19/12/2024
From left to right, the horses playing Ginger, Merrylegs and Black Beauty in the film 'Black Beauty', 1994.
Ginger is Black Beauty’s best equine friend. She’s a chestnut mare who’s sensitive and spirited, and when she was a filly and a young horse, this was interpreted as belligerence and punished. Because she was abused as a young horse and never learned that people can be kind friends, Ginger arrives at Birtwick a few months before Black Beauty as a dangerous, touchy horse who bites and kicks.
With John, James, and Squire Gordon’s patience and kindness, though, Ginger gradually relaxes, learns to trust people, and becomes happy in her new home. She is, however, self-conscious about the damage her upbringing and training caused (such as making her mouth hard), and she fears what might happen if she’s ever sold. Ultimately, Ginger’s fears come true when she and Black Beauty are sold to the Earl of W when the Gordons leave the country. Ginger has experience with the bearing rein already, and she’s not willing to put up with what she sees as dangerous abuse. She tolerates the bearing rein for a while but eventually lashes out and damages harness by kicking and rearing. After this, Lord George begins training Ginger for foxhunting, but he’s too heavy and not a good rider. Due to the bearing rein and Lord George’s hard and poor riding, her back is strained and she suffers breathing problems. She and Black Beauty are separated for several years after she’s put out to rest and heal for a year, but she and Black Beauty reconnect in London when they’re both pulling cabs. At this point, Ginger has lost all her spirit; she believes that men are cruel and cannot be beaten. She’s thin and exhausted, her joints are swollen, and her owner plans to use her until she dies—and Ginger looks forward to dying, since that will stop her suffering. Soon after this meeting, Black Beauty sees a dead chestnut horse that he believes is Ginger, though he can’t confirm the dead horse’s identity.
Merrylegs is a fat gray pony owned by Miss Jessie and Miss Flora at Birtwick. He’s wise and old, at 12 years old, and has been at Birtwick for five years when Black Beauty arrives. Black Beauty quickly befriends the pony. Merrylegs makes a point to carefully care for and train his young riders, but he also believes that part of this is teaching visiting boys not to be cruel and abuse horses. So, when the boys beat him with sticks and try to make him gallop, Merrylegs ejects the boys to teach them not to do that. Dumping mean riders gently, though, is as much as Merrylegs is comfortable doing to make his point. Though Ginger suggests she’d kick cruel boys, Merrylegs believes he’d be sold into horrible work if he ever kicked, bit, or was anything but a gentle and reliable horse for children. When his friends discuss how cruel people can be to horses and dogs, Merrylegs doesn’t disagree—but he also suggests it’s inappropriate to talk about such things when they’re so well cared for at Birtwick. Squire Gordon sells Merrylegs to the vicar when he moves to Europe, on the condition that the vicar never sell Merrylegs and that Merrylegs should be humanely shot when he’s too old to work. Black Beauty never discovers whether this happened or not.
