I’m trying to find links or bibliographies pointing me to source materials. Most of what I am finding on the web is from breed associations and there are no citations and much of it is conflicting. How do I find descriptions of breeds written by people who were in England during the Middle Ages or even papers written by people who have read such materials?
Lest you wonder why someone who is obviously not an academic is suddenly taken by the desire to act like one, a friend of mine recently aquired a Shire and there has been much discussion at dinner tables about the history and usage of the breed which naturally has led to discussions of the “Great Horses” of William, blah, blah, blah. I’m tired of the blah and I’m looking for some real meat.
Try playing around with the Royal Historical Society Bibliography. A simple search for ‘horses’ throws up 182 entries, some of which should be of some use. The better secondary works should then point you towards any primary sources. Note that the entries are biased towards mainstream academic publications, so there may well be some specialist equestrian works that will have been missed.
Equiworld.net might be able to help. Here’s their breeds page. Don’t think it goes back far enough for you though, but it’s Shire entry links to these guys. Bet they know .
This is all that’s on their site about it, but there are contact details:
You might try adding site:.edu to a google search - this will limit your search to only academic sites (primarily in the U.S., I think, but I’m not sure).
horses europe history species site:.edu
Not the most refined searching, but it’s a start, perhaps - and it has some citations that may point you toward better sources. That particular page focuses more on domestication of horses, rather than breeds…hmmm.
Thinking about it that way, one of these two searches may work better for you:
horses europe history breeds medieval site:.edu
horses europe history breeds site:.edu
But I’m not sure - no time to run the searches right now.
.