Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/298

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
270
HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING.

greyhound: whosoever shall break the leg of any one of them, let him pay his whole worth.'

In the Gwentian Code, applicable to the district inhabited by the Silures, it is written: 'The protection of the groom of the rein is, to conduct the person while the smith of the Court makes four shoes, with their sets of nails, and shall shoe the kings steed.' 'The groom of the rein has the king's daily saddle, his panel, his bridle, his spurs, his hose, and his rain-cap when discarded; also his old horse-shoes (hen pedolen), and his shoeing-irons (heyrn pedoli).'[1] In the triads of the 'Cyrethian' we find: 'Three free sons of the bond: a clerk, a bard, and a smith. Three bond sons of the free: the sons of the above.' Of the king's hall it is ordered: 'The servants are apportioned in three parts, one third to the queen . . . . . The smith (gof) of the Court is to sit in a chair before the judge (near a column), which column the silentiary is to strike, on the side furthest from the king, when commanding silence.' In the 'Leges Wallice,' of about the same date, there is also another paragraph relating to our subject: 'Refugium gwastrant awyn (equisonis) est, conducere hominem tanto tempore quanto faber curie faciet IIIIor ferra cum clauis, et cum eo ferret dextrarium regis.'[2]

Oxen alone were used for the plough: 'Neither horses, mares, or cows, are to be put to the plough; and if they should be put, and abortion should ensue to either mares or cattle, or the horses be injured, it is not to be compensated.'[3]

  1. Book i. chap. 6.
  2. Book i. chap. vii.
  3. Venedotian Code. Book iii. chap. 24.