Cheval-Fin — Wikipedia

The horsepower , also written melted horse , is a very old sports game.

In civilizations where the horse holds a large place, the children rush and relying on the rump of the animal succeeds successively to settle in califourchon, several on its back, three for example.

Like the previous activity, in the game of the Made Horse, a team plays the role of the horse and the other the role of the riders.

According to the dictionary Littré : “Founded horse said, in the old language, of the horse that fell: The horse … joined the four foot and protruding fifteen foot well as if to protrude in the water; And when the horse found the hard earth of his foot, which cuydoit finds the water, he will cheat on his foot with a blow of Meschef and melted down to the ground; And when the king saw his melted horse, he looks at low, and he was advised that he was in a river. »

The melted horse is played with two teams of 4, 5 or 6 players. With more participants the game becomes impossible for lack of space on the back of the horse.

The horse’s team chooses one of its players, generally the least robust who stands, leaning against a wall, a tree … and places his hands as if he wanted to make the short scale. A teammate inclines the bust almost horizontally, presses his forehead on the hands of his comrade who has just laid down and then spreads his legs a little. A third player from the same team is decreasing, places his neck against the posterior of the second and surrounds with his arms with his legs of the one on which he supports his head. The fourth is like the third, the fifth as the fourth and so on until all the team players form a long support with their backs, a sort of melee of linear rugby, which constitutes the back of An imaginary horse.

The other team, the riders, is behind a line a few meters from the installation made up of the first team. The rider supposedly being the best for jumping starts the first and jumps to califourchon as far as possible on the back of the horse to leave behind as much space as possible so that his teammates can fall on the back of those who are below . The second fact of the same and tries to place himself just behind the first who jumped and so on until the horse supports the whole opposing team.

• For the horse:
  • Given the physical test that constitutes for the players the fact of receiving on the back of the opponents who let themselves fall with all their weight, their goal for them is to become riders. For this the horse should not melt, an old meaning which means collapsing. If they manage to keep and even drop the riders while going away, the opponents will take their place.

• For riders:
  • Falling a califourchon well so as not to lose your balance, jump far enough for the whole team to hold, not put your feet on the ground when you are on the horse’s back and not speak despite the provocations of the horse that Can say for example to a rider: “You set foot” and the other to answer “no” which makes his team lose.

This game seems to have disappeared; Recreation courses were sometimes prohibited because it was the cause of muscle accidents.

This game was reserved for boys and with the appearance of diversity in schools, certain games have disappeared to give way to others.

Industrialization and globalization have precipitated in oblivion many traditional games which required neither money nor standardized equipment for the benefit of games with a universal audience. ^{[Ref. necessary]}

• In the novel by Anatole France, Stone , this game is quoted: “Let’s go,” he tells us, don’t you have enough playing the perched cat and the melted horse? ” Let’s change the game. ”
• Of the same author in Flower life : “They dominated in the recreation as well as in the classes and showed, in the melted horse and in the parts of bars, the mastery that we recognize in Greek theme and in Latin discourse”
• Found in the works of Rabelais by François Rabelais: “La Jouoyt … Au horsé melé” – Gargantua, Book I, Chapter XXII
• In “Fanny”, from Pagnol, Panisse criticizes Caesar for having forced him to play Sèbe in his youth at the age of 10 years
• These four quotes show the importance that this game had in childish life at the time.

Fund is a navy term which means flowing thoroughly, pressed, lowered. In Languedoc, this game is called San Jorgi Cap , that is to say the little horse of Saint George.

• Found in the book Familiar expressions of Languedoc and Cévennes :

Shouting sèbe is “admitting defeated, shouting thumb”, a phrase which was initially used in the game of the melted horse, when the player who lent his back declared himself tired. We can compare the Occitan Jugar to Seba “to play the melted horse” closer to this expression. According to Frédéric Mistral, “in French Flanders, the game of the Made Horse is called” Game of the Ognon “, translation of the Provençal Cebo that we took for Sebo. It would prove that this game is from the South”.

• In Cathedral (Paris, Stock, 1898, p. 34 ) From Joris-Karl Huysmans, there is a curious allusion to this childish game, which makes it possible to describe the traditional representation of the medieval typology which shows, in the stained glass windows of Chartres, the evangelists perched on the shoulders of the four main prophets of the Old Testament: “It was [the Virgin] also at the end of the southern transept, vis-à-vis Saint Anne, she, she, who has become a mother in turn, surrounded by four huge figures carrying, as well as At the game of the melted horse, four small characters on their shoulders: the four great prophets who had announced the arrival of the Messiah, Isaiah, Jérémie, Daniel and Ezekiel, lifting the four Evangelists, thus expressing the parallelism of the two wills, the support, that lend to the new law, the old. ”

In the military field, one can also have testimonies attesting to the use of certain traditional games such as the horse melted in “Practical gymnastics” of Napoleon Laisné published in 1850. Here, he refers to it in his chapter on exercises without Loading or equipment and quotes it among other more sporting games and practices such as dance, swimming, boxing and savate.

• Nicolas Lancret’s painting, The melted horse ^{[ first ]} , shows children playing. Several versions exist including that exhibited at the Meier gallery (78,000 Versailles).
• In the movie Rouslan it ludilala From Alexandre Ptouchko, in the Petchenègues camp, we see, in the background, young people playing this game.
• On the Beauvais tapestry from a cardboard by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Country amusements: the melted horse .
• On the tapestry of Michel Corneille the old, Children’s games. Children playing melted horse .
• In the painting of Pieter Brueghel the Old, Children’s games Dating from 1560, in the lower right corner, we see 5 boys playing this game. This representation is more explicit than those appearing on the tapestries.
• Jean Honoré Fragonard’s painting, The melted horse , shows children, one of whom seems to start, playing this game in what seems to be a park.
• We find on the site of Digital resources in education history Put in external links a very explicit anonymous engraving.
• Six children were filmed playing it. We can see this very short sequence after more or less twenty minutes and 48 seconds, in the documentary “The trial of Lady Chatterley”. Six children are filmed: two supported against a wall, two curved and two jumping on their back.