Horse play
Question: In the 19th century, great Clydesdale horses were bred for sale on
the Scottish isle of Lismore. They were ferried to the mainland in a
purpose-built, flat-bottomed boat with a very low freeboard to allow easy
boarding. Walter Weyndling, the Board of Trade Inspector of Ferries, notes in
his delightful Ferry Tales of Argyll and the Isles (published by
Sutton, 1997), that the ferrymen had to induce each horse to “stale” (urinate)
before embarking “otherwise the liquid produce of four giant horses could reduce
stability to the point of capsizing”.
If the urine had been retained in…
