With the Celts, it appears that it was not unfrequently the custom to place in the warrior's tomb, besides his horse, one or two wheels of the chariot, and sometimes the whole carriage and harness. At Alaise, in France, and among the tombs of Anet, Switzerland, this has been noticed.[1]
If my memory serves me right, the remains of a chariot found in a tomb are now in the York Museum.
Unfortunately, as Mr Knowles observes, these remains of horses in graves do not constitute any distinguishing mark of time or race, as the slaughter and burial of horses appear to have belonged to almost all nations and all ages; the custom extending from the Tschuds of the Altai and the Crim Tartars to the Franks and Saxons; even in the sarcophagi of Christian knights, buried in churches during the Middle Ages, besides their own weapons and bones, the less perishable parts of their steeds are there. So late as the eighteenth century the custom was in vogue, for a martial and Christian order of knighthood, in 1781, laid Frederick Casimir in his grave with his slaughtered horse beside him. In 1866, Her Majesty Queen Victoria's huntsman died; his old and favourite horse was destroyed, and the animal's ears were deposited on his late master's coffin before the earth had shut him out from the world.
And still more unfortunately for our subject, these remains of the gentle soliped do but seldom testify to the existence of nail-pierced hoofs and a metallic mounting. From shoes being nearly always manufactured of iron, that metal oxidizes so rapidly, that in the presence
- ↑ Troyon. Habitations Lacustres, p. 334. Lausanne, 1860.
