Yesterday evening at half past eight, Per the farrier came by. A farrier is someone who shoes horses and trims and takes care of their hooves; whereas a blacksmith is someone who hammers bars of red-hot metal, sometimes into horseshoes and sometimes into wrought-iron candelabra.
Per lives in Sweden, he only comes here to work; he and his family have bought a horse farm. At the moment they have twelve horses and much free grazing land. He says that it’s no longer economically practical for Swedes to run old family dairy farms with less than 100 head of cattle; all the smaller farmhouses are being sold to Norwegians for second homes and the pastures leased for next-to-nothing to Per. He says he speaks a new Sworsk dialect.
When he opens the back doors of his van there’s a workshop inside with lighting and all his tools,
including an anvil for hammering the shoes into the correct shape (sorry for the blur):
Now it’s nearly nine p.m. and starting to get dark. Per wears a little halogen light on his forehead like a late afternoon cross-country skier.
The first thing he does is remove the old shoe and file down the hoof.
A horse’s lower leg has the same structure as a hand. The horse walks on the equivalent of the fingernails of its index and ring fingers; they and the pad of a very small middle finger are what touch they ground, the little finger and thumb are further up the leg. The horseshoe is fastened to the hoof (or fingernail) with steel nails. Because the hoof is growing out all the time, the shoes have to be replaced every six or seven weeks — if you wait longer, they start falling off and then you can’t ride. Horseshoes can sometimes be reused, but usually they become too worn down in the middle.
He has a little metal stand that the hoof can rest on:
You can see it better here:
After he’d been working for a little while, he brought out more lights from the van. He took a horseshoe that was the correct size and checked it against the shape of the hoof. Askur, being an Iceland pony, has small hooves. Per said that Shire horses require shoes that are huge: roughly six inches (150mm) in diameter. They cost twice as much as Askur to shoe too, not that he cares — we don’t make him pay.
Then Per hammered it to conform to the shape of the hoof and nailed it through the holes and diagonally into the hoof, bending the nails over where they emerged on the side. I think he used about six nails per hoof.
Betty and Askur don’t seem to mind. See you again in October, Per…
A Bad Guide 
Because the hoof is growing out all the time, the shoes have to be replaced every six or seven weeks — if you wait longer, they start falling off and then you can’t ride.
Can one infer from this that horses were domesticated (for the purposes of riding) only after the discovery of iron and iron-working techniques ? Genghis Khan was a shoe-in, according to the historical records – does this mean he had the horses shoed (sp. ?) ?
It can’t be that simple, though. Think of those westerns in which hordes of mounted Indians whizz around the prairies. It must be possible to ride and tend horses in such a way that, at least on certain terrains, horseshoes are not needed. Or else the Indians lost because they kept melting down their firesticks into horseshoes. Surely they could have wrapped the hooves in aluminum foil instead ?
Maybe riding horses had a short life. After getting past the bad jokes, I find myself now interested in this subject.
A farrier is someone who shoes horses and trims and takes care of their hooves
In French this is a maréchal-ferrant. I have never understood why they are called “maréchal”, i.e. marshal (an army rank). One day I’ll look for the answer.
Very interesting documentary, AJP!
Siganus, maréchal (Old French mareschal) comes from a Frankish word, I think mareskalk where mare means ‘horse’ (same origin as Eng mare ‘female horse’ [jument], a word of Latin origin). It referred to someone who looked after horses, and from a humble beginning in the stables the word was applied to higher and higher cavalry and army positions. Le maréchal-ferrant was the man specifically in charge of putting the “irons”(les fers) on horses’ hooves.
Sorry for the poor punctuation, I mean that jument is of Latin origin, mare is not.
Thanks for the brief, Marie-Lucie. There is also the “maréchal des logis” (literally the house marshal, Latin mariscalus, marescalus, stable groom) and “la maréchaussée” (the gendarmes, i.e. the cops). [Mare-chaussée = shoed mare? :mrgreen:]
AJP, I would definitely hate having nails being driven in my nails.
:mrgreen: A Bad Guide isn’t a green blog? :mrgreen:
No, it’s not.
Incidentally, why is a horseshoe supposed to bring good luck?
>Siganus Sutor
I think this saint is relied:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunstan
Thanks, m-l, that’s very interesting.
Stu, I read that Greek horses didn’t have shoes, but Roman ones had sandals that were tied on their hooves. I don’t know how they kept them on. The Italians have always made very attractive sandals. Betty, the brown horse, didn’t wear shoes all summer, but they really need them to go on the gravel roads. In the winter they wear shoes with studs, like snow tyres, so they don’t slip.
Sig, I don’t know why they’re supposed to bring good luck. This is a green blog in the summer. And nobody’s going to drive nails into your nails.
>Siganus Sutor
Not “relied”: connected.
(Once again I blush with shame.)
A horseshoe has to be positioned like this
U
to be lucky. If you turn it upside down, the luck will fall out.
Do you know the story about Neils Bohr being chided for having a lucky horseshoe in his office? He replied that of course he didn’t believe in it but “I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not.”
TLFI: “Le lat. médiév. mariscalcus, marescalcus est attesté au sens de «valet d’écurie» dès la Loi salique, au sens de «chef de l’écurie et de l’armée» dep. le IXe s. (Nov. Gloss.), au sens d’«officier chargé du logement» dep. le XIe s.”
When the Salian Franks conquered Gaul, or at least its Northern part, they did not have a writing tradition but adopted the habits of the Roman bureaucracy, so that their documents are written in Latin, but they had to adapt many Frankish words into Latin. The Frankish mareskalk, first ‘stable boy/man’, later ‘master of the stables and the army’, was adapted as Latin mariscalcus, marescalcus, which later evolved into French maréchal (and later was adopted into English as “marshal”).
I confess that I had never tried to find out why the (originally horse-mounted) gendarmerie was called la maréchaussée, but it makes a lot of sense that it should be closely related to maréchal. The end of the new Latin word was coincidentally very similar to the root calc of the Latin word for ‘shoe’, calceus. This root eventually evolved into Fr chauss- found in several words having to do with shoes, like chaussure ‘shoe, shoe trade’, and chaussé(e) ‘shod’ . From the Frankish word, a medieval Latin word was also coined as a collective name for the horse-mounted guards: marescalcia which, with the addition of a suffix, ended up as la maréchaussée, which is still used as a humorous word for the police, especially la gendarmerie, which is the national police force in France and Canada. (In Canada, the members of the “Mounted Police” are sometimes on horseback, but in France the horses have long been replaced by motorcycles).
Fascinating, m-l. I know nothing about Franks & Frankish, they don’t teach it in England.
Is calceus related to calculus? I know that calculus is related to chalk — nice, because I frequently use them together — and also to causeway.
Ø
My dictionary says : < “Calceus, i” [calx I] and « Calculus, i » [dim. of calx II].
About “Calx”: I: Heel, foot; II: Pebble.
Of course, our shoes are “calzado” (sing.), as you know.
On the other hand.-
Because of Germans, the Romans adopt the stockings or panties (I don’t know exactly) so we, sometimes, say “calzonas” when you talk about shorts.
I’m sorry for my English.
Over here a calzone is a sort of inside-out pizza.
“I know nothing about Franks & Frankish, they don’t teach it in England.”
They must have told you about the Salian and Riparian Franks, Crown?
The Salian Franks were the ones who eventually conquered Gaul after the fall of the Roman Empire, and stayed there, adopting the local version of the Latin language, which eventually became “French”, the language of the Franks living in “Francia” (who by that time were no longer speaking “Frankish”, their original Germanic language).
One legacy of the Salian Franks is what is known in French as la loi salique, ‘Salian law’, the only (I think) remnant of which was that it barred women from occupying the throne. This is why there have been no reigning queens of France, unlike England where females could inherit the throne in the absence of a male heir, like the Elizabeths (I and II), and Victoria, among others. If this law had not been in effect, there might have been a queen after Louis XIV, since some of his daughters and granddaughters survived while all his sons and grandsons died before him (Louis XV was his great-grandson, who became king at the age of five). (This would be a great topic for an “alternate history” novelist).
>Marie-lucie
À cause de cette loi, mais plutôt comme une excuse, nous avons souffert 3 guerres civiles appelées « carlistas » dans le s. XIX ; à la fin, la fille du roi a régné comme Isabel II.
Il y a quelques jours, Carlos Hugo de Borbón*, un des successeurs de la branche « ennemie » est mort. Il parlait de socialisme ! Cette branche, aussi divisée par deux, a un autre « roi », Sixto Enrique, qui appartient à l’ultra-droite.
* http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Hugues_de_Bourbon-Parme
Jesus, je crois que Sixto Enrique est aussi l’un des prétendants au trône de France! Ces princes espagnols descendent d’un fils de Louis XIV, qui était marié avec une princesse espagnole.
>Marie-lucie
Oui, notre roi Felipe V, le premier Bourbon, était un petit-fils de Louis XIV.