Horse whorls began as superstition, with basis in reality. People were noticing a connection between the whorls and the behavior of the horse. That makes sense.

There are some superstitions that don’t seem to have that connection to practicality. Not at first glance.

The hippomane is the focus of some of thees superstitions. Sometimes called ‘foal bread’, because it can form inside the foals mouth and is vaguely shaped similar to a loaf of bread. If you look hard enough. A hippomane is normal occurrence during pregnancy. It usually forms somewhere along side the foal, but can on occasion actually be connected to the foals forehead.

This is where the superstition comes in.

Hippomane is Greek literally meaning "horse madness". As the mare is said to go mad after eating it. Mentioned by Aristotle circa 350BC as growths on the forehead of a new born foal. As the mare eats the afterbirth, as she cleans the foal, she eats the growth. According to him, if the mare is prevented from doing so she will feel no affection for the foal and refuse to feed it. Because of that they believed the ‘power of love’ was concentrated in the hippomane.

Not only did the dam need to eat the hippomane, but if someone got a hold of it before she could eat it the mare would go ‘wild and frantic at the smell’.

This brings us back to the logic that began whorl studies. Without the knowledge we have today, knowledge built on the shoulders of these first scientists, they had no way of knowing the importance of letting the mare and foal bond after birth. Or, as this superstition makes obvious, they had the idea, but used different words to descibe it and put an interesting twist on the idea behind it.

We now understand that cleaning the foal is a very important and powerful behavior for a dam. We also understand that when the smell of the foal gets on something other than the foal that it is easy for the mare to get confused. People take advantage of this when a foal dies and a substitute foal needs to be adopted. The old way of going about it was to skin the dead foal and cover the new foal with the hide. This gives the adoptee the smell of her lost baby.

The taking of the hippomane before the mare finished cleaning the foal could have gotten the smell of the foal on the person. It could have, would have needed to, interrupt the cleaning bonding process. It could easily have made the mare’s protective instincts kick in. Making her feel the need to fight to protect her foal.

The old superstitions are fascinating. Often even the most outlandish of them have a glimmer of truth if we look hard enough.