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Dark Tales Sleuth

Notes on the Hungarian Horse Dealer

The Hungarian Horse Dealer is a nonsupernatural tale, about a Hungarian traveler returning home from Vienna after some successful and profitable business dealings. On the way, he stops for the night at a respectable-looking inn.

The host then inquired what business had carried him to Vienna. He told them he had been there to sell some of the best horses that were ever taken to that market. When he heard this, the host cast a glance at one of the men of the family who seemed to be his son, which the dealer scarcely observed then, but which he had reason to recall afterwards.

A glance, that, as I'm sure you've guessed, bodes ill. Between this tale and "The Murder Hole," I'm not sure I ever want to stay at a family-run inn or hotel again!

The version of "The Hungarian Horse Dealer" that appears in Evening Tales is a shortened version of the chapter "Hungarian Robbers," from The Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers in All Parts of the World, vol 2 (1833), by the Scottish historical novelist and travel writer, Charles Macfarlane. The original story gives more details about the horse dealer's exodus from Vienna, immediately after Austria's defeat by the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Stories of banditry and robbery, Macfarlane writes, are ageless. They are the adventure/terror tales of choice for readers too old for fairy tales, and too sceptical for ghost stories. Well, that's what he claims, anyway. If you are inclined to agree, you can check out his compendium of international outlaws at the Internet Archive -- both volumes of The Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers in one.