The Blacksmith and the Witch

This week, another witchcraft story from the north. John McNab Currier was a 19th century physician and amateur scientist who lived much of his life in New Hampshire. He also collected folklore, including this little story from an unnamed town in the Granite State.

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The man who served as blacksmith in the town between the years 1845 and 1855 believed strongly in witchcraft. One day a local man came into the smithy and requested that a small job be done. (Dr. Currier doesn't specify what the job was, but I'm guessing it was probably something like a repair to a farm implement.) The man was in a hurry and urged the blacksmith to complete it quickly so he could leave.

Now, the blacksmith had long suspected this man of being a witch, but never had been able to prove it. With the man inside his smithy he had his chance.

It was well-known at the time that witches could not pass through a doorway that had a horseshoe hung above it. While the man sat waiting for him to begin the job, the blacksmith climbed on a ladder and nailed a horseshoe above the door. Then he returned to his forge and quickly completed the job.

A blacksmith shop in Shelby County, Indiana.

The blacksmith handed the repaired item to the man, but although he had said he was in a hurry he didn't depart. When asked why he wasn't leaving, the man nervously said he had just remembered that a friend of his might stop by the smithy today and he wanted to talk with him.

The blacksmith went back to work, and the man sat in a chair, supposedly waiting for a friend to arrive. The man set there for many hours. The friend never arrived.

By the end of the afternoon the blacksmith felt he had his proof. He took down the horseshoe, and the man instantly left the smithy. Clearly, the blacksmith thought, this man was a witch.

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Last year I wrote about how horseshoes were used to keep witches out of houses. For people in the 17th century witchcraft was a matter of life and death and the horseshoe belief was taken quite seriously. When I read this story from Dr. Currier I was surprised to find someone using a horseshoe to keep a witch inside a building. Either people didn't take witchcraft so seriously by the 19th century or the blacksmith was particularly brave. I guess no one was going to mess with a guy who spent all day pounding metal with a hammer!

Smiths have a long folkloric association with magic, both good and evil, going back to at least the ancient Mediterranean world. For example, in Greek mythology semi-divine smiths named the Daktyls rose from the handprint of the goddess Rhea and were invoked as protection against evil magic. Trolls and dwarves labor underground creating magical items in Norse mythology, and in some Christian tales blacksmiths learn their skills from the Devil. There's an interesting overview here.

Dr. Currier writes the name of the town this way: "B____n, N.H." There are only six towns in New Hampshire with names that start with "b" and end in "n": Barrington, Belmont, Bennington, Benton, Berlin, and Boscawen. I'm not sure why he didn't want to reveal the location, because he does for the other stories he collected and published in the July 1891 issue of The Journal of American Folk-lore, which is where I found this one.

Horseshoe Magic: Secretly Pleasing to the Devil?

A few years ago I purchased an iron horseshoe in a neighborhood botanica. There is a decent-sized Santeria community in Boston, and the horseshoe is an attribute of Ogun, the orisha (spirit or deity) who governs iron, the military, and physical strength. Don't mess with Ogun!

I don't practice Santeria, though; I just bought the horseshoe because I've always heard they're lucky. I'm not sure where this idea originated, but it's been found in New England for a long time. For example, in the late 19th century farmers in western Massachusetts told folklorist Clifton Johnson the following:

1. Nailing a horseshoe above the door of your house brings luck.

2. Nail it so the opening points upwards. Otherwise, all the luck will run out!

3. In the old days, horseshoes were used to repel witches from the house.

The first two are still commonly held beliefs, but I don't think many people in the 21st century use horseshoes to protect themselves from witches. If I am wrong please let me know.

Those 19th century farmers were quite correct that their ancestors thought a horseshoe would keep witches out of the house. Richard Godbeer provides a great example in his book The Devil's Dominion, which examines witchcraft and magic in early New England.

The story goes something like this. Goody Chandler of Newbury Massachusetts became quite ill in 1666, and thought her sickness was caused by her neighbor Elizabeth Morse, who was unpopular and therefore considered a witch. Goody Chandler was determined to keep Morse out of her house, and nailed a horseshoe over the door. Apparently it worked because Elizabeth Morse refused to enter once the horseshoe was put up.

This probably would be the end of the story if an uptight neighbor named William Moody hadn't gotten involved. William Moody was opposed to any kind of magic, and he thought putting up a horseshoe was just as bad as witchcraft. He knocked down the horseshoe, and once again Elizabeth Morse began to come into Goody Chandler's house under the pretense of being neighborly.

William Moody was not alone in condemning all forms of magic as witchery - it was the official platform of the Puritan church in New England. Cotton Mather himself, the leading minister in Massachusetts, wrote in Wonders of the Invisible World that,

"The Children of New-England have Secretly done many things that have been pleasing to the Devil. They say, That in some Towns, it ha's been an usual Thing for People to Cure Hurts with Spells, or to use Detestable Conjurations, with Sieves, & Keyes, and Pease, and Nails, and Horse-Shooes... 'Tis in the Devils Name that such Things are done."

I suppose William Moody thought he was being helpful, but he comes across as a pious busybody. And his actions certainly didn't help Goody Chandler, who just got sicker and weaker. She finally convinced another neighbor to nail up the horseshoe again (she was now too weak to do it herself) but William Moody took it down and this time carried it away. Elizabeth Morse was able to enter the house, and Goody Chandler died soon after.

It's an interesting story. Who was to blame for Goody Chandler's death? Elizabeth Morse, William Moody, or natural causes? I say natural causes (and I hope you do too), but her contemporaries had other ideas. Elizabeth Morse was brought to trial and eventually convicted of witchcraft, but even the judges must have had some doubts since she only served one year in jail.

A horseshoe could also be used to keep a dead witch in his or her grave. As I've noted in an earlier post, the people of Hampton, New Hampshire staked the heart of suspected witch Goody Cole after she died. To make double sure she stayed in her grave they tied a horseshoe to the stake.

Although the horseshoe is considered lucky and magical across Europe and North America, it's not quite clear why. The writer Robert Means Lawrence devoted an entire book to this topic (The Magic of the Horsehoe, published in 1898). Is it because its shape is reminiscent of the horns of a ferocious animal? Is it because it resembles a crescent moon? Or perhaps it's because it's made of iron, and supernatural creatures (such as fairies) fear iron.

I'm actually a fan of the iron theory, since other metals have the power to repel magical monsters (like silver against vampires and werewolves), and the defining lines between supernatural creatures are blurry. Witches can transform into animals, including wolves, and sometimes they return from the dead to cause trouble, like vampires. In the British Isles, witches often were accused of cavorting with fairies, and peasants nailed horseshoes over their doors to keep fairies out of the house. So I think it all boils down to this - if you have trouble with a supernatural creature, use some metal.

The next question is "Why does metal repel monsters at all?" but my blog is limited, and a question like that would probably lead me on an infinite regression into mankind's distant and murky past!