384 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSESHOEING. 



have the horse-shoe on the threshold. It should be a 

 horse-shoe that one finds,' He adds : ' In the Bermudas 

 they used to put an iron into the fire when a witch comes 

 in. Mars is enemy to Saturn.' ' Under the porch of 

 Stainfield church, in Suffolk, I saw,' he mentions, ' a tile 

 with a horse-shoe upon it, placed there for this purpose, 

 though one would imagine that holy-water would alone 

 have been sufficient. I am told there are many similar 

 instances.' 



Ramsey" speaks of nailing shoes on the witches' doors 

 and thresholds to keep them in ; and Mr Francis Douce, 

 in his manuscript notes, says : ' The practice of nailing 

 horse-shoes resembles that of driving nails into the walls 

 of cottages among the Romans, which they believed to 

 be an antidote against the plague : for this purpose L. 

 Manlius (a.u.c. 390) was namxed Dictator, — to drive the 

 nail.' 



We have already noticed the singular custom for 

 many centuries prevailing at Oakham, in Rutlandshire. 

 In Monmouth-street, London, Brand,^ in 1797, saw many 

 shoes nailed to the thresholds of doors ; and Henry Ellis, 

 in 1 8 13, counted no less than seventeen in that street 

 fixed against the door-steps. 



The fair, but frail, ladies of Amsterdam, in 1687, be- 

 lieved that a horse-shoe which had either been found or 

 stolen, and placed on the chimney-hearth, would bring 

 good luck to their houses.^ 



There is a curious and somewhat remarkable old Ger- 

 man saying in reference to a damsel who has met with a 



' Elminthologia, p. 76. = Popular Antiquities. 



3 Putanisme d' Amsterdam, 



