Sukh's White Horse retold by Yuzo Otsuka, English text by Sarah Ann Nishie (Labo Teaching Information Center, Tokyo) ~Ernie Hoyt

Sukh’s White Horse is a Mongolian folktale. I believe one of the best ways to learn about another country’s culture is by reading or listening to their folktales. In this tale, the story focuses on the origin of a musical instrument called the morin khuur or horsehead fiddle. It is retold by Yuzo Otsuka and was translated into English by Sarah Ann Nishie. It is illustrated by Suekichi Akaba.

The morin khuur is a Mongolian stringed instrument. It is one of Mongolia’s most significant cultural heritage items. In 2001, UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) designated the morin khuur as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. 

The morin khuur or horsehead fiddle is so called because the upper part of the instrument is shaped like a horse’s head. This book tells the story of how the instrument was invented

As with  most fairytales and folk tales, the story starts long, long ago. On the plains of Mongolia lived a shepherd boy called Sukh. He lived with his grandmother. It was just the two of them. He worked as hard as any adult - he got up early in the morning and helped his grandmother cook breakfast, then he would take their more than twenty sheep out onto the plains. 

Sukh was known for his great singing voice. He was often asked by other shepherds to sing for them. “His beautiful singing voice would ring out across the plain and far into the distance”. 

One day, Sukh did not come home. It was already dark. His grandmother became very worried about him. Even the other shepherds started to wonder what happened to him. They were all distraught and wondering what they should do when Sukh came running home holding something white in his arms. It was a foal.

Sukh took care of the foal which grew into a beautiful white horse. Sukh loved this horse with all of his heart. One  night Sukh woke up to hear his horse in distress. When he went to check, he saw the horse trying to protect his herd of sheep from a big wolf. Sukh was so grateful to the horse for protecting his herd. 

During the spring of one year, the noyon, or local ruler, was having a horse race in town. He said the winner would get to marry his daughters. Sukh’s fellow shepherds told him he should join the race. Sukh decided to join the race and he won! 

However, when the noyon saw that the rider of the white horse was a poor shepherd, he reneged on his promise to give his daughter away in marriage and gave Sukh three pieces of silver and told him to leave the white horse as well. 

Sukh got angry and yelled back at the King, “I came to race, not to sell him”. This made the King angry. He ordered his men to attack and beat Sukh and also took Sukh’s white horse away. Sukh’s friends managed to get him home and with the help of his grandmother, he eventually recovered. Unfortunately, he was still suffering from the loss of his white horse. 

The noyon was so proud of the horse that he wanted to show it off to everyone. He had a party and was planning to ride the horse in front of everyone for the first time at the party. He had his men bring the horse and mounted the horse. 

Then it happened - “The white horse leaped up with fearsome energy. The ruler rolled off of him, down onto the ground. The white shore shook the reins out of his hands and began to run like the wind through the screeching crowd”.

The noyon was furious. He ordered his men to catch the horse. Or if they couldn’t catch him, then shoot him to death. The white horse had run back to Sukh with its body full of arrows. Sukh tried to save the horse but alas, it was to no avail. The next day the horse died. 

For many nights, Sukh couldn’t sleep. When he finally did fall asleep, he had a dream. In the dream the horse spoke to him softly. The horse said, “Don’t mourn so. It would be better to make a musical instrument out of my bones, hide, sinews and hair. That way, I can always be beside you. I can comfort you”. 

The next day Sukh  began to work on making the instrument, following the instructions from the horse in his dreams. When the musical instrument was finished - it was the birth of the morin khuur.

Once you finish reading the story, you can enjoy listening to the story again in English and Japanese on the CD that comes with the book. The CD also includes a bit of background music with sounds from the morin khuur. 

The story is sad but uplifting at the same time. It’s a story of love and trust between a boy and his horse. It always strikes me as rather strange why many folktales have tragic endings. I for one, would like to know what happened to the noyon after the horse threw him off.

Empire of Horses by John Man (Pegasus Books)

In the earliest days of humanity, “an ocean of grass” stretched across continents, ignored until horses and bovine animals were domesticated and needed to be fed. Herdsmen traveled across the grasslands, moving their livestock from one spot to the next, becoming “pastoral nomads.” They discovered that horses, which could be tamed, ridden, used to carry heavy burdens, and (when necessary) eaten, were valuable animals that gave rise to a new civilization--one that was dominated by horsemen.

With the advent of the Bronze and Iron Ages, the horsemen became archers, hunting with bows and metal arrowheads. The skill they needed to hunt for food became extraordinarily useful when employed against enemies, aiming deadly arrows while astride swift horses, and the precursor of medieval knights was born.

Within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, the nomadic region of Ordos was born, which became the empire of a mysterious tribe called the Xiongnu. Where these people came from is a matter of speculation but it’s a fact that they were formidable warriors. Soon their territory extended to 350 kilometers from the Han Dynasty’s capital of Chang’an and their leader, Modun, was hungry to expand his borders.

He had been a significant problem for China for years, attacking its northern borders with his “horseback archers,” enough that the Han emperor tried to buy him off, with gifts of silk and Chinese princesses. This bought an uncertain peace for sixty but failed to achieve the underlying goal: to weaken the invaders by giving them a taste for Chinese luxury. The Xiongnu counted their wealth in horses and bows with the strength to turn arrows into armor-piercing bullets.

The Xiongnu never succeeded in conquering China but for centuries they maintained their empire, which was “almost twice the size of Rome’s”  and “took what they wanted,” until at last they fell to the time-honored practice of divide and conquer. The southern Xiongnu succumbed to Chinese influence while the northerners clung to tradition. Still the victories of their empire are legendary, to the point that modern-day Mongolians claim them as their ancestors and Modun as the influence for Genghis Khan.

The Mongol name for the Xiongnu is Hunnu, or, Man says, “simply Huns.” This takes him to the theory that this first nomadic empire was the root of another army of mounted archers, one that would be scorned as barbarians and that would eventually take over the Balkans from the Caspian Sea to the Baltic, “an area half the size of the USA. Attila, leading his people known as the Huns, was a “juggernaut that could live by pillage,” much like the Xiongnu. 

In the mid-eighteenth century, a French Sinologist in a five-volume work called A General History of the Huns, Turks and Mongols made the astounding and unsubstantiated claim that “Attila’s Huns were descendants of the ‘Hiong-nou.” This theory was given credence by Edward Gibbon, the 1911 edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica, and historians of the 1930s. However, as Man says, the one conclusive similarity is both the Xiongnu  (or Hunnu) and the Huns came out of nowhere, established their empires by conquest, and then completely vanished. With enigmas like that, especially when they bear almost the same name, who can possibly keep from romantic speculation? ~Janet Brown

Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race by Lara Prior-Palmer (Catapult)

When still a teenager, Lara Prior-Palmer decides to enter the Mongol Derby, seven weeks before the race begins. “I am extremely competitive,” she announces in her application, “and want to be the youngest (am 18) person to finish.”

Giving herself minimal time for preparation, she’s allowed to enter a “1,000-kilometer race on twenty-five wild ponies, a new steed for every 40-kilometer stage” across the Mongolian grasslands, with only ten days allowed for completion. But, she says, “my thighs were strong and my heart was raw.” In a little over a month, she’s on her first pony, with a copy of The Tempest stowed away in her bag of survival gear. 

Her journey is broken by stops at the urtuus, the stations where riders change their mounts, which have been loaned by local families for a rental fee and vary in their stages of wildness. By 8:30 competitors are forced to stop for the day, choosing their “glum horses” to begin their ride by 7 the next morning.

It takes a while for Prior-Palmer’s competitive spirit to kick in. At first her goal is simply to make it to the next urtuu and eventually to finish the race. Her hours on horseback are contemplative ones and her observations are precise and poetic. Following in the hoofprints of Chinggis Khan’s thirteenth-century Postal Express, riders who carried the mail in stages from Siberia to Poland in twelve days, she’s haunted by thoughts of the Great Khan, a man so humble that he demanded that his burial ground remain unknown, with no grand monuments or markers, one who permitted all religions to be freely practiced within his empire, and who even now is regarded as Mongolia’s “ancestral spirit.” 

Stopping at the required time means she often sleeps in ger, those windowless circular tents that collapse and are moved on to the next grazing area, leaving no trace of their presence. Baigal or “what exists,” the natural world, is so respected by the Mongol nomads that they wear soft-soled shoes in order to avoid harming what their feet will fall upon. 

Prior-Palmer is seduced by baigal, even when “thunder burgles the sky” and she and her pony “ride on, curling our bodies against the teeth of the storm.” The sky looks like “a map of the world,” and she feels “very alone,” “the last drops in the bottom of a wine glass.”  

Perhaps it’s the pain that comes from days of constant riding that brings out the spirit of competition or perhaps it’s the awareness of Devan, an obnoxious young woman from Texas who takes the lead early on and maintains it, but on her fourth day, Prior-Palmer decides she wants to win. 

On the seventh day of the race, she enters the final urtuu, babbling stories and unconcerned that Devan has arrived ahead off her. Within twelve minutes she learns that she’s the winner because her competitor has been penalized for raising her pony’s heart rate above the sanctioned limit. 

From her copy of The Tempest, she finds “when I waked, I cried to dream again.” “Endings fade,” Prior-Palmer decides, “but the force behind a story lives on.” The Derby is over but the steppes of Mongolia live on, in this book and in the minds of its readers. ~Janet Brown