VALUE OF LEGENDS. 339 



many Celtic peoples, at any rate all the Gauls, knew the 

 art of horse-shoeing.' ' 



Legends are generally good evidence, says Mr Wright,^ 

 of the great antiquity of the monuments to which they 

 relate ; and there is a curious legend connected with this 

 art, which lends additional force to the facts already 

 enumerated, and is besides so general over a large part 

 of Europe, and is of so great an age, that it looks as if 

 it had belonged to the days of Druidism, and the in- 

 fancy of horse-shoeing. This is the legend of Wayland 

 Smith. 



The Vulcanian art was, we are told, so admired by the 

 Greeks, that Xanthus, the smith, caused it to be inscribed 

 upon his statue, that he was born of iron (o-j^Tjpoc^Dr]^, 

 ferrogenitus) ; ^ and over their forges they had a prophy- 

 lactic against envy, in the form of a phallus hung round 

 with bells.-* The anvil, hammer, and tongs, and Vulcan's 

 cap wreathed with laurel, is not unfrequently met with on 

 classical monuments, as the annexed illustration from 

 Montfauqon will show (fig. 138). But the northern 

 nations always associated something mys- 

 terious with the functions and character 

 of their Vulcan, whether in the fabrica- 

 tion of arms or in shoeing their horses : 

 reminding one of the secret arts of the 

 Druids and their weird-like haunts. What ^^- '^^ 



makes the remembrance more vivid is, that the abode 

 of this cunning, but awesome, personage, was always sup- 



' Moniteur Universel, 1862. 



^ The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon. 



3 Pollux, vii. 24. "^ 'QarrKavia. ibid. vii. 24, x. 31. 



