The Magic of the Horse-shoe, with Other Folk-lore Notes

Robert Means Lawrence's The Magic of the Horse-shoe, with Other Folk-Lore Notes collects beliefs and customs about charms and superstitions. The preface describes the study of popular customs and beliefs as a way to see how the human mind worked in early times. An engraving of the arms of the town of Oakham, Rutlandshire, appears at the start.

The contents range widely. A passage on forked and pronged objects says that when a Moslem takes his child on a journey he paints a crescent between its eyes, that a modern Greek attaches a crab's claw to the child's head, and that in Bulgarian villages a wise woman places a reaping-hook in a corner of the room at a birth. A section titled The Symbol of the Open Hand deals with a talisman of extended fingers. Elsewhere the book turns to salt, which has been called the cosmopolitan condiment, and notes that camels sometimes take white stones into their mouths. Numbered notes cite many sources.