amuletsHorseshoe

The object arrives late and the charm arrives after it. Historians differ on the origin of the nailed shoe, partly because worn iron was valuable and got reforged; there is no hard evidence that the Druids invented it. Four bronze horseshoes with apparent nail holes were found in an Etruscan tomb in 1897, dated around 400 BCE, and a horseshoe complete with nails came out of the tomb of the Frankish king Childeric I at Tournai, dated to the fifth century CE. Written references are later: the earliest clear record of iron horseshoes is a mention of "crescent figured irons and their nails" in 910, with occasional mentions by 973. Around 1000 CE cast bronze shoes with nail holes were common in Europe; the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries brought widespread iron manufacture, and during the Crusades iron was valuable enough that horseshoes were accepted in lieu of coin to pay taxes.

Why this piece of scrap and not another: they were made of iron, a material held to turn away evil spirits, and they were held on with seven nails, seven being the luckiest number. Worn shoes were put above or beside doorways to guard houses, barns and stables, a custom whose remnants can still be seen across Italy, Germany, Britain and Scandinavia. In the Middle East the same shape is made as blue-glazed terracotta plaques; in Turkey metal or blue glass horseshoes are combined with the all-seeing eye.

Then there is the argument about which way up. In much of Europe, the Middle East and Latin America the shoe is hung facing downward, so that blessing pours onto whoever passes beneath. In parts of Ireland and Britain it is hung upward, so the luck is caught and cannot run out. Both went to the United States with their emigrants: English and Irish descent hangs it up, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Balkan descent hangs it down. Other conditions get attached in some traditions and not others — that the shoe must have been used and not new, that it must have been found and not bought, that any luck belongs to the owner of the shoe rather than to whoever hung it.

The Christian version names a blacksmith. Saint Dunstan, who worked as a smith before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 959, is said to have been asked by the Devil to shoe his horse, and to have nailed the shoe to the Devil's own foot instead, removing it only on a promise that the Devil would never enter a household with a horseshoe nailed to the door.

One English town has been collecting them since the fifteenth century. Every noble visiting Oakham, the county town of Rutland, presents a horseshoe to the Lord of the Manor, and it is nailed to the wall of Oakham Castle; the oldest of that accumulation date from the 1400s. The county flag is a golden horseshoe on a field of acorns.

Found, not bought, in the strictest versions. Nailed up over a door, a barn or a stable, points up or points down according to which tradition you inherited, ideally with seven nails. Nothing is done to charge it. It is not retired: it stays on the door until the door goes.

Still nailed over doors across northern Europe and North America, still sold new in gift shops as a wedding token, and still hung as a decorative wall piece with no claim attached. Edward Lovett found them on Sussex bedsteads in 1928, beside holed stones, against nightmares. Inference — a new shoe bought for luck breaks two of the tradition's own rules at once, and the people who sell them and the people who quote the rules are rarely the same people.