those of other countries.[1] His fame as a remarkably competent shoer of horses is not less than his reputation as a forger of swords. In England, as we have already seen, the popular notion gave him credit for secrecy and despatch in arming the hoofs of animals belonging to less courageous owners who ventured near his mystic abode. The pedantic Erasmus Holiday, in 'Kenilworth,' sums up his proficiency in this respect, when alluding to the strange apprenticeship Wayland served to Doctor Doboobie, whom it was supposed the Evil One had flown away with. The faber ferrarius is thus spoken of: 'This knave, whether from the inspiration of the devil, or from early education, shoes horses better than e'er a man betwixt us and Iceland; and so he gives up his practice on the bipeds, the two-legged and unfledged species called mankind, and betakes him entirely to shoeing of horses.'
In certain provinces of France at the present day, when a horse travels freely, they say, 'This horse goes as if he had been shod by " Vaillant."'[2] As a proof that the smith with the Gauls, as with the Germans, shod the horses, while he fashioned and tempered the arms of the warriors, it has been observed, that not only do the shoes, weapons, and armour of an early period bear evident traces of fabrication by the same hands, but that they also carry a veritable maker's name struck upon each alike.[3]
Gay, in his 'Trivia,' refers to the weird occupation of this traditionary artisan,—this symbolical personification
