Horse-shoes were at one time often nailed on doors as a protection against witches and malignant spirits, and “The horse-shoe nailed, each threshold’s guard”[62] may often still be seen on old country houses. John Aubrey, writing some two hundred years ago, says: “Most houses at the West End of London have a horse-shoe on the threshold.” Dwellers in town, however, have not the same dread of the mysterious as the more lonely dwellers in the country, though many a man who is brave enough on the gas-lighted pavement would feel a little “creepy” when the shrill scream of a trapped hare, or the wild cry of the peewit, broke upon the stillness of the night and found him in some country lane or on the open downland. It is a firm article of belief, however, with all who have faith in the efficacy of the horse-shoe that it must be picked up, not bought. Whatever virtue may reside in one that is found is wholly wanting in one that is purchased. The humble donkey has its share of quaint associations. The conspicuous cross upon its back is popularly supposed to date from the day that our Saviour rode in Jerusalem upon an ass. It is, however, more probable that the ass that brayed and browsed in Eden bore a similar mark. Amongst the ancient Egyptians the ass was dedicated to the evil spirit Typho, and once a year, if we may believe Plutarch, the people sacrificed an ass to this foul deity by hurling it over a precipice. The people of Lycopolis carried their antipathy so far that they excluded the trumpet from their festivals and military service from a fancy that its sound was a little too suggestive of the asinine vocal performances. The asses of the East are of a more tawny colour than those with which we are familiar in England; as this red tint was associated in people’s minds with a creature devoted to the Evil One, it was but a step further to ascribe an evil association to the colour itself; hence anyone who was so unfortunate as to have an especially ruddy countenance, or a more than usually deep shade of red in the hair, was at once held to be in an uncomfortably close relationship with Typho. The dun-colour of our British specimens gave them their name. Chaucer, for instance, calls the donkey the dun, as we may see in the “Canterbury Tales”—“Dun is in the mire.”