s. in. MARCH is, iocs.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
215
to be the correct position. It is a lazily per-
formed task, at its best, to attempt to ward
off evil in any other way than by one's own
efforts, and those who are lazy and credulous
enough to expect the horseshoe to do it for
them would certainly not be at the extra
trouble involved in placing the shoe with the
horns upwards like the crescent moon. The
moon is thus represented on a Babylonian
boundary stone 830 B.C., and also on a
Carthaginian tablet in the British Museum,
doubtless as a symbol of the earth-goddess with
which the moon became identified. The horn
is a well known Oriental symbol of power.
In Scripture a tusk is called a horn, and we
find that the mules and cattle in Spain
and Italy are adorned with a small crescent ;
formed by two boar's tusks, or else a forked
piece of wood. Observe the brass pendants
which hang from the breast of the carthorse
and adorn his harness, and it will be found
that the forks of the crescent always point
upwards. When the Italian makes the !
gesture of projecting the little finger and
thumb with the remaining three fingers
closed, it is upwards that he turns them.
And when he hangs the half-moon from the
harness of his cattle, does not the Italian and
Sicilian peasant maintain the custom of his
pagan forefathers in their efforts to secure j
the protection of the goddess Diana ? Doubt- 1
less, too, it is a still earlier relic of lunar !
worship that survives among the gipsies who I
use a crescent to adorn their sorry van-laden j
cattle ; while a cabalistic token, which they I
believe brings good luck to the bearer of I
it, represents roughly a serpent, the evil '
principle in gipsy mythology, which encloses
the moon and stars, symbolical of the world
lying in evil. It is a very remarkable fact,
in connecting this horseshoe superstition
with lunar worship, that Beckman ('Hist,
of Inventions,' 1846, vol. i. p. 453) traces to
2eAr'i'7;, the moon, the Greek word for horse-
shoes, creA^vcua, and he says, " I think we
may venture to conclude, without any fear
of erring, that this word was employed to
signify horseshoes of the same kind as ours,
and that they were known, if not earlier, at
least in the ninth century."
J. HOLDEN MAcMlCHAEL.
The iast word has not been said on this question until a reason has been given. Our primitive ancestors were not so foolish as their superstitious descendants. We are .content with the phrase "So as to keep the luck from dropping out" ; but if the horse- shoe amulet is a survival of early religion (or Shamanism or superstition, call it what you will), this idea is too puerile to have
been the original concomitant reason for
setting the amulet one way up and not
another. The points should be upwards,
because this is the position in nature of the
horns of the bull.
Death being obviously a manifestation of the power and presence of evil, life, espe- cially in its generative aspect, appears to the savage as a manifestation of the good principle. This is naturally symbolized by something connected with agriculture among ploughmen, or by a very prolific animal among shepherds and hunters. Hence come two classes of amulets : horns and boars' tusks.
Now, having naturally selected the bull's horns as a sign of procreative life, look up into the sky and you will see the talisman in the heavens ; hence the moon-goddess comes to be regarded as the universal mother.
The horseshoe, then, is not a conven- tionalized crescent, pace MR. ELWORTHY, but both crescent and horseshoe are con- ventionalized horns. Compare C. G. Leland's ' Gypsy Sorcery ' pzssi'wt.
FRED. G. ACKERLEY.
Libau, Russia.
In his remarks on this subject MR. SNOWDEN WARD states that "Roman Catholic Chris- tians assign the blue robe and the crescent
moon of [the Egyptian goddess] Isis to the Virgin Mary." The italics are mine. It is hardly necessary to say that the" assigning" of the crescent moon to the Virgin Mary, in Catholic art, has nothing whatever to do with heathen mythology. The true explana- tion of the assignment is to be found in the first verse of the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse of St. John, in which occur the following words: "A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars." As regards the " blue robe," there has always existed a tradition in the Catholic Church that blue was the dominant colour worn by the maidens of Nazareth, and consequently by the Blessed Virgin herself. Thus from the earliest times the painters of the various Madonnas have depicted the " Mater Pia" in blue apparel, or, as was sometimes the case, in garments of white and blue. This last admixture would accord well with the following precept of the Mosaic law: " Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them to make to themselves fringes on the borders of their garments, putting in them ribbons of blue" (Numbers xv. 38). Et may not be amiss to quote, in this connexion, a few lines from some interesting 'Notes from Palestine,' written in 1890 by the Very Bev, Canou ,
