THE BURGUNDIANS AND GROOVED SHOES. 183 



feet in height, still armed with their grooved " scramasacs," 

 the pointed spur at the heels, and wearing great girdle- 

 plates of iron damascened with silver. One of these 

 " six-feet" people of the 5th century was laid in a tomb 

 formed of large masses of tufF roughly chiselled, and near 

 him were found the bones of a horse, which had pro- 

 bably been that of the giant, the shoes of which yet exist- 

 ed; they had six oblong holes and were " fullered " (« 

 rainures) (hg. 42). Not far from this many other graves, 

 of the same or an earlier epoch, have furnished horse- 

 shoes ; the one we give a drawing of is the smallest, the 

 others are wider in metal, so as to cover the greater part 

 of the sole. This is not an exceptional form, for we 

 have a number of the same kind. In addition, these 

 shoes differ but little from those of the Roman period, 

 and show a continuation of the same manner of shoe- 

 ing, with the slight modifications the farriers adopted 

 according to circumstances. There are always shoes with 

 six nails, sometimes fullered, but not undulated as in the 

 first period. In the foundation of the church of Mou- 

 tiers-Grand-Val, built in the 7th century, a similar shoe 

 has been found (fig. 40). To the shoes of certain 

 origin, we add another form which has also been admitted 

 at divers epochs, though more rarely, and appears to in- 

 dicate a mode of shoeing strange to the country. We 

 give as a type of these shoes (fig. 44) a specimen found 

 on the track of the ancient road from Aventicum to 

 Augusta Rauracorum by Pierre Pertius, and in the valleys 

 of the Byrse, between Laufon and Bale. They are par- 

 ticularly distinguished by the massive form of the calkins, 

 which appear like a great protuberance a little in front of 

 the extremities, which become sharp. The one repre- 



