Now for Your Cherishings – Gervase Markham 1676

Now for Your Cherishings – Gervase Markham 1676

(Peter Paul Rubens – Detail from Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma – The Collection – Museo Nacional del Prado)

“Now for your Cherishings, they are those which I formerly spake of;

Only they must be used at no time but when your Horse doth well,

And hath pleased your mind, both with his cunning and tractableness:

Although the time for the same be when he hath finished his Lessons,

Yet there is a secret pleasing and cherishing of a Horse with the Bridle, which must be exercised in the doing of his Lessons,

And that is the Sweetning of his Mouth by a little ceasing of your Bridle hand, and gently drawing it up back again,

Letting it come and go with such unperceiving motion, that none but the Beast may know it.”

~ Gervase Markham, 1676.

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