What wooden horse do Don Quixote and Sancho ride blindfolded?

Don Quixote and Sancho ride the wooden horse Clavileño blindfolded.

The episode appears in Part II, Chapters 40 and 41, during the pair’s stay with a duke and duchess. The nobles stage an elaborate prank, claiming that the magician Malambruno has sent Clavileño to carry them through the air and rescue the enchanted Countess Trifaldi and her ladies. Don Quixote accepts the mission as a genuine knightly adventure, while Sancho is much more reluctant.

Clavileño is actually an inanimate rocking horse. Servants move air around the riders and set off fireworks to make them believe they are flying and eventually crashing. Both men are blindfolded, but Sancho later claims that he secretly lifted his blindfold and saw the heavens. The name combines Spanish words associated with a peg and wood, reflecting the horse’s wooden construction and controlling peg.

A common mix-up is Rocinante, Don Quixote’s ordinary horse. Rocinante is his real mount; Clavileño is the fantastical wooden horse used in the duke’s practical joke.