‘Horseback brown’. Colour semantics of equine bay, chestnut, and dun in Middle Welsh literature

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article examines a set of terms in the semantic domain of horse colours in Middle Welsh. In the absence of a Basic Colour Term (BCT) for brown in its colour system, Middle Welsh deployed a combination of specialized adjectives and contextually-restricted uses of BCTs for red and yellow to describe the full range of horse coats in the brown range. It is argued that, like other equestrian cultures, medieval Wales would have had a nuanced and sophisticated collection of descriptive terms for horses and that its small number of BCTs in no way indicates a limited discernment of colour variations.