The Golden Bridle

Long ago, before men learned to ride on the open plains, lived a beautiful maiden with long flaxen hair. She was her father’s only daughter with many older brothers. Her brothers were fearsome warriors and esteemed hunters; carpenters and sailors with many gifts. Each brother had a beautiful wife and they each bore beautiful children. Children with dark hair and dark eyes like their fathers, and their father’s father, but beautiful nonetheless. The maiden looked like her mother. With golden hair and warm hazel eyes, and a voice that sung sweet as any bird. She was a beauty but weaving and sewing; sowing and reaping; cooking or baking; all good things that young maidens should do but none came to her naturally. Instead, she would lie in the fields and watch the clouds roll past, or braid her long golden hair, feeling the earth rumble under the thundering of hooves of the wild horses her brothers hunted down. At night she would breathe deep the warm scent of the horse rugs that lined her corner of her parent’s home.

One day while the young maiden lay out in her father’s fields, a rich fat man carted past on his litter raised by slaves. He saw the young sleeping maiden and decided he must have her this instant! He strode up to the house and asked the maiden’s father, promising riches and gold for the maiden. The father agreed immediately, seeing the golden rings and chains about the Lord’s neck.

The maiden wept and ran into the field when her father pronounced that she was to be wed to the lord. In the field stood a wild horse, unlike any other she’d ever seen. With a pelt white as snow. The horse did not hesitate and run like most prey would. Instead, the large creature knelt down its head and blew a vision into the maiden’s mind. The farmhouse aflame and the maiden’s brothers had their flesh picked off by birds and wolves, the Lord had sent his men to claim the girl’s dowry when she had failed to produce an heir. The horse blew again and the girl saw herself overlooking the plains with the horse and golden bridle. The lands of her father well-tended and her nephew’s fat and happy with meat in their bellies.
With no gold of her own and no way to forge such a piece, she took a knife to her golden hair and fashioned a rope like the one the horse had shown her. She plaited her hair and place it upon the horse, swinging herself onto it’s broad back. The horse jolted, and she clung on as tight as she could, riding for the nearest town whereby she came by a hunter, lame from chasing pigs.
She offered him a seat behind her on the horse and together they chased down all manner of beast. The hunter took the pelts back to the maiden’s father and asked for her hand. Promising all manner of further help. The father agreed after the Lord had found a new prettier maiden who was adept at all manner of goods. Together with the maiden’s help, they tamed more horses and their lands prospered and they became the first plainsfolk, and to this day it is customary to braid a wife’s hair into a bridle of wild horses to tame them.