Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/299

 These extracts from the ancient laws of Wales which may have been—and we have every reason to believe were—in existence centuries before the reign of Howel the Good, show in the most unmistakable manner that farriery was practised and held in high estimation by the primitive people of Britain, that the Court farrier was a sacred sort of personage, on whose shoulders the mystic mantle of the Druid iron-workers had fallen, and whose handicraft was not to be practised by every one.

It is very strange that, in relation to this subject, these laws of Wales have never before been examined.

Sir Walter Scott appears to have sanctioned the popular opinion, afterwards maintained by Sir P Meyrick, Bracy Clark, and other notabilities, that these ancient Britons, the Welsh, did not shoe their horses. In one of his miscellaneous poems, the 'Norman Horse-Shoe,' composed in 1806, he relates an engagement on the banks of the Rymny, between the Norman Lords-Marchers of Monmouthshire, Clare, Earl of Striguil and Pembroke, and Neville, Baron of Chepstow, and the Welshmen of Glamorgan. The piece is prefaced by the announcement, that the Welsh, inhabiting a mountainous country, and possessing only an inferior breed of horses, were usually unable to resist the shock of the Anglo-Norman cavalry. On this occasion they were successful, notwithstanding that the horses of the latter were shod: — 'Red glows the forge in Striguil's bounds, And hammers din, and anvil sounds, And armourers, with iron toil, Barb many a steed for battle's broil. Foul fall the hand which bends the steel Around the courser's thundering heel,