Horseman's Word - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Society of the Horseman's Word was a fraternal secret society

Secret society

A secret society is a club or organization whose activities and inner functioning are concealed from non-members. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence agencies or guerrilla insurgencies, which hide their...

that operated in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

from the eighteenth through to the twentieth century. Its members were drawn from those who worked with horses, including horse trainers, blacksmiths and ploughmen, and involved the teaching of magical

Magic (paranormal)

Magic is the claimed art of manipulating aspects of reality either by supernatural means or through knowledge of occult laws unknown to science. It is in contrast to science, in that science does not accept anything not subject to either direct or indirect observation, and subject to logical...

rituals designed to provide the practitioner with the ability to control both horses and women. It also acted as a form of trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

, aiming to gain better rights for its members.

The initiation rituals into the society incorporated a number of elements such as reading passages from the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

backwards, and the secrets included Masonic

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

-style oaths, gestures, passwords and handshakes. Like the similar societies of the Miller's Word

Miller's Word

Formed in the 18th century in imitation of the Mason's Word, which later became Freemasonry, and followed by the Horseman's Word, the Miller's Word was a trade guild formed to restrict entry into and control the profession of grain milling, as well as to protect its members' interests...

and the Toadsmen, they were believed to have practiced witchcraft

Witchcraft

Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...

. In East Anglia, horsemen with these powers were sometimes called Horse Witches.

History

The formation of the Horseman's Word in the late eighteenth century coincided with the draft horse

Draft horse

A draft horse , draught horse or dray horse , less often called a work horse or heavy horse, is a large horse bred for hard, heavy tasks such as ploughing and farm labour...

becoming the primary working animal

Working animal

A working animal is an animal, usually domesticated, that is kept by humans and trained to perform tasks. They may be close members of the family, such as guide or service dogs, or they may be animals trained strictly to perform a job, such as logging elephants. They may also be used for milk, a...

in the farming areas of Northern Scotland

Northern Scotland

Northern Scotland is an administrative division of Scotland used for police and fire services. It consists of Highland, the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands and the Western Isles. The police service uses Northern in its name, but the fire service uses the name Highlands and Islands Fire and...

, replacing oxen in the hinterland of Aberdeen

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....

and the Moray Firth

Moray Firth

The Moray Firth is a roughly triangular inlet of the North Sea, north and east of Inverness, which is in the Highland council area of north of Scotland...

and ponies in Caithness

Caithness

Caithness is a registration county, lieutenancy area and historic local government area of Scotland. The name was used also for the earldom of Caithness and the Caithness constituency of the Parliament of the United Kingdom . Boundaries are not identical in all contexts, but the Caithness area is...

and Orkney. As a result, the ability to raise and control these animals became a valued skill and people possessing this ability were in high demand. This created a desirable form of well paid and respectable work. It was in this context that the Horseman's Word was founded as a trade union

Trade union

whose goal was to protect these horse trainers and ploughmen, along with their trade knowledge, from the threat of an encroaching economic system in which the resources for production were becoming privately owned and wages and prices for goods and services were being taken out of the skilled laborers control and put into the hands of large farm owners. The Society, aside from protecting trade knowledge, wanted to ensure that the men engaged in this profession were efficiently trained and that the quality of their work was consistently good and that the remunerations for that work were appropriate. As Ben Fernee related, "The ploughmen did not own the land, the horses, the harness, the ploughs or their homes but they took control of the new technology, the horses, and ensured that only a brother of the Society of the Horseman’s Word might work them."

According to Ben Fernee, "Unmarried ploughmen lived hard lives, drank hard, played rough and chased women." The Horseman's Word took much influence from Freemasonry

Freemasonry

, another fraternal organisation to have developed in Scotland, albeit two centuries before. It was also influenced by a similar magical secret society, the Miller's Word

Miller's Word

, which was primarily for those in the milling profession.

Initiation Ceremony

The Horseman's Word borrowed much from the Miller's Word

Miller's Word

initiation ceremony where bread and whisky were given as pseudo sacraments and the inductee was blindfolded. Like the Miller's Word

Miller's Word

, throughout the society's meetings they imbibed alcohol, sang songs, and told jokes that mocked traditional morality and Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

. The members of The Horseman’s Word did however add their own designs in the form of passwords and oaths as well as rites of initiation. It has been speculated that these initiation rituals could have been influenced by the witches sabbat

Sabbath (witchcraft)

The Witches' Sabbath or Sabbat is a supposed meeting of those who practice witchcraft, and other rites.European records indicate cases of persons being accused or tried for taking part in Sabbat gatherings, from the Middle Ages to the 17th century or later.- Etymology :The English word “sabbat”...

, absorbed directly from Scottish folklore or from published accounts of witches and their ceremonies. The witch trials had ended not long before so many of the details of these trials would have been known to them.

Prior to the initiation ceremony the candidate, often a ploughboy, was told to come to the barn where the ceremonial procedures were to take place, normally held between 11pm and 1 am. Once at the door he was blindfolded and taken before the master of ceremonies, who was often an elder ploughman. As in Masonic rituals there was then a prearranged and established exchange of questions and answers that was to be given. In the case of the Horseman's Word and the Miller's Word this exchange was often a parody of catechism

Catechism

A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...

. After this was completed the inductee was then asked to seal the pact and shake hands with the devil, which would often be a branch or pole covered in animal fur.

The Word

After the candidate completed the initiation ceremony he was then given a word that was supposed to give him power over horses. So aside from being a secret society "The Horseman’s Word" was actually a spoken word. This secret word, which varied by location, was said to have magical and mystical qualities which would allow the keeper of the word to possess the ability by merely whispering it to bring horses under their complete control. Apart from gaining knowledge of the secret word more practical information and techniques about controlling and training horses was also passed on to members of the society. These methods were kept secret and done in such a way that the horseman maintained their reputation as having unique and even magical power over horses.

Techniques and Secrets of the Horseman's Word

Until the initiation ceremony and induction into the society and the receiving of the word, the horseman who were not members of the society but potential candidates would have trouble with horses. This would often be caused by older ploughmen who were members of the society tampering with their horses. They would put things like tacks under the horse's collar to cause it to behave irrationally. This would be unknown to the potential candidate as the techniques for training and controlling the horses were not yet given to him. Most of these techniques were based on the horse's sharp sense of smell. Foul substances placed in front of the horse or on the animal itself would cause it to refuse to move forward. This technique is known as jading and is still used by horse trainers today. There were also pleasant smelling things that were used to make a horse move forward or calm down. If the substance was an oil it could be wiped on the trainer's forehead, they would then stand in front of the animal and the smell would draw it towards them. This practice was often used in taming unruly horses. There were also pleasant smelling and inviting materials, such as sweets, that the horseman could keep in their pocket in order to calm, attract, and subdue a crazed horse. Keeping these techniques secret, along with the myth that there was a word that only the horseman knew that gave them and them alone power over horses helped guarantee their reputation, prestige, job security, and pay. The same type of logic and protection of trade secrets can be seen among modern magicians who keep their tricks secret and only share them with other members of their trade.

One critic of the Society, a ploughman who later became a grocer and published a book entitled Eleven Years at Farm Work; being a true tale of farm servant life (1879), claimed that "Without betraying any secret, it may be said the real philosophy of the horseman's word, consists in the thorough, careful, and kind treatment of the animals, combined with a reasonable amount of knowledge of their anatomical and physiological structure."

Historical study

In the twentieth century, a number of scholars began to study the history and origins of the Society. The first of these, J.M. McPherson, published his findings and theories in his Primitive Beliefs in the North-East of Scotland (1929), in which he outlined the idea that it was a survival of an ancient pagan cult that had been persecuted in the witch trials in the Early Modern period. Such ideas were supported by the folklorist Thomas Davidson in an article of his published on the subject of the Horseman's Word (1956), and then by George Ewart Evans

George Ewart Evans

George Ewart Evans was a Welsh-born schoolteacher, writer and folklorist who became a dedicated collector of oral history and oral tradition in the East Anglian countryside from the 1940s to 1970s, and produced eleven books of collections of these materials.-Life and career:Evans was born in a...

, who purported the theory in four books of his published in the 1960s and 1970s. Nonetheless, around the same time that Evans was publishing his theory of a pagan survival, there were also researchers who had examined the origins of the Society and criticised the idea that it had ancient roots. In 1962, Hamish Henderson

Hamish Henderson

Hamish Scott Henderson, was a Scottish poet, songwriter, soldier, and intellectual....

detailed how it had arisen in the eighteenth century, with his information being expanded upon by Ian Carter in his 1979 study of agricultural life in Scotland.

In 2009, The Society of Esoteric Endeavour published a compilation of nineteenth and early twentieth century texts about the Society in a volume entitled The Society of the Horseman's Word. Limited to an edition of one thousand copies, the first hundred copies contained an envelope inside within which was contained a piece of horse hair knotted in exactly the same manner as that which was originally used to invite prospective members into the Society.

Fiction

In 1981, a novel written by Georgess McHargue that was entitled The Horseman's Word was published.

History

Initiation Ceremony

The Word

Techniques and Secrets of the Horseman's Word

Historical study

Fiction

Further reading