SUPERSTITIONS OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES. 383 



b the word ferrant is added to the title of the former 

 {Marechal ferrant). 



Some strange superstitions are allied with horse-shoes 

 and horse-shoeing, but chiefly with the shoes. It is im- 

 possible to fix the age of many of these curious fancies, 

 but they appear to belong to the remotest antiquity — to 

 be coeval, indeed, with the early mysteries, and to have 

 held their ground long after these had disappeared, de- 

 scending from one age to another, until they have even 

 reached our own day. Finding a horse-shoe, and nailing 

 it to a door or other place in order to keep away witches 

 or ill-luck, is one of those frailties of the human mind not 

 alone confined to the West, but ranging over a large 

 extent of the earth's surface. 



Burnes,' in travelling through Central Asia, remarks : 

 ' Passing a gate of the city, I observed it studded with 

 horse-shoes, which are as superstitious emblems in this 

 country as in remote Scotland. A farrier had no cus- 

 tomers : a saint to whom he applied recommended his 

 nailing a pair of horse-shoes to a gate of the city. He 

 afterwards prospered, and the farriers of Peshawur have 

 since propitiated the same saint by a similar expedient, in 

 which they place implicit reliance.' 



Aubrey^ tells us that in his time 'it is very com- 

 mon to nail horse-shoes over the thresholds of doors, 

 which is to hinder the power of witches that enter into 

 the house. Most houses of the West-end of London 



' Travels into Bokhara, vol. ii. p. 87. 



• Miscellanies 3 on Apparitions, Magic, Charms, &c. London, p. 

 148, 1696, 



