According to a well-known legend, Saint Eloy was once shoeing a demoniac horse, which refused to stand still; he therefore cut off the animal’s leg and put on the shoe. Then, making the sign of the cross, he replaced the leg, the horse experiencing no ill effects from the operation. This saint is mentioned in Barnaby Googe’s “Popish Kingdome,” as follows:— And Loye the smith doth looke to horse, and smithes of all degree; If they with iron meddle here, or if they goldsmithes bee. In certain countries blacksmiths and farriers have always been credited with supernatural faculties, and it seems, therefore, reasonable thus to explain the origin of some portion of the alleged mystic virtues of their handiwork, the iron horse-shoe, although indeed this view does not appear to have been advanced hitherto. Among ourselves, and in some of the principal European countries, blacksmiths are highly respectable members of society, although they do not usually deal in occult science. But in portions of the Russian empire, as in the province of Mingrelia, the Caucasus, and neighboring regions, blacksmiths do enjoy a certain reputation as magicians. Solemn oaths are taken upon the anvil instead of upon the Bible. In Abyssinia and in the Congo country all iron-workers have the reputation of sorcerers, and among the Tibbous of central Africa they are treated with great deference. When an inhabitant of the Orkney Islands wishes to obtain an amulet, he applies either to a farrier, or to his son or grandson; and the Roumanian gypsies are mostly blacksmiths, their wives obtaining a livelihood by mendicancy, the practice of divination, and the interpretation of dreams; while both men and women are thought to have the faculty of summoning to their aid powerful spirits of the air.[100] In Morocco, at the present day, there still exists a community of dwarfish artisans, workers in metals, magicians, and adepts in the healing art, who make little books which are used as portable amulets; and the Haratin, who inhabit the Drah valley, deem it sinful even to mention by name these dwarfs, whom they consider entitled to extraordinary respect. Each member of this mysterious tribe of pigmy smiths is said to wear a _haik_, or outer garment, having upon the back a representation of an eye, a symbol suggestive of the Cyclops of old.[101] There was, indeed, as we have seen, a common opinion throughout a great part of Europe that the earliest smiths were supernatural beings; for it was reasoned that the marvelous process of melting and fashioning iron could not have been conceived by man, but must have originated through magical agencies.