Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1910 — HORSESHOE MYTH. [ARTICLE]

HORSESHOE MYTH.

Traced Back to the Greek* and Their Sea God PoaeldoK. Of all the emblems for good forhorseshoe stands among the first. Everybody knows it is unlucky to pass a horseshoe on the road without picking it up. Jit Is a luck emblem of the greatest power. Again, we are indebted for this statement to old tales, centuries in age, that have descended from father to son. from mother to daughter, through the years. The old myths repay research. The luck of the horseshoe has a most respectable beginning. It is traced to the religion of the old Greeks and their sea god Poseidon, who was identical with the Roman sea god Neptune. To Poseidon horses were sacred, and to him they were sacrificed. Poseidon was believed to have created the first horse when he struck the ground with his trident and a horse sprang fr<mr the - hole, which afterward became a spring. The sbq god was the lord of springs. X° him all springs were ascribed. In the shape of a horse he sometimes wandered by the shores of his ocean domain, and where he struck his hoofs deeply there the waters gushed out and permanent springs were found. This is the reason why horseshoes are reckoned lucky. Going to the root of the matter, one sees a nature myth as the root principle. From the sea all rain comes and to the sea all springs^ primal origin, and to the rain and the fresh waters, sea derived, we owe all fertility on earth. The old Greeks therefore worshiped Poseidon as the fortune giver through his springs. They gave him horses, his precious beasts, and they adored the footprints of horses when they found them, for they might be the very footprints of the god himself. When horses came to be shod the transition of the luck emblem from the footprint Itself to the. shoe mark —practically the same thing—was easy. Pegasus, the winged horse, from whose hoofs the water springs gushed copiously when he came to earth, has been credited with the origin of the horseshoe luck. The horseshoe was a specific against earthquakes. It would keep a house safe from harm by earth shaking. Again one perceives the sea myth—Poseidon was the shaker of the earth.