loo HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



Belgium, in 1623/ This king, who lived in the fifth 

 century, was the founder of the French monarchy ; and in 

 the grave, with human bones, those of a horse, ornaments 

 and equipments of various kinds, was also found what 

 Chifflet believed to be the remains of an iron horse-shoe. 

 This article was in a state of extreme oxidation, and from 

 the small fragment that could be preserved the author 

 contrived to delineate an ordinary horse-shoe of the seven- 

 teenth century. Chifflet, two years after the discovery, 

 published his account of it, in which he says : ' The re- 

 mains of his (Childeric's) horse were found : the bones of 

 the head, the teeth, cheek-bones, and an iron shoe ; but 

 the latter was so eaten away by rust, that while I was 

 trying to cleanse the nail holes — of which there were four 

 on each side — with a small spike, the rotten iron broke in 

 pieces, and could only be imperfectly restored.'^ This 

 restored shoe has given rise to much dispute. Bracy 

 Clark thought from its shape and size that it must have 

 belonged to a mule ; forgetting that the use of such an 

 animal for riding purposes in the age of the Merovingian 

 kings, and by a king, was possibly as great a degradation 

 as it is now-a-days to the Indians, or to the Bedouins, who 



sing- 

 Honourable is the riding of a horse to the rider. 

 But the mule is a dishonour, and the ass a disgrace.^ 



' Anastasis Childerici. Auctore J. S. Chiffletio. Antwerp, 16^5. 



' Op. cit. ' Inventse sunt ejus equi reliquiae, capitis ossa, dentes, 

 maxillae et ferrea solea, sed ita rubigine absumpta, ut dum veruculo 

 clavorum foramina (quae utrinque quaterna erant) purgare leviter 

 tentarem, ferrum putre in fragmenta dissiluerit, et ex parte duntaxat 

 hie reprcsentari patuerit.' Page 223. 



3 Froissart, however, would appear to indicate that in Spain, in the 



