Two white ponies were grazing on the high slopes above Carding Mill Valley. A mare and colt, white in the soft light, which felt more autumnal than was usual for the turn, grazed on a hidden lawn surrounded by bracken and heather. Up there, they seemed still, absorbed in feeding, but whenever a dog barked in the distance, they became watchful.
A pair of ravens flew across the valley and landed nearby. The ravens watched the ponies; the ponies watched the ravens.
When the birds flew off, the ponies shook themselves from their reverie. They seemed to become present in the landscape, actors in the moment, no longer passive. There was a strength about them; rough, stocky and yet elegant with a sense of purpose as they stepped across the steep hillside and shook their manes. This felt like a declaration.
There have been ponies on the Long Mynd since Bodbury Ring hillfort opposite was occupied in the iron age. My understanding is that the true Long Mynd breed was one of the earliest in Britain but is now extinct, and the present horses are descended from Welsh mountain ponies, often described as pit ponies, used in local industries for centuries.
The Long Mynd is high heath, the heather was still a vivid purple, the ravens called back to a long ago and the ponies walked in a place apart, an island in a changed world.
Reading September from John Clare’s Shepherd’s Calendar is to become aware of how unpeopled the working countryside has become at harvest time. The “rude groups” who toiled the valleys are gone, the “rush bosomed solitudes” no longer disturbed by workers but visitors, the harvest songs of the fields are replaced by the wuwuwuwu of midnight combines.
The first hands-free harvest – using only remote machines – was accomplished at Harper Adams University in Shropshire this year. The link between the people and the land has changed radically and this gives the presence of the Long Mynd ponies a mythic status. Their declaration of existence now has more to do with the future than the past.
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