Belgium, in 1623.[1] This king, who lived in the fifth century, was the founder of the French monarchy; and in the grave, with human bones, those of a horse, ornaments and equipments of various kinds, was also found what Chifflet believed to be the remains of an iron horse-shoe. This article was in a state of extreme oxidation, and from the small fragment that could be preserved the author contrived to delineate an ordinary horse-shoe of the seventeeath century. Chifflet, two years after the discovery, published his account of it, in which he says: ‘The remains of his (Childeric's) horse were found: the bones of the head, the teeth, cheek-bones, and an iron shoe; but the latter was so eaten away by rust, that while I was trying to cleanse the nail holes—of which there were four on each side—with a small spike, the rotten iron broke in pieces, and could only be imperfectly restored.'[2] This restored shoe has given rise to much dispute. Bracy Clark thought from its shape and size that it must have belonged to a mule; forgetting that the use of such an animal for riding purposes in the age of the Merovingian kings, and by a king, was possibly as great a degradation as it is now-a-days to the Indians, or to the Bedouins, who sing—
Honourable is the riding of a horse to the rider,
But the mule is a dishonour, and the ass a disgrace.[3]
- ↑ Anastasis Childerici. Auctore J. S. Chiffletio. Antwerp, 1655.
- ↑ Op. cit. ‘Inventae sunt ejus equi reliquiæ, capitis ossa, dentes, maxillæ et ferrea solea, sed ita rubigine absumpta, ut dum veruculo clavorum foramina (quæ utrinque quaterna erant) purgare leviter tentarem, ferrum putre in fragmenta dissiluert, et ex parte duntaxat hic representari patuerit.’ Page 223.
- ↑ Froissart, however, would appear to indicate that in Spain, in the
