondrial DNA and the origins of the domestic horse'. PNAS 99 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.152330099
Radovic, Lara, et al.. 2024. 'The global spread of Oriental Horses in the past 1,500 years through the lens of the Y chromosome'. PNAS 121 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2414408121
Argh I found a moderately academic reference stating that “hobby” is from Gaelic “swift”, WHICH IS GOOD because there are a lot of search engine results saying it’s from a English rhyme for “Robert.”
Which I like to see.
https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/77656/1/CHP%202008.1%20Jones.pdf
It’s also a shared beef with myself and academic Robert Jones that nobody cares about hobelars. Cheap and effective distinctive mounted unit! Where’s the representation! But they were probably celts and mounted on little ponies and didn’t have shiny armour, so less sexy, apparently.
I need to give this a more thorough read over, but in case it hasn't been mentioned, the term "ambling" in reference to horses typically means it has a shuffling gait! So like a pacer or walking horse, or perhaps even like an Icelandic horse! Notably, in Chaucer's Canterbury tales (I can't recall which one exactly off the top, but I'll see if i can find my essay from Uni on this), there is mention of an ambling horse that's been linked to the modern Tennessee Walkers, rocky mountain horses, shuffling mustangs, etc.
Without further details it's impossible to say exactly which gait (fast walk, pace, tölt, rack) they exhibited, but amblers were PEAK traveling horses because of their comfy gait! A good amble isn't bouncy like a trot is, and unlike a canter (which can have a very "rocking horse" feel, which can be hard to sit and consumes a lot of energy), an ambling horse can go for HOURS at a brisk and smooth as glass pace. I've personally done a LOT of trail riding on a decent variety of breeds (thoroughbreds, Arabians, a percheron, Welsh crosses, a mustang, appaloosas, quarter horses), and by far I could go the longest with the least butt pain/numbness on my Tennessee walking horse! And gaited breeds are notoriously and effortlessly fast!
That’s a lovely addition, thank you!
It’s very sad to me that we can’t know exactly what they looked like or what their amble was like. The Kerry Bog Pony, speculated to be a descendant of the Irish Hobby, is said to have “an unusual footfall pattern, which helped it move on soft ground such as peat bogs” - but this is Citation Needed, and appears to be referencing how their hind feet fall outside the tracks of their front feet (also Citation Needed).
An example of a small gaited pony-horse used in medieval warfare, with a gait we can see today, is the Mongolian horse, with a pace called joroo. The horse in the foreground is pacing with this pace. Apologies for the quality. A source, but not the original source, for the video is here.
The horse is doing quite well in its speed test - the horse in the background is running at a gallop, and you can see the photographers are in cars.
And the pacing horse is being ridden without saddle or stirrups!
We can’t know exactly what pace the Irish Hobby used, but with the size and lack of gear, this seems like a nice visual of what hobelars and their hobbies may have looked like! And an idea of how they were effective enough to field against “classier” technology. It is definitely a Sportful Sight, and you can see that it would be very annoying and cause knights to Full Dispute you.
i’m very curious about how/when/why “hobby horse” became a name for play stick horses and how it’s linked to mari lwyd and her ilk. my only contribution is that shakespeare uses “hobby horses” as a sort of playful insult in much ado about nothing (something something “i have 8 or 9 wise words to say to you that these hobby horses must not hear” if memory serves, from benedick to leonato re: claudio and pedro iirc) which to me reads as a reference to a morris dance-type hobby horse but i’d have to look at my 9 copies of much ado to see what the footnotes say.
Somewhere in the 1500s, “hobbyhorse” became known as the term for the mumming character of a horse.
It could have gone hobby (small horse) -> hobby horse (small horse horse, mumming character) -> hobby (thing you do for pleasure, like mumming.)
It could also have gone hobby (small horse) -> hobby (thing you do for pleasure, like keeping a hobby horse) -> hobby horse (mumming activity.)
Merriam-Webster dictionary has some etymology: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hobbyhorse
a figure of a horse fastened about the waist in the morris dance; a dancer wearing this figure; buffoon… See the full definition
but I’m bothered by that dictionary, because they also claim:
“hobby: small light horse, from Middle English hoby, hobyn, perhaps from Hobbin, nickname for Robert or Robin”
And that source is repeated with varying confidence everywhere, that hobbies and hobelars were named for an English rhyming-word trick surrounding the name “Robert,” a name often applied playfully to English horses. As supporting evidence, sources state, the word “dobbin” for “plough horse” came about by naming the horse Robert->Robin->Dobbin.
You also see the “Robert” etymology claimed with total confidence in the Online Etymology dictionary: https://www.etymonline.com/word/hobby
Originating c. 1400 as "hobi," a diminutive of Robert or Robin, the word means a small, active horse, initially a proper name for such a hor
I, and a few random people and academics who care about hobbies (source cited above) feel it’s more likely to come from the Gaelic word obann, “Swift.” (Source cited above.) This seeming a reasonable word to apply to a horse described primarily by being “fast,” in the native languages of the people who used it. Why would Irish people overwhelmingly name them “Robert” and do cute little English-style word games about it, when their own language was right there? Jones points out that anti-Celtic biases colour even modern study; it’s been the standard for hundreds of years to frame medieval Celts as primitive and negligible, and it takes a lot of unraveling to even notice sometimes.
Anyway, it’s a lot to ask anyone, whether or not they’re on the piss on the poor website, to argue with a published fuckin’ dictionary. But Robert Jones and I are going to do it. It’s a weird hobbyhorse! but we’re going to ride it!
So make the best of “hobby /mumming” etymology as you can - and maybe you could take my little hobbyhorse forward! I don’t really think they came from Robert.
