Chapter M: D. Conway, in his “Demonology and Devil-Lore,” asserts that the

Scandinavian superstition known as the “demon-mare” is the source of the use of the horse-shoe against witches. In Germany there is a saying in reference to the morbid oppression sometimes experienced during sleep or while dreaming, and which is a symptom of indigestion, “The nightmare hath ridden thee.”

This elvish mare rides horses also, and in the morning their manes are found all tangled and dripping with sweat.

Grimm says that the traditional idea of the Nightmare seems to waver between the ridden animal and the riding, trampling one, precisely as the Devil is sometimes represented as riding men, and again as taking them on his back after the manner of a horse.

According to a Bavarian popular belief, the Nightmare is a woman, who is wont to appear at the house-door of a morning, invariably requesting the loan of some article. In order to get rid of her at night, one should say: “Come to-morrow and receive the three white gifts.” The next morning the woman comes, and is given a handful of flour, a handful of salt, and an egg.[155]

In the north of England, naturally perforated stones are hung up by the side of the manger to prevent the Night Hag from riding the horses. In a rare book of the sixteenth century, entitled “The Fower Chiefest Offices belonging to Horsemanship, by Tho. Blundenill, of Newton Flotman, in Norffolke,” the following curious charm is given as a remedy for horses affected with the nightmare:—

Take a Flynt Stone that
hath a hole of hys owne
kynde, and hang it ouer
hym and wryte in a bill:

_In nomine patris_, etc.
Saint George our Ladyes Knight,
He walked day so did he night
Until he hir found,
He hir beate and hir bounde,
Till truely hir trouth she him plyght
That she woulde not come within the night.
There as Saint George our Ladyes Knight
Named was three tymes, Saint George.

And hang this Scripture ouer him, and let him alone. With such
proper charmes as thys is, the false Fryers in tymes past were
wont to charme the money out of the playne folkes purses.

Drink offerings were anciently poured from vessels made from horses’ hoofs; and witches are popularly supposed to drink with avidity the water which collects in equine hoof-tracks. German writers on early traditions and folk-lore agree in ascribing to the horse-shoe divers magical properties, whose origin is vaguely connected with the ancient pagan conception of the horse as a sacrificial animal.[156]

According to a popular poetic fancy of the ancient Teutons, horses, Wodan’s favorite and darling animals, were endowed with the gifts of speech and prophecy during the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany. At this holy season they were wont to put their heads together, and impart to each other confidentially their experiences and trials of the past year; and this communion of equine spirits was the sole pleasure vouchsafed to the noble animals, and atoned in a measure for the hard work which was their lot.

Even nowadays many peasants do not venture to harness their horses at Christmas time, and do not even speak of the animals by name, but make use of pet epithets and circumlocutions when they have occasion to refer to them. On Christmas night, hostlers often sleep in the manger or under it, and their dreams at such times are prophetic for the coming year, for in their sleep they can hear what the horses are saying.

In order to impart health and vigor to the animals without incurring the expense of extra fodder, the hostler walks at Epiphany season by night three times around the village church, carrying in his uplifted hands a bundle of hay, which he afterwards feeds to the horses; or on Christmas night he steals some cabbage, which is then mixed with the fodder; or, before going to the midnight Christmas Mass, he lays on the manure-heap a quantity of hay called the “Mass hay,” and on his return from church this is given to the horses. Some peasants have a yet more simple method of promoting the welfare of their horses, which consists in laying the cleaning-cloth upon a hedge on the evenings of Christmas, New Year’s Day, or Epiphany, and afterwards grooming the animals with the dew-laden cloth.[157]

In the popular mind horses are credited with extraordinarily keen faculties for detecting ghosts and haunted places, which they instinctively scent from afar. The Thuringian peasant does not beat his horse when the latter refuses to proceed along some gloomy forest road; for the whip is useless against spiritual obstacles, whereas a _Paternoster_ devoutly repeated is usually much more effective.

It is a Bohemian superstition that a horse sees everything magnified tenfold, and that this is the reason why the noble animal submits to being led by a little child.[158]

When a Brandenburg rustic has bought a horse in a neighboring town and rides him homeward, he dismounts at the boundary line of his own village, and, gathering a handful of his native soil, he throws it backward over the line to prevent the animal’s being bewitched. In Bohemia the chief signs of bewitchment in a horse are thought to be shivering, profuse sweating, and emaciation. A charm against this consists in drawing one’s shirt inside out over one’s head, and using it as a wherewithal to groom the animal,—a method which may be acceptable to superstitious jockeys and hostlers, but which will hardly commend itself to a fastidious horse-owner.[159]