Rather touched by the film but unsure what to make of a commercial brewery associating itself with such a tragic event, I was surprised after a glance at the comments below the video to discover that Clydesdale horses are synonymous with Budweiser beer in the USA.
Seemingly Budweiser have been using them in promotions since the first crate of post-prohibition beer was delivered on the back of a dray towed by a team of Clydesdales to the Governor of New York and to President Franklin D Roosevelt back in 1933. The company have been running television adverts featuring the Clydesdales during every Super Bowl since 1967. They are regarded as an American Icon.
Now ordinarily I rate Budweiser somewhere between our own fizzy pish cooking lager -- McEwan's or Tennant's, preferring perhaps those amusingly named Yankee beers of the seventies and eighties Schlitz and Colt 45, which seem to have vanished from our off licenses and supermarket boozeshelves, along with Sapporo and wur ain home-brews like 'Skol' and Double Diamond.
However, I digress, as usual, the point I'm going to try and unsubtly wedge in here is that a huge American audience owes a massive brand loyalty to a beer, that has as its mascot, a big horse from Lanarkshire, Scotland. Little is made of the horses origins in the States, even those coves at the fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia cite the big gee gee's origins as the farms of Clydesdale. Yet, we rarely celebrate it, or dare I say exploit the marketing potential of the quiet dignity of the big strong horse. I'm not suggesting we strap the Tartan Overlord into a pair of chaps, slap a stetson on his napper and send him and Hopalong MacAskill off on a goodwill tour of the States...but -- a closer association, with a beastie that is Scottish, at a time when our currency in the USA is particularly low thanks to the ongoing anti-Megrahi mince encouraged by wee Dick Baker and his pal Elmer Fudd, might see our fortunes rise a wee bit, subliminally or otherwise.
The sculptor Andy Scott immortalised the breed when he chose one to represent Glasgow, by placing his sculpture beside the M8 motorway. The inference being that the city and the horse, both once used to hard work, were now better known for show and display. The splendid photograph below is David May's.
Rather surprisingly, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust still place the horsey in the vulnerable category. At one time there were believed to be 140,000 of them throughout the UK, by the 1950's we were down to 80 licensed horses. Thankfully as the horses were exported around the world the breed survives quite nicely today, with some 600 foals born every year in the USA alone, where they are hugely popular. Earlier this year, after Budweiser was subsumed by evil megacorps InBev, the worlds largest brewer, with no taste for tradition, they decided to drop the Clydesdales from this years Super Bowl advert. Needless to say the yanks went crazy, petitions were set up, facebook erupted into a cauldron of Clydesdale loving frenzy, and the horses continue as an American Icon...
It's time to wrap them in Tartan, feed them shortie and reclaim them.
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4 comments:
I was told as a youngster that they were originally bred in Strathavon and should have been properly named the "Avondale". But, apparently, they came from Hamilton - my home town. Stately beasts and a great symbol for Scotland.
I strongly suspect Lothian and Borders mounted police use Clydesdales with their feathers shaved.
Either that or they employ dwarves to ride them.
The Clydesdales were working horses, Glasgow used to be full of them back in the thirties & forties.
You can still see them in Pollok Park & they bring them out to Glasgow Green on good days, the weans love them & they are very placid horses.
There is a story in Mr Observer's family about way back in the old days his granda & his great uncles had a horse for transport & it collapsed & died in the High Street, so rather than pay someone to collect the body as you had to do, they lifted the horse into the cart & then tipped it into the Clyde.
The proof of this story is that when they were dredging the Clyde at the time of the Garden Festival they found the body of a Clydesdale horse.
Unfortunately for Mr Observer I have heard the self same story from numerous people so it is obviously apocryphal, but it does illustrate the value which is still attached to these horses even now, as emblems of a bygone era.
It was a pure working class horse, so it was.
Formidable but beautiful animals when you are close up to them.
Such beauty... they always make me think of Boxer in Animal Farm. Noble and decent and hard working animal determined to make it work at all costs.....
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