Читать книгу The Magic of the Horse-shoe, with other folk-lore notes - Robert Means Lawrence - Страница 10

Horses that, feeding on the grassy hills, tread upon moonwort with their hollow heels, though lately shod, at night go barefoot home, their maister musing where their shoes become. O moonwort! tell me where thou hid’st the smith, hammer and pinchers, thou unshodd’st them with.

The horse-shoe has sometimes been identified with the cross, and has been supposed to derive its amuletic power from a fancied resemblance to the sacred Christian symbol. But inasmuch as it is difficult to find any marked similarity in form between the crescent and the cross, this theory does not appear to warrant serious consideration.