After careful thought and trying to picture a “one-horse open sleigh” in my head, I’ve come to these conclusions:
a) The bells are on the harness (the trappings or the traces or the bridle or the reins or perhaps the collar) AND on the horse, perhaps on his tail, at the base, or tied into his mane.
b) Alternatively, the bells are on the harness alone, which are on the horse, so you could say the bells are “on bob-tail”. And perhaps Pierpont thought “bells on bob-tail ring” sounded better than “bells on harness ring.” (This is what seems most likely to me.)
c) Third possibility is that they’re on the horse alone, on the base of the horse’s bobbed tail. Only John Pierpont knew for sure and he’s not around to ask.
The horse’s tail is bobbed (either cut or bound up) so it won’t be in the driver’s face. The driver of a sleigh sits very close to the horse’s rear end.
A time of two minutes and forty seconds over a mile gives us a speed of twenty-two-and-a-half miles per hour, which I think is pretty darn fast for a horse pulling a sleigh, especially in the 19th Century, when most people didn’t go much over twenty miles an hour, unless they were taking a train. A horse can go faster, of course, of course, but for short distances only.
The song was written more more than 140 years ago, when everyone knew what a horse and sleigh looked like and everyone was familiar with the terminology used by equestrians. It never would have occurred to Pierpont to make the distinctions.
But it’s a nice song. It definitely stimulates the imagination. And the less-familiar stanzas have some humor. A guy falls flat on his back and the only person who comes along laughs and speeds away.
I’ll leave that explanation for Catherine the Great.
As for how a horse is judged in the ring… beyond general appearance (nice coat, well groomed, hooves blacked, mane/tale combed and attractively bound/decorated, ears and muzzle shaved, etc.), and conformation (how nicely the horse is built, proportions, musculature, that sort of thing), the judges want to see that the horse can perform difficult and specific movements that the rider gives it. The horse must understand and follow nearly imperceptible directions given it by the rider, it must know how to take the proper leads (putting the proper front foot forward first - it changes depending on what direction the horse is going in the ring), the horse cannot balk or shy, it must know how to jump, it must make instant allowances for unseen obstacles on the far side of a barrier (jump), and so on.
I’m sure a lot of folks think horses are just big dumb critters, but they really are required to learn a LOT (just like the rider!).
Mr. Dobalina. Mr. Bob Dobalina. “Never mind the ‘Furthermore,’ the plea is self defense.”
city folk! Listen to Dobbin, I mean Dobalina. Bobtail nowadays is any horse with a short cropped tail, not only does it keep the tail out of the drivers face,it keeps the tail clean for show competition. Don’t think I need to explain that even to city folk, that’s the main reason for keeping the tail out of your face. Most competitions won’t allow a real bobbed tail, because of the cruelty aspect,not the actual chop,the flies as Holly sed. ( anybody else unsuprised that someone named Holly is a BlackBeauty fan?) Bobtail is as appropriate name for the horse as Blackie,or Ol’paint.
Real common practice to put bells on harness ,summer time too. Fact harness are sold that way.Not a good idea to atach anything to the reins. But for more jingle add bells elsewhere. Bobtailed SLEIGH is a sleigh where the back end of the sleigh doesn’t extend past the ends of the rear runner’s struts. There used to be sleighs specially made for racing , a sleigh on crusted snow is easier to pull than an equivelent wheeled vehicle. Driver of a sleigh doesn’t sit as close to the tail as in a racing surrey. I bet on that bay,but a roan beat him. And as Bob says you can learn a lot looking at the south end of a north bound trotter.As or that Catherine crack, Hmmm, I was gonna say more but that rings my chimes.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
To all of you who do not know what this is! a bobtail is simply where you cut off the log hair of a horses tailn, Thus the bobtail this procedure was done in the 1800’s very populer fasion for your horse pulling your sleigh …Bells On a BobTail Nag is the bells attached to the side of the reighns of the horse! “HAPPY SLEIGH RIDING!”
Of course the horse has a “bobbed” tail, that’s why it’s called a ‘bob-tail’; people are prone to use abbreviations, especially in songs and poems, etc., etc. That’s what people mean by poetic license; it’s an agreement that poets are allowed to make up words.(Barbed wire, for instance, is often pronounced as if the name is barb wire, famed in song and story as the name of a particularly chesty endowed female private eye.) The song doesn’t say if the bob-tail of the horse is permanent or temporary; just that it is, for the purpose of the song, “bobbed tailed”, or, less accurately, “bob tail.” The bells might very well be attached to the actual tail or to the “breaching”* that encircles the rear quarters in the horizontal plane. The actual horse doesn’t care where the hell the bells are attached; they won’t like bells any better in one place than they do in the other. In either case, one may refer to them as “bells on bob-tail” which is another example of poetic license as I doubt the horse is yclept “bob tail.”
As a side story, a less discussed reason for “bobbing” or mutilating a horse’s tail is that horses are prone to defecate copiously and they sometimes do not succeed in moving their tails away from the results of the defecation, particularly when they are in harness. The result is that the tail may be coated, or at least fouled by feces; known in the vernacular as “horse shit.” A horse whose tail is fouled by feces is not pleasant to sit behind, as one would do in a sleigh or other horse drawn conveyance, as the smell of the feces can be quite offensive; most people would prefer to avoid that smell. “Bobbing” the tail of the horse minimizes the probability of feces enfoulment, to coin a word. It also, in the eyes of some folk, enhances the appearance of the horse although I doubt other horses were consulted as to their preference.
I do hope that the foregoing helps to resolve the question posed by the OP.
I missed the damned Edit window time frame so in my above post, I use the word “breaching” to describe a part of a horse’s harness; there are other words used to describe the same part but I don’t know what they are. I have requested the information from my horse intensive nieces; if I get a response, I will list the alternate names, unless I forget which isn’t unlikely.
but for short distances only.
