346 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



those of other countries.' His fame as a remarkably 

 competent shoer of horses is not less than his reputation 

 as a forger of swords. In England, as we have already 

 seeUj the popular notion gave him credit for secrecy and 

 despatch in arming the hoofs of animals belonging to less 

 courageous owners who ventured near his mystic abode. 

 The pedantic Erasmus Holiday, in ' Kenilworth,' sums 

 up his proficiency in this respect, when alluding to the 

 strange apprenticeship Wayland served to Doctor Do- 

 boobie, whom it was supposed the Evil One had flown 

 away with. The Jaberjerrarius is thus spoken of: 'This 

 knave, whether from the inspiration of the devil, or from 

 early education, shoes horses better than e'er a man be- 

 twixt us and Iceland ; and so he gives up his practice on 

 the bipeds, the two-legged and unfledged species called 

 mankind, and betakes him entirely to shoeing of horses.' 

 In certain provinces of France at the present day, 

 when a horse travels freely, they say, ' This horse goes as 

 if he had been shod by " Vaillant."'^ As a proof that 

 the smith with the Gauls, as with the Germans, shod the 

 horses, while he fashioned and tempered the arms of the 

 warriors, it has been observed, that not only do the shoes, 

 weapons, and armour of an early period bear evident traces 

 of fabrication by the same hands, but that they also 

 carry a veritable maker's name struck upon each 

 alike.3 



Gay, in his ' Trivia,' refers to the weird occupation of 

 this traditionary artisan, — this symbolical personification 



' Saga Bibliotek, vol. ii. Kjobenham, 1816. 

 ' De Sourdeval. Journal de Haras, 1862. 

 ^ Megnin. Op. cit. 



