17/02/2026
Happy New Year of the Fire Horse!
Today is the first day of the Chinese Year of the Fire Horse. The Fire element brings passion, energy and creativity. This Mongolian story of Suho the shepherd illustrates the Horse’s courage, loyalty and love of freedom.
Long long ago, there was a herd boy named Suho, who lived in a yurt with his grandmother on the Mongolian steppe. One evening, Suho found a tiny white foal all on its own. Worried for its safety, he carried it back to the yurt. Boy and foal quickly became friends. Suho had a beautiful singing voice and would spend hours singing to the foal, as he went about his herding work. As the foal grew, it allowed Suho to ride on its back and would gallop across the steppe, in time to Suho’s singing. One night Suho heard a terrible growling outside the yurt. He rushed out to find the little white horse, bravely defending the sheep from a pack of wolves. This animal truly had a remarkable spirit!
As time went on, a local prince issued an invitation for daring contestants to enter a horse race. The prize would be the prince’s daughter in marriage. Urged on by his friends, Suho decided to enter. The race was over a long gruelling course. Despite stiff competition, as the riders neared the finish line, Suho and his white horse squeezed into the lead and finished first! However, when the prince realised that the winner was only a shepherd, he threw Suho 3 gold coins and informed him that he was buying the white horse. When Suho refused, the prince ordered his soldiers to beat Suho up and take the little white horse.
Suho’s friends carried him home. After some days, and many bowls of his grandmother’s stew, Suho began to recover. Meanwhile the prince threw a special party to ride his new white horse for the first time. As soon as the horse could, it threw the prince off and headed straight for home at a gallop. No one could catch it. Enraged, the prince ordered his archers to shoot the horse down, but the horse just kept running. By evening, the horse arrived, badly wounded, at Suho’s yurt. Suho’s spirit lifted when he saw his old friend. He tended to the horse’s wounds as best he could. However, after 3 days, the brave horse died.
Suho entered weeks of deep depression, until one night, the horse came to him in a dream. It told him not to despair because its spirit lived on and would always be with him. The horse encouraged its friend to sing again. It told Suho how to make a fiddle and instructed him to go outside and pluck the tail hairs from its body to make the strings and bow. The next morning, Suho fashioned the first morin khuur fiddle, carving the distinctive horse’s head onto it in memory of his friend. He started to sing again, accompanying himself on the morin khuur.
If you listen to traditional Mongolian music today, you will still hear Suho’s songs, or ones very like them, accompanied by Mongolia’s national instrument, the morin khuur. They are songs of freedom, companionship, bravery…and horses.
