Why The Long Face?

And now IKEA. I’m so upset about the meatballs, apart from pretending you live there and enjoying the immense risk and danger of going off the path, those meatballs were the best things about IKEA. Now we find out that the secret to their deliciousness may have been in the beef…the secret being that is wasn’t all beef, some of it was horse.

This news story has rather rocked our country in the recent weeks. Naturally, there is outrage that this has so easily happened and we, the consumer, have been eating something without being made aware of it. As many articles have pointed out, this is more an issue of fraud than of food safety. It also begs the questions of why beef is being substituted for horse; according to Q & A Horsemeat Scandal, it’s because horsemeat is cheaper than beef so the substitution is an easy way of making the meat go further.

As well as outrage coming from the fraud aspect of the scandal, there is also something about eating horse that feels essentially ‘wrong’ to many Britains. Eating horse in Britain became taboo gradually, we were certainly munching away on geegees at the end of the last ice age, so what changed? It’s likely to be around the same time horses became domesticated that peoples’ attitude towards them began to change and there is evidence of this happening as early as 4000 BC.



However, as with many of the big changes in Britain, the main influence seems to have come from the Church. At some point, possibly as far back as 732 AD, the Vatican announced that eating horse was a pagan activity and not acceptable behaviour among well-to-do Catholics. This decision was fairly widely rebuked by most European countries who continued nibbling their neighing Nellys well into the nineteenth century, but it does seem to have had quite an impact on English-speaking countries. Perhaps this religious influence, paired with the psychological impact of our relationship with horses, is what has made eating horse just not the done thing.



 Drawing on the psychological aspects, and desperately clawing my way back to a publishing and book related topic, I thought I’d look at horses in literature that encourage our sentimental attachment to the animal.



One of my favourites is Angharrad from the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. Angharrad is a gentle soul who is one of the only characters to understand Todd, Ness’ troubled protagonist.

Good old Boxer in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Poor, dimwitted Boxer is a stoical chap who believes in hard work and a good regime. He never doubts the words of those in command, unfortunately, it is this that leads to his downfall.





Fledge the winged wonder. Formally known as Strawberry, he worked in London pulling handsome cabs, but in true C.S Lewis style, he is magically transported to Narnia and given wings by Aslan.

Shadowfax, the chief of the Mearas. One of those names I can’t say in a normal voice (have to either sound like Aslan or Mufassa saying "Simba!"). He’s fearless, fast and fighsty; only Gandalf is permitted to ride him and that's only if Shadowfax allows. It is due to his epicness that we get the line “Run, Shadowfax, show us the meaning of haste.”



A horse that has made me cry more than any other is the kind, gentle and brilliantly brave Joey, a war horse like no other. Told from Joey’s point of view, War Horse by Michael Morpurgo lets you to really get to know and feel for this incredible character.



Last but not least, probably the most famous horse in British literature, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty. I definitely cried a lot at this book too. Kindness, sympathy and respect are big themes in this story and similarly to Joey in War Horse, Black Beauty tells his own story. Through his life we see the full range of treatment horses can expect at the hands of humans. If any horse can teach us what the relationship between man and beast can mean, it’s Black Beauty.