I have always wanted to organize a tour of New York City for horse and hoof history, but this might be as close as I can come until life gets back to normal. Consider this a warmup, inspired by the New Year's Eve traditional celebration in Times Square.
This article will cover midtown landmarks -- or "hoofmarks", as I call them -- around Times Square and Central Park.
"Work will make you free" promises the sign above the gate at the entrance of Auschwitz in Poland, the site of one of the worst disasters in human history. It's one of the most famous signs, and symbols of suffering and evil, anywhere in the world. Did you ever wonder who forged it? Have you ever heard of Jan Liwacz, the blacksmith of Auschwitz? And did you know there is a touch of irony forged into the letters by a prisoner blacksmith? (Photo by "Neil" courtesy of Wikimedia.)
How would Joe Biden look at the anvil? Traditionally, political cartoons have portrayed US Presidents as blacksmiths and, sometimes, farriers. Here you see President Woodrow Wilson portrayed in 1917 as a striker, not the smith. Uncle Sam is the smith, and he is urging Wilson to swing and hit, while the iron is still hot. The shoe has "crisis" written on it; it probably refers to the hesitation of the United States under Wilson to abandon isolationism and enter World War I on the side of the Allies. This old political cartoon by William Allen Rogers is from the archive of the Library of Congress's Cabinet of American Illustration.
Saturday Night Live notwithstanding, there hasn’t been much to laugh about when it comes to US politics lately. And ever since former-farrier Lincoln Chafee dropped out of the Democratic primaries back in 2015, there have been almost no tie-ins at all to hoofcare, horseshoes or even horses.
Remnants of an old forge near Castle Dermot in Kildare, Ireland.
"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." - James Joyce, 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'
The Gaelic word for forge or smithy is "cérdcha", pronounced "cartha", and the forge was important not just to the horsemen and the smith himself, but to the whole community, so the architecture naturally had stature. But does anyone remember that today, when farriers show up in vans and trucks?
St Patrick's Day seems like a perfect time to share some good news for history and architecture fans, as well as art and poetry and mythology fans. The government workers of Ireland may have taken today off to celebrate the holiday, but they have been very hard at work in recent years, and have some interesting information to share.
Ireland has a project called the National Survey of Architectural Heritage, and one of the many types of buildings that they have selected to survey and document is the classic Irish smithy: they have selected 49 still-standing smithies, forges, and shoeing shops scattered around the Emerald Isle.
Another forge in County Wicklow.
The stated purpose of the survey is to "identify, record, and evaluate the post-1700 architectural heritage of Ireland, uniformly and consistently as an aid in the protection and conservation of the built heritage."
Unlike other national architectural surveys, Ireland's considers smithies worthy of cataloging.
Imagine, if you will, van-loads of surveyors and photographers and historians driving around the countryside collecting the measurements and histories of each of these buildings. And then compiling all that information into a database that can be searched and referenced.
The forges don't all have horseshoe doors, but they all do seem to be a bit magical. This one is in County Westmeath.
For years, I've talked about organizing a van-load of my own. I'd fill it with people who appreciate the old forges with horseshoe doorways. Wouldn't you like to see some of them before they all disappear or are eagerly converted by architects into homes for people who have never stood in a real forge?
Unfortunately, many of the oldest shoeing shops were situated so that ever-widening roads spelled their inevitable demolition. If there are this many left in the tiny country, can you imagine how many there once were?
Fewer seem to be left in Great Britain, but Ireland has plenty to see. The problem is that many are described in the survey as "derelict". In the photos, they may lack a roof, or a wall, or a couple of walls. But something still stands to let you know that these places mattered, back in the day.
Forges were built to last, as if the smiths who constructed them had no reason not to believe that they would be needed forever. For many fathers, they were rock-solid legacies to pass on to their sons. While many are similar, no two are exactly alike.
This lovely forge near Antrim Castle still stands; notice the heel calks on the doorframe's shoe. It is not in the Survey, however, because it is in Northern Ireland.
I wonder if there are some Americans who will read this article and head for Ireland to buy one (or more) of these old landmarks so they can re-erect them in America. Some Irish buildings have crossed the Atlantic, though I haven't heard of any forges doing that--yet. I don't think that is what the Irish government or I have in mind. Better to head to Ireland and go into the files of the Survey, get dimensions and proportions and details, and build one of your own here.
Make no mistake: smithies are just one of dozens of categories of common and uncommon buildings listed in the survey. The government has located and identified and surveyed the forges, but they are not protected from demolition or development or conversion.
A page from the survey; this is the result of a search for survyed smithies in County Meath. There may well be more that were not in the survey, or that haven't been found yet because they are on private property.
Do you speak architecture? Here's a sample listing of one forge:
Detached three-bay single-story rubble stone former forge, c.1850, with single-bay single-story side elevation to west having horse shoe-shaped integral carriageway. Reroofed, c.1930. Now disused. Gable-ended roof. Replacement corrugated-iron, c.1930. Iron ridge tiles. Rendered coping to gables. No rainwater goods. Rubble stone walls. Square-headed window openings. Cut-stone lintels. Timber paneled doors. Horse shoe-shaped integral carriageway to side elevation to west. Cut-granite surround with 'nail holes'. Inscribed benchmark to surround. Set back from road perpendicular to road in own grounds with side (west) elevation fronting on to road.
Appraisal: This forge is a fine, small-scale building that is testament to the small-scale industry of County Kildare and which is therefore of considerable social and historic importance - the building is also testament to an age before the automobile when the local community relied on horse power for transport and farming activities. Although now disused and in poor repair, the building retains some of its original character, features and materials. The construction of the building is of interest and combines rubble stone with more refined cut-granite dressings. Important surviving early salient features include the cut-stone dressings to the openings, in particular the appropriate surround to the integral carriageway that is also furnished with nail holes. The inscribed benchmark to the surround is also of scientific and social interest, having been used by the Ordnance Survey in the early preparation of maps. The forge is attractively located perpendicular to the road side and is a pleasant and prominent landmark in the locality.
-----------------------------------------
Not all forges were built to last. This thatched one in County Limerick might not be standing. It looks like everyone in this photo is packed up and leaving the farrier behind. Maybe he was ready to leave and someone showed up with that donkey to trim.
They're just sitting there. The ones in use rarely, if ever, have a horse inside; many have become gas stations or homes or shops or tearooms.
I know there are people who go to Ireland to see the castles, or the foxhunts, or the wolfounds or the Galway hooker sailboats. People have come to the defense of these bits of history and tradition, and they want to experience them, preserve them, and treasure them.
Now the government has, almost by accident, created a treasure map for anyone who wants to experience a very special type of old building that (almost) no one would dream of constructing any more. But there they are, waiting to be photographed and visited and appreciated for what they were. And still are.
In addition to reading directly online, you may also receive email "alerts" containing headlines and links(requires signup in box at top right of blog page).
The helpful "translator" tool in the right sidebar will convert this article (approximately) to the language of your choice.
To share this article on Facebook and other social media, click on the small symbols below the labels. Be sure to "like" the Hoofcare and Lameness Facebook page and click on "get notifications" under the page's "like" button to keep up with the hoof news on Facebook. Or, paste this article's address from the browser bar into your post.
Questions or problems with this site? Click here to send an email hoofblog@gmail.com.
Disclosure of Material Connection: No direct compensation was paid for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
If your idea of fun is seeing how far you can carry a 363.8 pound stone, Scotland has an event for you. Just don't expect to tie up your horse to be shod at the smithy in town that day. (Photo of Airth, Scotland's "smiddy stane" contest courtesy of Ewan McTaggart)
Another reason to wear a kilt: you can spread your legs far enough apart to carry a 363-pound rock across a field...if you are so inclined.
Once there was a peaceful park on the edge of London...
The Opening Ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic Games were pretty spectacular. I’m sure that the highlight for many was when the Queen parachuted out of a helicopter and into the stadium with James Bond at her side and her handbag in place.
But for me, the highlight came before that.
Director Danny Boyle’s timeline portrayal began with a bucolic rural England, complete with (real) giant Shire horses. It got even better when smokestacks rose among the meadows and the Industrial Revolution reshaped the land into mills, waterwheels and massive gears. Smoke filled the air. The pastoral farmers turned into millworkers with soot on their faces.
And then it happened.
The smiths leaned on their hammers and watched the rings they'd forged rise in the sky over the stadium
The center of the stadium glowed with fire and a single giant Olympic ring formed in the earth. And it kept forming because 100 or so hammer-wielding smith-types pounded it into shape. Ok, so their sledges were undoubtedly made of foam. But it was pretty realistic, an Olympic-sized exercise of traditional iron wheel-making in a forge.
The ring rose in the night sky and four others joined it, forming the iconic Olympic rings.
The peaceful park was transformed into an equestrian village, with a smithy, of course.
Across the river in London’s Greenwich Park, the equestrian events were set to begin 12 hours later and the Olympic forge was open for business. The flame burning there is encased in a gas forge, but it is being tended by a group of British farriers who are also sharing it with team farriers from around the world.
If there is a place at the Olympic equestrian venue where the world meets, it will be here. The Olympic forge amidst the sprawling stable area should be a re-creation of the village smithy on a town green.
During the Games, the Hoof Blog will do its best to connect you with the people who are sharing the Olympic Forge’s Flame.
You won’t hear gossip about horses or riders, but you might learn something about how the FEI and individual nations approach farriery and veterinary care as essential parts of equine welfare, how the forge came to be, who the farriers are, and which nations sent a farrier along with the horses to keep things straight.
We’ll end the beginning by saying thank you to all the farriers who have already generously provided interviews and sent over photos of their time in Greenwich Park. Keep it coming...and keep the Olympic forge flame burning for us all.
Call 978 281 3222 for US orders of this crucial reference book; supplies are limited!
Read this blog's headlines on the Hoofcare + LamenessFacebook Page
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Here's some trivia for a February Sunday afternoon: how closely are you paying attention when you watch television?
Notice the horse being shod in the background as the wedding proceeds.
If you're like me, you'll be glued to the television tonight for the final episode of the second year of the PBS/BBC mini-series Downton Abbey.
And if you're also anything like me, you knew that, sooner or later, something related to hoofcare would show up in the second series.
A horse lost a shoe in the first series, with no farrier to be found. Lady Mary was very annoyed that she had to walk the horse home. I thought that surely the farrier would materialize and later turn out to be the rightful heir to the estate.
This year, I've been waiting patiently for writer Julian Fellowes to let another hoof reference fly. And he did.
It happened last week: Second series, episode six, the one where the war is over, but the Spanish Flu has hit instead.
But did you catch the reference?
It was a fleeting one.
Lady Sybil has eloped with her Irish anarchist chauffeur lover; they've driven off into the night when Lady Mary discovers they're missing.
Which way did they go? You might wonder.
But Lady Mary knew instantly where they had gone.
"Oh, we must hurry! They'll be halfway to Gretna Green by now!" she gushes as she and Lady Edith rush out the door.
That's it. The alarm is sounded: "Gretna Green" means only one thing: Lady Sybil has run away to stand in front of an anvil in Scotland. And since Downton Abbey is supposed to be in Yorkshire, they didn't have that far to go.
The dowager countess will definitely not approve.
Kilts are probably optional and you probably have to pay the piper but weddings are still big business in Gretna Green, which rivals Las Vegas as a town with a wedding-as-industry mindset.
Apparently it was the way that elopements happened for centuries in England. By crossing the border from England to Scotland, couples were eligible to be wed--no questions asked. And the first place you came to when you crossed over from Cumbria was a smithy in the hamlet of Gretna Green.
And the smith had the legal power to perform marriages.
You might wonder how I happen to know about an obscure Scottish village. Well, I've even been there. Twice. Not to get married, but to be a tourist. Gretna Green is in Dumfriesshire, just down the road from Closeburn, the ancestral home of Edward Martin, FWCF, MBE, the great Scottish farrier and blacksmith.
You can bet that Gretna Green was on the tourist route for his incredible hospitality when Americans came his way.
The history was interesting and it was sort of amusing to be tourists at the weddings of total strangers, but a gift shop full of anvil-theme items was simply a candy store for farrier visitors to take home as mementos of this unique village. It must be the anvil souvenir capital of the world.
Now that it's been mentioned on the world's favorite television drama, the wedding business must be booming in Gretna Green. But then again, it always has been.
Photos: Anvil emblem by Chris in Plymouth, smiddy interior by Andrys Stienstra, happy couple by Matt Thorpe.
Read this blog's headlines in your Facebook news feed when you "like" the Hoofcare + LamenessFacebook Page
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any direct compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned, other than Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Today we salute some holy horseshoeing. During the long battle in World War I to take (or defend) the Argonne Forest, American transport horses were stabled inside the ruins of a church in Consenvoye, in northeastern France. A corner of the once-grand church became the smithy where American farriers worked to keep the horses shod.
I imagine a scene something like this: the pubkeeper comes out on the sidewalk to speak to the visitors staring at his sign. "Come in, come in," he says. "We're open!" But they just keep staring at the sign, as if they haven't even heard a word he just said. Finally one snaps out of his stupor and says, "Nah, we don't want a pint, we just came to see your pub's signs."
It could happen, you know. This old pub is in a village that was once on the main route between Exeter and Plymouth on the coast. The pub door opens right out onto the street. Mail coaches and freight wagons must have passed by here, bringing and taking all that would sail on the seas.
The coach road is now the A37 and the big motorway passed the village of Ivybridge by, and the smithy became a pub. Perhaps the smith went from tending the fire to tending the bar. Someone somewhere along the way commissioned some worthy artwork to commemorate this building's hard-working origins. And it's well done.
by Fran Jurga | 31 December 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
Here's a peek inside the Smiddy in Dundonnell, Scotland, which is almost as far north as you can go. It's past Inverness, and looks west toward the Outer Hebrides. It's a smiddy no more, but a mountaineering hut where up to ten hikers can rest for the night. But the forge fire blazes and the tools are still there and here's a fellow to serenade us on the accordion.
The red dot on the map at left locates Dundonnell on a map of Scotland. The islands to the left are the Outer Hebrides.
Auld Lang Syne is, after all, a Scottish tune penned by the great poet Robert Burns. But you knew that.
Here's the Dundonnell smiddy from the outside.
I can't think of anyone I'd rather spend an evening by the fire with than the readers of this blog. Of course I'm not really in Scotland, except maybe in a flight of imagination.
Thanks to Dundee, Scotland photographer Robbie Graham for the loan of this photo. Robbie asked for a "wee credit", but I'd give him a lot of credit. His photographs are extraordinary; take a "wee" tour of Scotland with Robbie with this set of images of the country he obviously knows and loves so well.
Happy new year from the Hoof Blog as I turn off the Big Mac for the year! May Auld Lang Syne's cup of kindness find you all often in 2010.
by Fran Jurga | 2 September 2009 | Fran Jurga Hoof Blog
I had an idea for this blog post: Everyone turn the sound off when you watch this video, and then you won't be influenced by the location. Because for nine minutes and thirty seconds, this video takes you into a universal setting. This shoeing forge could be in Colorado or Sweden or Turkey or Japan or New Zealand, with few changes. It's a pretty universal scene.
However, the sound is very nicely recorded and adds a lot; after a while, the apprentice's voice comes on and you'll hear what it's like to train as a second-year apprentice farrier in remote Donegal, on the northwestern edge of Ireland.
I play a lot of games when I watch farrier videos (and I watch a lot of them). I love to watch the background activity (and give bonus points for multiple dogs) and in this case, the shoe pile jumps out of the background and dominates the whole forge. Obviously they aren't worried about earthquakes in Donegal or else John and Heather will be buried in old shoes some day.
A game I like to play with non-US videos is to try to pick out the countries where tools and clothing and shop decor were made. In this video we see Kevin Keegan's ubiquitous Hoof Jack--is there a country on earth that the Hoof Jack hasn't conquered? I'm staring at one in my office right now as I write this.
Readers: send in photos of your Hoof Jacks in a native setting showing what it's like in your part of the world where you live and work. Just make sure the Hoof Jack is in the photo somewhere. I'll post them on the blog.
I wondered where the loop knife came from: Canada? Australia? Montana? Germany? and John's apron has a made-in-the-USA look to it. The "w" on the shoes is the forge is a giveaway that they are by Werkman and from Holland.
That's just a start, you can take it from there. Many thanks to the gentle director and editor who refrained from a voiceover narration, intro music and splashy graphics. They had the good sense to just let this scene speak for itself so those of us who know what to listen and look for, can. And I hope you will.
It's just ten minutes out there in the farrier universe.
Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog is a between-issues news service for subscribers to Hoofcare and Lameness Journal. This blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).
To subscribe to Hoofcare and Lameness (the journal), please visit the main site, www.hoofcare.com, where many educational products and media related to equine lameness and hoof science can be found.
Questions or problems with this blog? Send email to blog@hoofcare.com.
County Carlow in Ireland is home to this skeleton of a once proud forge. Double-click on the image for a larger view. Photo kindly loaned by Paddy Martin.
Throughout the lifetime of this blog, I have periodically shared evidence of a few special remaining buildings that are scattered around the globe. These buildings are usually in the British Isles. They are special in that they employ the simplest and most elegant form in nature, the arch, to emulate a horseshoe as the supporting doorway of a smithy or shoeing forge.
True to form, as soon as you publish one, another one pops up. Or, in today's case, two pop up.
We have Paddy Martin from Ireland to thank for these, and I do thank him heartily.
The top photo is my favorite. The arch of the old forge may soon be all that is left. It was definitely the strongest form. Notice there is also an arch in the fence gate. And even the ivy on the cottage is attempting to imitate the form of an arch. This must be a magical place.
I can't help but notice that the scale of this arch is more powerful than many of the horseshoe doorways seen in other smithies from days gone by. You could drive a truck through there, or a loaded wagon. Surely either this farrier was a proud man, or a prosperous one, or both, and that must have meant that the horses in the area enjoyed visiting a fine smithy, back in the day.
But why hasn't it been preserved? There's certainly something beautiful in the neglectful state, but how long before it crumbles?
Paddy writes, "I'm now 60 years old and the first time that I saw this old forge was when I was walking or 'driving' cattle from a farm near Castledermot to another farm near Rathvilly in County Carlow...a distance of about seven miles. I was helping my father and I must have been about 10 at the time. I seem to remember the name Cummins or Cummings being associated with this old forge. At about 18 I moved away from the area and I have only become reacquainted since my daughter moved into a house two minutes away a couple of years ago.
"The forge is located at Corballis Cross Roads which is on the 'back road' from Castledermot to Baltinglass through Crop Hill in South Kildare. The building itself seems not to be past restoration...must have a closer look when I'm there again."
Note to Paddy: Find out if it is for sale....
And this slightly different rendition on the arched doorway is in County Kildare. Photo kindly loaned by Paddy Martin.
Paddy's second forge photo is one that I believe I have seen pictured before; he says it is on the road from Kildare Town to Rathangan in County Kildare. It is very similar to others found in Ireland but it doesn't have the single window above the keystone--or maybe it did and it has been bricked over.
I need to make some sort of a Google Map with all these great old forges marked on it so someone (maybe even me, someday) could go on tour and visit them all. We could have some sort of a smithy architecture road rally up and down the British Isles. In order to win you'd have to have a picture of yourself in front of each forge. That's the sort of farrier competition I might be able to win.
When allied forces landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and fought their way inland from the beaches, a couple of soldiers on a detail with a photographer discovered that, in spite of the invasion, you could still get a horse shod down at the forge. This beautiful and peaceful photo was taken during one of the bloodiest, deadliest weeks of human history. I would have thought the town would have been evacuated. Perhaps it was--and the farrier defied orders and stayed behind in case anyone needed him.
Note: This article was written in 2009. Since then, an account has emerged that British troops used a French horse to carry their mortar as they advanced. Could it be the same horse in my photos? Gray draft horses are common in Normandy, which is the home of the Percheron breed. But perhaps the British realized that the horse they commandeered had lost a shoe, or needed the attention of a farrier.
Today (June 6) is the anniversary of D-Day, the World War II invasion of France by an allied force of troops and air support from Great Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, and other nations. They came by sea and they dropped from the sky by parachute. You've seen the movies, and you probably know the story.
A new possible angle on the horseshoeing story emerged in 2019, when the BBC News posted this video about a gray work horse commandeered by British troops to carry their mortar. Did the horse lose a shoe? Click the arrow to start the video.
UPDATE: The BBC has changed access to this video. It can now only be viewed inside the United Kingdom. American, Canadian, and other readers will not be able to play the video. If you have a way to access it, the link is: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/embed/p07c9k5w/48520886
Imagine my surprise years ago when I found these photos in the archives of the invasion. In the midst of all the fighter planes, tanks and artillery, we find some unidentified soldiers who appear to have stumbled on a smithy in Creully, one the first towns inland from the beaches, and hence one of the first real places in France to be "liberated" by the invading allies. Or, was he shoeing their horse, I wondered.
Here's an enlargement of the men's faces. This could be a Norman Rockwell painting.
The elderly marechal ferrant (that's French for farrier) is not caught up in the revelry of liberation. I am sure that when this photo was taken you could hear the battle going on, yet inside this smithy, time has stopped. Perhaps the Canadian soldiers had banged on his door. He was probably hiding deep inside, as tanks rolled through his village from the beaches to the east, and convoys of German trucks and wagons evacuated.
It's easy to imagine a scenario here: Perhaps one of the soldiers is a farm boy from Saskatchewan or Manitoba who had never seen the European way of holding up the hind foot for the farrier. He'd be saying (with a helmet on, after just almost being killed during the amphibious landing on the beach), "Gee, that's dangerous! Watch out you don't get kicked, old man!"
Or perhaps he was an inner city boy from Montreal or Toronto who had never seen a horse shod in his life. After surviving the landing on the beach and marching inland, he sees life with new eyes. He and his detail may have been assigned to check that all the buildings of this village are empty and secure and instead they find this old man and a farmer's son shoeing a cart horse. Are they being ordered to leave? But first, they insist on finishing the horse: they're not going anywhere until the last nail on the last shoe is clinched.
Or did the Canadians need the horse to be shod so they could use him, as the BBC newsreel footage suggests?
I think these photos illustrate one of the most magical things about shoeing horses, anywhere and everywhere it happens, but especially in a purpose-built forge. Time does seem to stop. No one can go anywhere until it's done, nor do they want to. No matter how modern the materials, the ritual is as timeless now as it has always been.
Update: Canadian records tell us that the farrier's name was Monsieur M. Le Jolivet and the forge was on Rue de Bayeux in Creully, a village about four miles inland from the "Gold" zone of beaches where the Canadians landed.
I wondered if the farrier invited the soldiers to share a sip of his calvados, the fine brandy of his region, after the horse was done. That would be the French way, even with shells falling on the town and tanks rolling down the road.
Or maybe he had more horses to do.
Another update: More research with the Canadian government sources has revealed that the photographer was with the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals / Canadian Army Film & Photo Unit. The men shown are likely Sgt. Al Grayston and Private Lewis Luke “Lew” Currie.
Currie, the smiling man in the beret in the photo, was a driver assigned to the photographer. He was killed during fighting on July 4, 1944, just a few weeks after this photo was taken. He was trying to assist the film crew when a shell hit him.
Another amazing thing about this photo is the skill of the photographer. Taking photos of this quality in the available light of a forge was probably a welcome challenge to a photographer who had been dodging artillery shells and seeing soldiers fall the day before--or perhaps the hour before. Everyone in the film crew would have been mentally and physically spent. The photographer was probably dumbstruck when stumbling upon this timeless scene and the idea of creating such a beautiful image.
So many years later, I was amazed to find these photos and couldn't wait until June 6 rolled around on the calendar to share them with you. I hope you will remember the importance of this day and all the people who died, and know that this day in history has many dimensions, and many stories that should be told again and again so we never forget.
--by Fran Jurga
Photo credit: Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie / National Archives USA. Many thanks for the loan of these photographs.
People sometimes ask for names of famous blacksmiths and farriers. There are too many, history is full of them, from the gods of antiquity, Vulcan and Hephaestus, to today's highly skilled farriers using modern materials like engineers of the hoof and artisan maestros of forging like Francis Whitaker and Samuel Yellin.
But Dexter Pratt may be the most famous of them all.
For many people, their earliest images of who a blacksmith or farrier is and what s/he does were formed by the immortal words of the poem, The Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The smith in the poem seems like Everyman. Most wouldn't think that there was a real man behind the anvil in that story, but there was.
First, a refresher, in case you don't remember the poem:
Longfellow was America's most famous poet, but he was also a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When he walked to and from the campus, he passed a mighty chestnut tree on Brattle Street, under which stood the modest smithy of his neighbor, Dexter Pratt. Dexter is believed to be the inspiration for the poem, along with the fact that Longfellow's own grandfather, Stephen Longfellow, was a blacksmith in Newbury, Massachusetts.
If there was a seed of inspiration for the poem somewhere in Longfellow's fertile mind, it was reinforced and enhanced every day by his encounter with the smith, who became his friend.
Longfellow's home on Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts is open to the public as a National Park site. It is across and down the street from the site of what must have been several blacksmith shops in Harvard Square.
Longfellow probably wrote The Village Blacksmith in 1839; it was published in 1840. Longfellow was paid $15 for the poem by Knickerbocker magazine.
Around the same time, Longfellow met a very interesting man named Elihu Burritt, known as "The Learned Blacksmith". He was living in nearby Worcester, and Longfellow encouraged him to move to Cambridge; the poet even offered to support the blacksmith.
But Burritt turned the famous poet down. He wanted to keep working in the forge while he pursued his studies.
At one time you could buy prints and post cards of Dexter's smithy, long after it and the chestnut tree were gone. Maybe you still can.
Dexter's shop and tree probably could have become one of the greatest tourist attractions in Cambridge, except that urban planning interfered: there was a curve in the street where they stood and the city wanted to straighten it. The authorities didn't see a way around it: the big tree had to go and, with it, Dexter's shop and forge. Not even Longfellow could save it.
The big tree was cut down in the 1870s.
Longfellow's chair, made from the wood of the spreading chestnut tree.
What a day it must have been when they cut it down. Cambridge schoolchildren took up a collection to make a memento. A chair was made from the tree for Longfellow, and you can see it if you visit his house. The poet wrote the children a poem of thanks. It is an ode to the tree; it doesn't mention the blacksmith, though.
"The Village Blacksmith" has outlived Longfellow, Dexter, and the tree. And so, it turns out, have the two houses where the men lived. They're still there.
Dexter Pratt's more modest home on Brattle Street is painted almost the same color as Longfellow's, but it's not so grandiose. (Wikipedia photo)
Dexter's house at 54 Brattle Street is in the National Register of Historic Places and owned by the City of Cambridge. It is now known as "The Blacksmith House". It was built in 1808 for a blacksmith named Torrey Hancock, who sold it to Dexter Pratt. It's interesting that Pratt's daughter sold the house to a runaway slave named Mary Walker, who lived there with her family for many years.
During World War II, a bakery opened in the house, selling baked goods made by women refugees from Europe.
Over the years, The Village Blacksmith inspired a lot of people. In 1922, famed director John Ford brought The Village Blacksmith to the silver screen, in a melodramatic story based loosely on the blacksmith in the poem. The subtitle for the film was "The Blacksmith's Daughter, Falsely Accused".
Almost 100 years after Longfellow wrote the poem, a mysterious silent film pantomime of the poem appeared. There's no documentation to go with this rough gem, which is copyrighted by the distributor as 1936 but looks to be older.
In the film, you will see first Longfellow's stately, then the more colonial home of Dexter Pratt, though I doubt it was so grand when he lived there. I don't know if the entire film was shot in Cambridge or just those buildings.
You can walk in Longfellow's footsteps down Brattle Street, and visit both houses. If you walk down the street to the Mount Auburn Cemetery, you'll find the graves of both men. A chunk of the chestnut tree is preserved in the Cambridge Public Library on Broadway.
Read this blog's headlines on the Hoofcare + LamenessFacebook Page
Disclosure of Material Connection: The Hoof Blog (Hoofcare Publishing) has not received any direct compensation for writing this post. Hoofcare Publishing has no material connection to the brands, products, or services mentioned, other than products and services of Hoofcare Publishing. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
by Fran Jurga | 18 January 2009 | Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog
Welcome to a lost classic of hoofcare humor, this time from our friends in Hollywood.
If you scroll through the blog, you will see that Popeye and Spike Jones have been featured in previous articles. The Popeye video made the Top Ten of all-time viewed stories on this blog.
While all three videos were made during World War II, let's move ahead to the post-war era and see how Hollywood could have used horseshoeing as a crossover way to get people to laugh, by adding popular music.
This Sunday, it's Walt Disney, Himself. A very old Donald Duck cartoon has been overdubbed with the classic recording of The Blacksmith Blues by Ella Mae Morse, a vocalist who was discovered in Texas in 1939. She was just 14 years old when she ran away and joined Jimmy Dorsey's band and later, Nelson Riddle's orchestra.
Here are the lyrics:
Down in old Kentucky Where horseshoes are lucky There's a village smithy standin' under a chestnut tree Hear the hammer knockin' See the hammer rockin' He sings the boogie blues while he's hammerin' on the shoes See the hot sparks a-flyin' Like Fourth of July-in' He's even got the horses cloppin', pop! down the avenue Folks love the rhythm The clang-bangin' rhythm You'll get a lot o' kicks out of the Blacksmith Blues...
The Blacksmith's Blues was probably Ella Mae's biggest hit and most important recording. She's hailed in the annals of rock 'n roll as being a trailblazer for Elvis Presley and other 1950s rockers because she was one of the first white performers to record what would have been exclusively African-American music. And she did it on a major record label, Capitol Records.
Danny Ward, owner of Danny Ward's Horseshoeing School in Martinsville, Virginia, has the original sheet music to "The Blacksmith's Blues". He handed this treasure to me once, thinking that I'd be able to belt it out on the piano for him the next day, but it was a little tough for me. I'm still plunking it out but now that I have heard Ella Mae, I understand the syncopation a little better. I should have known this song would have a special (and familiar) rhythm!
Fran Jurga's Hoof Blog may be read online at the blog page, checked via RSS feed, or received via a digest-type email (requires signup in box at top right of blog page).
Disclosure of Material Connection: Hoofcare Publishing has not received any direct compensation for writing this post. Hoofcare Publishing has no material connection to third party brands, products, or services mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Here's the Dundonnell smiddy from the outside.
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing. No use without permission. You only need to ask.
© Fran Jurga and Hoofcare Publishing; you are reading the online news for Hoofcare and Lameness Publishing. Please, no re-use of text or images without permission--please share links or use social media sharing instead. Just do not copy and paste text or images--thank you! (Please ask if you would like to receive permission.)