Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/397

 procured. The Druids wore them round their necks richly set, and sold them at a very high price. They appear, nevertheless, to have been nothing more than the shells of echini or 'sea-eggs.'

At a very early date we discover another evidence of the high antiquity of shoeing among the Celtic and cognate races, in the frequent occurrence of a name to designate those who had charge of horses, and who had to attend to their shoeing. In French, German, and early British writers, instead of ἱΠΠίατξος and mulomedicus, employed in classical times to denote the veterinary surgeon, there is used the designation 'mariscalcus,' 'manescalcus,' 'marescallus,' 'mareschallus,' and finally 'mareschal;' all, as Verstegan asserts, derived from the German word 'march'—horse. 'In the ancient Teutonicke,' he says, 'mare had sometime the signification that horse now hath, and so served for the appelation of that whole kind, to wit, both male and female, and gelding, and so all went in general by the name of horse. Scale, in our ancient language, signifieth a kind of servant, as the name of scalco (though a Teutonicke denomination) in Italy yet doth. Marscale (or marschal) was with our ancestors, as with the ancient Germans, curator equorum, one who had charge of horses. The French, who (as we in England) very honourably esteeme of this name of office, doe give unto some nobleman that bare it the title of Grand Maréschal de France. And yet notwithstanding they doe no otherwise terme the smith that cureth and shueth horses than by the name of mareschal.' Lobineau says