^S(^ HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



in prayer. The hammer was always sounding, except when 

 silenced by his orisons ; and here he imagined himself 

 assailed by the Evil One. On a certain night all the 

 neighbourhood was alarmed by the most terrific howlings, 

 which seemed to issue from his den. In the morning the 

 people flocked to him to inquire the cause. He told them 

 that the devil had intruded his head into his window to 

 tempt him while he was heating his iron-work ; that he 

 had seized him by the nose with his red-hot tongs ; and 

 that the noise was Satan's roaring at the pain ! ' 



The simple people are stated to have venerated the 

 recluse for his amazing exploits with the enemy of man- 

 kind ; and indeed he appears to have been as expert in 

 fabricating tales as horse-shoes or other iron-work. 



That priests of the highest rank on the continent at a 

 very early period shod horses, tradition abundantly testifies. 

 Saint Eloy or Eloi, who lived in France in the 7th cen- 

 tury, during the reign of Clotaire II., is frequently spoken 

 of as a goldsmith ;^ but in medi£Eval delineations he is most 

 commonly represented shoeing solipeds. We have alluded 

 to him elsewhere as a rather popular saint among horse- 

 men during the Middle Ages. He has been the patron 

 of the horse-shoer in nearly every country in Europe, and 



' S. Turner, F. Pa/grave. Hist. Anglo-Saxons. This fable con- 

 cerning the attacks of his Satanic Majesty on the crafty Dunstan, is 

 paralleled by that sustained by St : Benedict in the 6th century. That 

 worthy was ten>pted by the devil, who appears to have been particularly 

 addicted to trifle with the feelings of the mediaeval saints, in the form 

 of a mulomediciis: 'ei antiquus hostis in mulomedici specie obviam 

 factus est, cornu (to give the horses medicine) et tripedicam (an in- 

 strument to bind horses' feet) ferens,' etc. — Vita St Benedicti, Mura- 

 tori. Scrip. Rer. Ital., vol. iv. p. 223. 



* MicheleL Histoire de France, vol. i. p. 243, 1852. 



