SIR WALTER SCOTT AND NORMAN HORSE-SHOE. 271 



These extracts from the ancient laws of Wales which 

 may have been — and we have every reason to believe 

 were — in existence centuries before the reign of Howel 

 the Good, show in the most unmistakable manner that 

 farriery was practised and held in high estimation by the 

 primitive people of Britain, that the Court farrier was a 

 sacred sort of personage, bn whose shoulders the mystic 

 mantle of the Druid iron-workers had fallen, and whose 

 handicraft was not to be practised by every one. 



It is very strange that, in relation to this subject, these 

 laws of Wales have never before been examined. 



Sir Walter Scott appears to have sanctioned the 

 popular opinion, afterwards maintained by Sir F. Meyrick, 

 Bracy Clark, and other notabilities, that these ancient 

 Britons, the Welsh, did not shoe their horses. In one of 

 his miscellaneous poems, the ' Norman Horse-Shoe,' com- 

 posed in 1 806, he relates an engagement on the banks of 

 the Rymny, between the Norman Lords-Marchers of 

 Monmouthshire, Clare, Earl of Striguil and Pembroke, 

 and Neville, Baron of Chepstow, and the Welshmen of 

 Glamorgan. The piece is prefaced by the announce- 

 ment, that the Welsh, inhabiting a mountainous country, 

 and possessing only an inferior breed of horses, were 

 usually unable to resist the shock of the Anglo-Norman 

 cavalry. On this occasion they were successful, not- 

 withstanding that the horses of the latter were shod: — 



' Red glows the forge in Striguil's bounds. 

 And hammers din, and anvil sounds. 

 And armourers, with iron toil. 

 Barb many a steed for battle's broil. 

 Foul fall the hand which bends the steel 

 Around the courser's thundering heel. 



