Confessions of a Horseshoer

Druids, Celts, and Blacksmiths

36 Druids, Celts, and Blacksmiths I’ve been a student and professor of Celtic culture and Welsh language and literature, even longer than I’ve been a horseshoer, and have always been interested in the status of the farrier/blacksmith in druidical societies in medieval times. Back then, one person did all the jobs we now associate with blacksmiths, farriers, and horseshoers. Today, a blacksmith primarily works with metal, and a farrier primarily works with horses’ feet. Horseshoer is just another more common name for farrier, although about half the time I tell someone I’m a horseshoer, they think I make my living playing horseshoes. “Farrier,” from the Latin ferrum for “iron,” isn’t much better, since few people have any idea what the word means. It does raise a few eyebrows, however. In this section, I use the terms blacksmith, farrier, and horseshoer to mean the same person. According to the sources I’ve studied, the blacksmith’s position in the ancient tribes was equal to that of the doctor , just below that of the Druid, who was a rung below but occasionally equal to the king.The talents of the blacksmith in ancient Welsh and Irish societies were used to forge the • Druids, Celts, and Blacksmiths • 37 weapons, armor, and general armaments for defending a kingdom or attacking other kingdoms; additionally, the blacksmith was responsible for the horses and war chariots. But beyond these fundamentals, there remained a mystique about the blacksmith, the man who could manipulate and persuade the strongest of all materials, iron, into the service of the people. The ancient Welsh and Irish developed a system of cultural beliefs around the blacksmith and his iron, some of which persist today. Consider the lucky horseshoe, a phenomenon as present in the twenty-first century as it was in medieval times. Popular belief has it that the shoe must be hung with the open side up so that the luck doesn’t run out the bottom.I don’t consider that view of a horseshoe as lucky at all. If I see a shoe in that position while it is attached to the horse it means I am standing behind the horse and in the process of being kicked. To explain: while working on a horse’s foot, the horseshoer’s view of the shoe is always with the closed end on top. This is because when you, as a shoer, pick up a front foot, for example, you stand facing the horse’s tail and lift the foot in the direction of the tail. You then straddle the leg and hold the leg in place with knee pressure. When working with a hind foot, you again stand facing the tail, and put the leg across your inside thigh. In both these cases your view of the foot will have the closed end on top and the open end on the bottom. Hopefully the luck isn’t running out. If you are looking at a shoe on the horse that has the open end on the top, it means the horse has kicked backwards . . . at you. 38 • Confessions of a Horseshoer • The luck associated with the horseshoe actually pertains to the magical and mystical qualities of the iron itself, and what the blacksmith is able to do with it. Most of the stories are about the blacksmith and the devil. In all these stories, the blacksmith outsmarts the devil and usually ends up causing the devil so much pain that he avoids any contact with blacksmiths from that time forward. Typical of these stories is one in which the devil, in disguise, comes to have the iron shoes on his cloven hoofs replaced, and the blacksmith, aware of the true identity of his customer, hammers the nails into the sensitive quick of the devil’s feet.The devil limps off in pain, vowing to avoid all horseshoers from that time on. Out of this legend comes the horseshoer tradition of ending a work day by striking the anvil three times with the hammer to warn off the devil. I’m not entirely sure why I do this, but I find myself striking the anvil three times with my hammer at the end of each day. I always have. In medieval Celtic communities blacksmiths were in the upper echelon of the social structure. So also, were the bards, the poets of the kings. If a...