A Parlour for a Plague

Over here we still use stones for personal weight.

Hands are used for the height of horses.

Hard to fathom.

I think hands are still used here, too.

Even in Europe? Not sure.

I don’t know about mainland Europe.

In continental Europe horses are measured in metric units.

A port rhumb for that, Imur!

Definite proportion exists between the height and hand length in an individual at all ages, irrespective of sex. Height of an individual is 9 times the height of hand length.

For example, a horse that measures 56 inches from the ground up to the top of the withers, is 14 hands high, or 14 hh.

It is therefore quite easy to fathom the depth of a fathom by calculating the value in feet to the corresponding value in hands, you just have to multiply by .5 of a fathom - Simples!

One fathom therefore equals eighteen hands.

My sincere hope is that enlightenment brings a degree of comfort to Imur.


May I assure the dear reader that no Equus in the family Equidae was inconvenienced during these calculations.

Yeah? What about fetlocks and furlongs?

What, you have a metric hand?!

That’s 10.16 cms

A fetlock is an anatomical feature, not a measure of distance!

Furlong is 201.17 metres.

oh poop

And it’s not close to the pooper!

No Equus harmed?

Full fathoms five thy Equus lies....

That's all fine and dandy; but, what size hand? Who is the lender of the hand? Large hand or small?

(I've always had the same concern regarding weight in stones. Although if person is attempting to indicate weight loss, they can claim success if they just use larger stones and suddenly weigh 8 instead of 50 stones.)

All standardised now, possum

The term "hand" is very, very rarely used.



The height is called Stockmaß, literally translated "stick measure", in centimetres (respectively local units pre-1868).

Hearing a person’s weight in pounds means nothing to me, I have to try dividing the number by fourteen to get my head around it.

It’s always used here

Ditto.