WHY HORSESHOES ARE CONSIDERED LUCKY.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 38, 7 May 1907, Page 6

WHY HORSESHOES ARE CONSIDERED LUCKY.

CRESCENT SHAPES WEBB FAVOURED BY THE ANCIENTS. f . The custom of nailing a horseshoe over the door of a house or other building as a protection against evil spirits and as assurance of good luck is widely spread. The horseshoe unites within, itself three lucky elements : It is crescent-shaped, is a portion of a horse, and is made of iron, popular superstition has long endowed iron with protecting powers. Such powers attach in some degree 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 overtaken by a simoon they seek to propitiate the Jians who have raised it by erying, “Iron ! iron !”

Celtic, Finnish, and Welsh superstitions agree that iron is a guard against whichcraft. It 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 dung. Horses, in the popular mythology of England, were looked upon as luck-bringers. A horse’s hoof placed under an invalid's bed is a specific for many complaints in rural districts. On account of its form, there is no doubt, that the qualities anciently ascribed to the crescent have been transferred to the horseshoe. The crescent like the horseshoe, is semicircular in shape, and ends in two points. From ths earliest antiquity ornaments shaped in this way have been popular as preservatives against danger, and especially against evil spirits. In Italy and Spain the evil eye is averted by extending 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 semi-circular form like a horseshoe, and the Moors are also wont to

use that from in their architecture. The fact that the nimbus, or halo,

w'hich in old pictures surrounds the heads of saints and angels bears a rude resemblance to a horseshoe is no doubt one of the many accidental coincidences that have strengthened this popular superstition. Lord Nelson nailed a hpiseshoe to the mast of the Victory.