There is some Gabriel Byrne film about a horse of this type. His sons get on its back and it carries them to the sea, almost drowning them. There's some mixed mythology in that film with the boys being Travelers and the horse being named Tir Na Nog, but a decent film.

My father used to tell me there were horses that lived out under the rough surf off of the shore at Rockaway Beach and I shouldn't go out there or they might carry me off to a land where I'd never see my parents again. Once, when I was 8 years old and walking along the shore in Atlantic City, I swore I could see those sinister horses calling to me as the waves broke. I ran back to my grandmother and told her. She did nothing to dissuade me from my belief in them.

I always wondered a bit about Bruce Springsteen's upbringing because of that song of his 'Cowboys of the Sea." His last name is Dutch and his mother is Italian, but folks from Freehold tell me his dad's family is really Irish. Marrying the images of horses with the ocean isn't a uniquely Celtic thing by any means but it isn't very American. I'm sure my father heard it from his Irish parents and Grandparents.

I just now mentioned this to my husband who assumed I was talking about the Seahorses that Aquaman rode. Bwahaha! NOT! My husband says he used to watch a cartoon when he was a kid called Marine Boy and Marine boy rode Seahorses too. So... there you have my very American Husband's take on horses and the ocean.


The Horses I used to imagine out there under the waves were usually white and terrifying. Right on up through my late 20's I was afraid to swim very far out into the OCean off various NY beaches. I assume our parents told us about those Horses in the ocean because they wanted us to stay close to shore and out of the undertow.