From Past to Present
The scouring of the White Horse has ensured that the figure remains visible to this day, even if its shape has altered somewhat. The scouring process erases the past, but also reproduces it, maintaining a connection and continuity between the Horse’s moment of origin and the people that currently live near the hill
We can see this reshaping of the Horse in forms of art other than the chalk figure. Literature has the same effect, as it often discusses things of the past and reshapes them to fit contemporary times. For instance, G.K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse (1911) focuses on King Alfred, including his exploits in the Berkshire Downs, and occasionally mentions the Uffington Horse. At the start, the lines read “Age beyond age on British land, / … the White Horse looked on”
Tolkien visited the Horse’s surroundings often. He was inspired by the Berkshire Downs and white horses indeed play a significant role in his work. But was Tolkien simply inspired by the image of a white horse on a green hill? Or did more than the image alone influence him? If the latter is true, Tolkien’s white horses may achieve the same effect as the chalk figure of Uffington, which is that the preservation of the Horse as a uniting factor of the past contributes to a sense of shared identity in the present for England’s people.
Two sources can bridge the connection between the Uffington White Horse and Tolkien’s literary white horses. As Tolkien was a writer and philologist with a keen interest in languages such as Germanic and Celtic, these two sources—an Old English poem and a Middle Welsh prose text—are textual. The texts originate from Old English and Celtic literature to reflect the question whether the Horse has a Saxon or Celtic origin.