' And horse that, feeding on the grassy hills,
Tread upon moon-wort with their hollow heeles;
Though lately shod, at night goe bare-foot home.
Their master musing where their shooes become.
O moon-wort! tell us where thou hid'st the smith,
Hammer, and pincers, thou unshoo'st them with?
Alas! what lock or iron engine is't
That can thy subtile secret strength resist,
Sith the best farrier cannot set a shoo
So sure, but thou (so shortly) canst undoo?'
Longfellow speaks
'Of the marvellous powers of four-leaved clover and horse-shoes'
as a superstition among the primitive settlers in Acadie, now Nova Scotia. And we have quoted M. Megnin's opinion that the apex of the ensign of a Roman cohort, figured on Trajan's column, was surmounted by a hoof-iron. If this be really a horse-shoe, it not only demonstrates that the custom of shoeing was known to the Romans, but that the strange virtues superstitiously attached to that object had already been credited by them; as it would also appear to have been by the Arabs in Mahomet's time.
