St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-11-09
Horseshoes and Good Luck.

The custom of mailing horseshoe
over the door of q house or other build
ing as a protection against evil spirits
and an assurance of good luck is widely
spread over England and the United
States. 1t also fingers among all the
Teutonic and Scandinavian races, and
tlourisheS apace in Hindo0Stan. The
horseshoe unlteS within itself three
lucky eiementS-it is creScent-shaped.
it is portion of horse and is made of
iron. Popular superstition has long
endowed iron with protecting powers.
Such powers attached in some de-
gree to most metals, but since, in
most countries, iron has been the metal
latest worked, it naturally inherited the
virtues of the others. The Romans
drove nails into the walls of cottages as
an antidote to the plague. When Arabs
in the desert are oyertaken bya simeon,
they seek to propitiate the Jinns, who
have raised it, by crying, Iron! Iron!'
The Scandinavian exercises the Neckan
or river spirits with an open knife in
the bottom of his boat, or nail set i'll a
reed, singing:
Neckan. Neckan, nail in water!
The Virgin Mary casteth steel i'll water
Do you sink. fit.
SGttlC, lIIusou anu w ClSti OupCloOi-
tons agree that iron is guard against
witchcraft. 1t has always been held a
good omen to find old iron, and as
horseshoeS are the readiest form in
which old iron could be found, it is
naturally the form to which the
remnant of the superstition has longest
chung.
Horses. in the proper mythology of
England, were looked upon as luck
bringers. In Yorkshire it is still thought
that disease may be cured by burying q
horse alive. A horses hoofplaced under
an inyalid'S bed is a specific for many
complaints in rural districts. SIN Ire
land" Camden says, "when horse
dies his feet and legs are hung up in
the house, and even the hoofs are
sacred.'
On account of its form. there is no
doubt that the qualities anciently as
cribed to the crescent have been trans
ferred to the horseshoe. The crescent,
like the horseshoe, is semi-circulaE and
presents two points. From the earliest
antiquity ornaments shaped in this way
have been popular as preServatlves
against danger. and especially against
evil spirits. Hudibras embalms this
ancient superstition in the cOuplet:
Of sickle, horseshoe and hollow flint.
And Herrick. in his ''Hesperides, says:
Hang up hooks and shears to scare
Hence the hag that rides the mare.
AL these have this curved or forked
shape, terminating in two points. The
seal of Solomon, infelicitously styled
the pentacle, was supposed to have
great power, and it consisted of two
triangles. presenting six forks. In Italy
and Spain the evil eye is ayerted by eX-
tending the fOrefinger and little finger
forward like a pair of horns, the two
middle fingers being bent down under
the thumb. The Chinese have their
tombs built in a spmi-circular form, like
a horseshoe, aud the Moors are also
wont to use 1t in their architecture. The
fact that the nimbuS, or halo, which, i'll
Old pictures, ulr0undS the heads OF
saints and angels, bears a rude resem-
blance to a horseshoe, IS, no doubt, one
of the many accidental condolences
that have strengthened this popular SUI
perStitiOn.
The belief in the horseshoe attained its
greatest diffusion at the end of the last
century and the beginning of this. Au-
hrey, in Ills "AIiscellanies, tells us that
in his time most houses iii the west end
of London had d horseshoe nailed over
the threshold. In 1913 Sill. Henry Ellis
counted seventeen hOrseshoeS in Mon
mouth street. but in 1871 only five or six
remained. Lord Nelson nailed horse
shoe TO the mast of the Victory; and
LUCKY DR.. James" attributed the sue
cess of his fever powders to the finding
of horseshoe. which symbol he adopted
as crest for his carriage.