362 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



great chiefs that they could handle the tools of the smith. 

 Longfellow declares that — 



' Since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations. 

 Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people.' 



In speaking of Basil the blacksmith, 



' Who was a mighty man in the village, and honoured of all men ; ' 



he intimates that even in the New World the traditional 

 attrib utes of the grimy occupation had found a congenial 

 home. There is something very pleasant in reading of the 

 home-like scenes in ' Evangeline,' where, in the far-off 

 Acadie, the children of the A'illage, hurrying away to 



Basil's forge, 



' Stood with wondering eyes to behold him 

 Take in his leathern lap the hoof of the horse as a plaything. 

 Nailing the shoe in its place ; while near him the tire of the cart- 

 wheel 

 Lay like a fiery snake, coiled round in a circle of cinders. 

 Oft on autumnal eves, when without in the gathering darkness 

 Bursting with light seemed the smithy, through every cranny and 



crevice. 

 Warm by the forge within they watched the labouring bellows. 

 And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes, 

 Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel.' 



There appears to be every reason to believe that the 

 mysteries of Druidism, and those secret metallurgical 

 rites anciently practised in the East, and known as the 

 ' Samothracian Mysteries,' were very closely allied. From 

 a comparison of the texts of Strabo, Diodorus of Sicily, 

 Herodotus, Clement of Alexandria, and others, who speak 

 of the Dactyli, Cabiri, Curetes, Corybantes, and Tel- 

 chines, as people who came from the far East to Phrygia 

 and Crete, where they introduced the working of bronze 



