Distant Reader - subject-horses-freebo

Introduction

This is a Distant Reader "study carrel", a set of structured data intended to help the student, researcher, or scholar use & understand a corpus.

This study carrel was created on 2021-05-24 by Eric Morgan <emorgan@nd.edu>. The carrel was created using the Distant Reader zip2carrel process, and the input was a Zip file locally cached with the name input-file.zip. Documents in the Zip file have been saved in a cache, and each of them have been transformed & saved as a set of plain text files. All of the analysis -- "reading" -- has been done against these plain text files. For example, a short narrative report has been created. This Web page is a more verbose version of that report.

All study carrels are self-contained -- no Internet connection is necessary to use them. Download this carrel for offline reading. The carrel is made up of many subdirectories and data files. The manifest describes each one in greater detail.

Size

There are 15 item(s) in this carrel, and this carrel is 795,211 words long. Each item in your study carrel is, on average, 53,014 words long. If you dig deeper, then you might want to save yourself some time by reading a shorter item. On the other hand, if your desire is for more detail, then you might consider reading a longer item. The following charts illustrate the overall size of the carrel.

Readability

On a scale from 0 to 100, where 0 is very difficult and 100 is very easy, the documents have an average readability score of 99. Consequently, if you want to read something more simplistic, then consider a document with a higher score. If you want something more specialized, then consider something with a lower score. The following charts illustrate the overall readability of the carrel.

Word Frequencies

By merely counting & tabulating the frequency of individual words or phrases, you can begin to get an understanding of the carrel's "aboutness". Excluding "stop words", some of the more frequent words include:

will, horse, take, good, may, let, together, put, horses, two, well, give, make, much, one, first, water, shall, must, three, cure, little, hot, till, body, powder, either, dry, time, day, like, head, cold, great, white, made, half, blood, place, hand, away, now, also, warm, ounce, part, grease, best, pound, another

Using the three most frequent words, the three files containing all of those words the most are Markhams maister-peece, or, What doth a horse-man lacke containing all possible knowledge whatsoeuer which doth belong to any smith, farrier or horse-leech, touching the curing of all maner of diseases or sorrances in horses : drawne with great paine and most approued experience from the publique practise of all the forraine horse-marshals of Christendome and from the priuate practise of all the best farriers of this kingdome : being deuided into two bookes, the first containing all cures physicall, the second whatsoeuer belongeth to chirurgerie, with an addition of 130 most principall chapters and 340 most excellent medicines, receits and secrets worthy euery mans knowledge, neuer written of nor mentioned in any author before whatsoeuer : together with the true nature, vse, and qualitie of euerie simple spoken of through the whole worke : reade me, practise me, and admire me / written by Geruase Markham gentleman., The experienced farrier, or, Farring compleated In two books physical and chyrurgical. Bringing pleasure to the gentleman, and profit to the countrey-man. ... For here is contained every thing that belongs to a true horse-man, groom, farrier or horse-leach, viz. breeding; the manner how, the season when, ... and what are fit for generation; the feeder, rider, keeper, ambler and buyer; as also the making of several precious drinks, suppositories, balls, purgations, ... and directions how to use them for all inward and outward diseases. Also the paring and shooing of all manner of hoofes, ... The prices and vertues of most of the principal drugs, both simple and compound belonging to farring, ... also a large table of the virtues of most simples set down alphabetically, and many hundreds of simples placed one after another, for the cure of all ... diseases, ... with many new receipts of excellent use and value; never yet printed before in any author. By E.R. Gent., and A new method, and extraordinary invention, to dress horses, and work them according to nature as also, to perfect nature by the subtility of art, which was never found out, but by ... William Cavendishe ....

The most frequent two-word phrases (bigrams) include:

well together, two ounces, one ounce, will make, fine powder, things good, like quantity, others vse, three ounces, every day, mixt together, take away, third degree, horse will, particular receipts, hot iron, second degree, cold water, shall take, horses body, will cure, white wine, warm water, fresh butter, take two, next day, will take, mornings together, farriers vse, outward shoulder, three days, euery day, strong beer, hogs grease, next morning, luke warme, years old, four ounces, strong ale, sallet oyl, ancient farriers, many times, shall see, inward reyn, one pound, outward reyn, sweet butter, day till, shall find, will cause

And the three file that use all of the three most frequent phrases are A proclamation, for bringing in horses out of some vvestern shires. Edinburgh, the 25. of March, 1667. Proposals humbly offer''d to the consideration of the honourable House of Commons, for laying a poll-tax on all horses, mares, geldings, &c. for one year and a poundage-tax on all horses, mares, geldings, &c. that shall be bought or sold in England. Also an annual imposition or duty on all weights and measures whatsoever; as likewise on all shopkeepers and tradesmen., and The country-man''s guide or plain directions for ordering. Curing. Breeding choice, use, and feeding. Of horses, cows, sheep, hoggs, &c. Adorn''d with sculptuers, shewing the proper places in the bodies of the said several beasts, where the said distempers do usually happen. Published for the publick good, by W.W..

While often deemed superficial or sophomoric, rudimentary frequencies and their associated "word clouds" can be quite insightful:

Keywords

Sets of keywords -- statistically significant words -- can be enumerated by comparing the relative frequency of words with the number of times the words appear in an entire corpus. Some of the most statistically significant keywords in the carrel include:

horse, tcp, water, head, cure, body, oyl, neck, legs, haue, good, wound, wine, vinegar, ounce, oats, iron, hand, foot, disease, butter, wind, wheat, vein, stone, saddle, powder, ointment, medicine, mare, little, hoof, honey, hogs, giue, eyes, day, chap, bridle, beer, bay, weights, warme, vse, vpon, vineger, ulcers, turn, tramell, tongue

And now word clouds really begin to shine:

Topic Modeling

Topic modeling is another popular approach to connoting the aboutness of a corpus. If the study carrel could be summed up in a single word, then that word might be horse, and The hunter a discourse of horsemanship directing the right way to breed, keep, and train a horse, for ordinary hunting and plates. is most about that word.

If the study carrel could be summed up in three words ("topics") then those words and their significantly associated titles include:

If the study carrel could be summed up in five topics, and each topic were each denoted with three words, then those topics and their most significantly associated files would be:

Moreover, the totality of the study carrel's aboutness, can be visualized with the following pie chart:

Noun & Verbs

Through an analysis of your study carrel's parts-of-speech, you are able to answer question beyonds aboutness. For example, a list of the most frequent nouns helps you answer what questions; "What is discussed in this collection?":

horse, horses, water, time, day, body, place, blood, powder, part, pound, pint, head, quantity, cure, ounce, things, hand, way, manner, wine, quart, grease, ounces, side, fire, others, days, parts, eyes, swelling, morning, times, thing, end, ▪, roots, hath, mouth, quarter, legs, degree, flesh, skin, nature, bone, hair, man, feet, foot

An enumeration of the verbs helps you learn what actions take place in a text or what the things in the text do. Very frequently, the most common lemmatized verbs are "be", "have", and "do"; the more interesting verbs usually occur further down the list of frequencies:

is, be, take, are, let, put, give, make, have, do, being, made, come, see, keep, lay, wash, go, find, cure, beaten, know, according, set, was, done, given, having, taken, ride, bring, vse, giue, anoint, hath, stand, use, cut, called, were, drink, been, rub, boiled, apply, draw, run, haue, cause, stop

Proper Nouns

An extraction of proper nouns helps you determine the names of people and places in your study carrel.

horse, horses, oyl, water, head, honey, cure, chap, hand, farriers, salt, ●, juice, hath, c., ounce, oats, legg, butter, ale, grease, turpentine, wine, therewith, mouth, hogs, bay, mare, hoof, haue, foot, reyn, urine, wound, powder, leggs, vp, ounces, warme, gallop, vein, body, beer, hay, iron, grass, ointment, terra, stone, neck

An analysis of personal pronouns enables you to answer at least two questions: 1) "What, if any, is the overall gender of my study carrel?", and 2) "To what degree are the texts in my study carrel self-centered versus inclusive?"

it, his, you, him, them, he, your, they, i, their, her, my, we, its, our, she, me, himself, themselves, vp, us, one, thy, mine, hay, yours, whereof, vntill, thee, s, ye, wil, vnto, us''d, ub, theirs, ours, n, ib, hin, herself, help''t, help''d, gs, f, coūteruaile, ch, boyl, ay

Below are words cloud of your study carrel's proper & personal pronouns.

Adjectives & Verbs

Learning about a corpus's adjectives and adverbs helps you answer how questions: "How are things described and how are things done?" An analysis of adjectives and adverbs also points to a corpus's overall sentiment. "In general, is my study carrel positive or negative?"

good, other, little, hot, much, great, dry, warm, white, first, cold, same, best, old, strong, more, such, many, small, hard, fine, long, outward, inward, whole, full, better, clean, second, third, sore, new, next, like, short, stable, excellent, red, most, soft, several, black, sweet, general, true, green, large, fresh, thick, sure

then, not, so, together, very, well, up, as, out, first, away, now, also, much, most, too, thus, more, only, down, in, once, off, therefore, before, again, else, thereof, sometimes, never, all, onely, over, forth, on, long, there, hard, especially, gently, somewhat, soon, often, therein, back, still, otherwise, ever, likewise, whatsoever

Next steps

There is much more to a study carrel than the things outlined above. Use this page's menubar to navigate and explore in more detail. There you will find additional features & functions including: ngrams, parts-of-speech, grammars, named entities, topic modeling, a simple search interface, etc.

Again, study carrels are self-contained. Download this carrel for offline viewing and use.

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