Things horses only do on the screen

True, but I prefer to suspend disbelief when world-building in other respects makes sense. I was more annoyed that Calanais was miraculously moved next to Inverness, and there was a pointy rock formation just outside of Inverness, critical to the plot, which in no way, shape, or form exsts.
 
Cinnamontoast said:
I keep having to tell this to my OH. We recently watched Broadchurch (yes, we are years behind!) an he was persistently telling me that’s not how policing work. I was like ‘Yeah, and Grange Hill isn’t representative of teaching. It’s the telly, babe!’
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My sister is a police officer and she can't watch most police drama they wind her up as they are so unrealistic 😂 she winces at some of the crap I watch
 
Caol Ila....Grisly horse head scene aside, you much watch the Godfather....it's a fantastic movie!
The trouble with the GOT 'horse beheading ' scene is you actually get to see it happen, which you don't in the Godfather.
Of course in GOT its all CGI, but still made me want to go and give my very own Friesian a big hug.....
 
littleshetland said:
Caol Ila....Grisly horse head scene aside, you much watch the Godfather....it's a fantastic movie!
The trouble with the GOT 'horse beheading ' scene is you actually get to see it happen, which you don't in the Godfather.
Of course in GOT its all CGI, but still made me want to go and give my very own Friesian a big hug.....
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Sorry to be pedantic, but not CGI; it was prosthetics (very, very good prosthetics) and clever camera work.
 
Caol Ila said:
True, but I prefer to suspend disbelief when world-building in other respects makes sense. I was more annoyed that Calanais was miraculously moved next to Inverness, and there was a pointy rock formation just outside of Inverness, critical to the plot, which in no way, shape, or form exsts.
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I haven't watched "Highlander" for ages, but I seem to remember some rather nice Highlands (horses, not scenery) in it?
 
The only bit of that show I've ever seen is the sword fight on the Cioch, above Coire Lagan in the Cuillin. It's at least a Vdiff rock climb to get there (although there are harder routes as well). :)
 
They could be out riding for days in the middle of nowhere and tell the horse to gallop all the way home on its own with no rider and it does.
They can randomly find a horse in the woods all clean and tacked up and just gallop off on it.
All horses are beautifully shiny and ready to tack up in their stables despite only using a handful of straw to brush them!
 
catembi said:
Someone dismounts, drops the reins...and the horse just stays there...? I have read about a thing called 'ground hitching' but I can't see it working on any of mine!
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I know this is taught as basic manners to western horses, but IME it doesn't need teaching to ponies kept at grass. The moment mine are dropped they just start eating until they're picked up again. For some reason if they're dropped where there's no grass, they just stand still, since there's nothing better to do. Since children drop things all the time, being able to jump off your ride and leave it in 'park' whilst you pick up a dropped whip is very useful!

Mine do tend to neigh at each other, but I'm told that anyone who studies foley work (putting sounds into film in post-production) is told that once they start listening for the effects it will ruin their film-watching experience forever.
 
Caol Ila said:
I never watched The Godfather past the horse head in the bed scene. I hear it's a great movie!



We know what sort of horses people rode in the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century, though. The only ones which could survive and which were at all useful up there. The Garron, the precursor to the Highland pony. English and Lowland travellers who brought their own horses had problems with obtaining enough fodder for them, because hay and oats were in short supply, and they were not suitable for many of the tracks.

From a PhD thesis on travelling in the Highlands before there was a semi-extensive road network in the 19th century:

"This total absence of roads and bridges meant that
carriages were of no use at all, and travellers had to use the drove roads that were
often not even suitable for riding horses. They had to lead their horses and had to
walk next to them as these paths were deep and muddy from the livestock driven
over them. The bigger and heavier English and Lowland horses had great difficulties
in walking on the boggy and deep ground in the Highlands. The smaller and lighter
Highland horses were far more suitable for this ground."

This chap had a bad time: "The horse carrying his portmanteau broke through the surface and sank
‘almost up to the back’ in the bog. Neither Burt nor his guide could ease the horse’s
burden as it struggled to break free. Fortunately, after about a quarter of an hour the
horse got out ‘bedaubed with the slough, shaking with fear, and his head and neck all
over in a foam’."

General Wade's roads, completed in 1736 (with the bridge over the River Spean), improved access and transport, but there were only four of them. Fort William to Inverness, Crieff to Dalnarcadoch, Inverness to Dunkeld, and Dalwhinnie to Fort Augustus via the Corryairack Pass. They obviously didn't go everywhere and inns stlll had issues with providing enough fodder for traveller's horses and stables large enough for horses that were not Garrons or Shetlands.

And they didn't always make things better. From a traveller crossing the Corryairack (which has now been replaced by the A86 and is just a hiking trail):
"The day he crossed Corryarraick was a continued violent rain and storm of wind, which
gave it the appearance of wild desolation, beyond any thing he could describe; and the
whole of the road itself, he said, was rough, dangerous, and dreadful, even for a horse. The
steep and black mountains, and the roaring torrents, rendered every step his horse took,
frightful; and when he attained the summit of the zig-zag up Corryarraick, he thought the
horses, himself, man and all would be carried away,.."

The barefoot v. shod debate was alive and well in the 18th century:
"The middle ranks objected that the roads would be an inconvenience
because the gravel would soon wear away the hoofs of their horses and make them
unserviceable. Burt explained that shoeing the horses was no alternative. There were
no farriers in the Highlands because there were neither enough people within a
reasonable distance to maintain them, nor did the Highlanders have the money to
shoe their horses."

In the decades following the '45 Rebellion, there was another spate of road-building in the Highlands. This travellers says that the paths still deteriorated when you left the military roads.
"Beyond Inverary the military are making a new road to Teyendrom [Tyndrum],
which there is to fall in to the great road from Sterling to Fort William. They have already
compleated 4 miles, which we passed in our way to Port Sonachan Ferry, 15 miles distant.
The instant we left the new road we found ourselves in the most horrid paths that can be
conceived, up and down steep hills, through bogs in some places, in others filled with large
loose stones where our horses had no firm footing or, what was worse, now and then
staircases of solid, craggy rock."

I think it's fair to say that 18th century Highlanders were not galloping around Friesians or anything larger than a small Highland.
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I'm not trying to say that there has indeed been hoards of Friesians galloping across Scotland ever since medieval times, but your quoted texts talking about how other breeds of horses struggled to get across Scotland, and needing fodder in quantities which was hard to obtain etc, sounds to me like proof of that some persons probably has tried to gallop around Scotland on other breeds of horses.

Sounds more like the other horses either didn't stay for long, or presumably died, making the Scottish hero having to go back to using his trusty old Highland.
 
Cloball said:
Ah silent witness.... And yet I still watch.
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As a scientist, watching NCIS is hilarious. One woman in a tidy lab, doing it all at the push of a button, right first time. Yeah, ok, love. 😆 Round here there's a lot of "FFS" going on and meetings normally end with, "I'll have another go next week."

As for the OP, I'm still waiting for a horse in a film to scoot sideways because a bit of bracken twirled, or a squirrel looked at him wrong.

Off topic, but random cat noises bug the hell out of me, too. If you enter a house with a cat, they'll either ignore you, come to greet you or bugger off to hide. I have yet to have one shoot past me screeching.
 
FinnishLapphund said:
I'm not trying to say that there has indeed been hoards of Friesians galloping across Scotland ever since medieval times, but your quoted texts talking about how other breeds of horses struggled to get across Scotland, and needing fodder in quantities which was hard to obtain etc, sounds to me like proof of that some persons probably has tried to gallop around Scotland on other breeds of horses.
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But not the locals. Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were galloping around on Friesians and other more spectacular types of horses in Outlander. Nope.

And nobody was actually galloping anywhere. Clearly.
 
I had to go through a whole thing of uploading a PDF because the University of Glasgow wants them all online. It is very much there, on the web for anyone to read if they care about mental illness and psychiatric care in the Highlands circa 18th and 19th centuries (I have a little bit of interest in and knowledge of that region during that time period -- hence Outlander annoying me more than most).
 
Caol Ila said:
I had to go through a whole thing of uploading a PDF because the University of Glasgow wants them all online. It is very much there, on the web for anyone to read if they care about mental illness and psychiatric care in the Highlands circa 18th and 19th centuries.
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Yes, actually, that sounds fascinating! One of my friends is just finishing her PhD about mental illness and psychiatric care in late-Victorian Melbourne, and I'm looking forward to reading the finished result.
 
You can read it if you like.

Still p1ssed I didn't get a post-doc to continue to work with those archives in Lochgilphead and Inverness, which had never been looked at before. But apparently that method of doing history (staring at some stuff in some archives) wasn't the 'in thing' anymore.
 
Caol Ila said:
I had to go through a whole thing of uploading a PDF because the University of Glasgow wants them all online. It is very much there, on the web for anyone to read if they care about mental illness and psychiatric care in the Highlands circa 18th and 19th centuries.
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Link please, that sounds like a good read. Mine sadly only available on paper in UEA library. I don't even think I have a copy now, unless it's on an old hard drive I still have. It was a longue durée study of the development of the road network in (parts of) East Anglia. Basically lots of guesswork and supposition, or, as my friend said of his own thesis, a tissue of lies 😂
 
Burnttoast said:
Link please, that sounds like a good read. Mine sadly only available on paper in UEA library. I don't even think I have a copy now, unless it's on an old hard drive I still have. It was a longue durée study of the development of the road network in (parts of) East Anglia. Basically lots of guesswork and supposition, or, as my friend said of his own thesis, a tissue of lies 😂
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In all its glory:


Development of road networks can be strangely interesting.
 
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