The Lancashire farmer thinks that mischievous fairies not only ride horses by night, but drive cows out of the barn, steal the butter, and eat up the children’s porridge; so he, too, affixes horse-shoes to his buildings. Any one visiting the hamlets of Oxfordshire can hardly fail to notice the numerous horse-shoes affixed to the picturesque thatched-roofed cottages; and the countryfolk in this neighborhood are not always content with _one_ of these popular safeguards, for two or three of them are often to be seen on the walls of a dwelling, invariably placed with the prongs downward. In Brand’s “Popular Antiquities” (vol. iii. p. 19, 1888) may be found a clipping from the Cambridge (Eng.) “Advertiser,” which relates that one Bartingale, a carpenter and resident of Ely, suspected a woman named Gotobed of having bewitched him, and of being the cause of an illness which he had recently had. Thereupon, at a consultation of matrons of the neighborhood held in his chamber, it was decided that the most efficient means of protecting him from the evil influence of the suspected sorceress was to have three horse-shoes fastened to the door. A blacksmith was accordingly summoned, and an operation to this effect was performed, much to the anger of the supposed witch, who at first complained to the Dean, but was laughed at by his reverence. She then rushed in wrath to the sick man’s room, and, miraculous to tell, passed the Rubicon in spite of the horse-shoes. But this wonder ceased when it was discovered that Vulcan had substituted donkeys’ shoes. Miss Georgiana F. Jackson says, in “Shropshire Folk-Lore,” that, in the home of her childhood at Edgmond, the stable-door was decorated with three rows of horse-shoes arranged in the form of a triangle; and the grooms used to say that they were placed there to exclude witches. In this region, too, an old horse-shoe placed above the door of a bedroom is a preventive of the nightmare. In Shrewsbury, the ancient county town of Shropshire, horse-shoe talismans are to be seen not only above the house-doors, but also on the barges which navigate the river Severn. In quite recent times a case has been reported of a poor girl of Whatfield, in Suffolk, who had experienced a long illness, during which she was visited daily by an old woman who appeared to be very solicitous as to her welfare. At length the girl’s family began to suspect that this old woman was none other than a witch; they therefore caused a horse-shoe to be fastened to the sill of the outer door. The precaution was successful, so runs the tale, for the reputed witch could never thereafter cross the threshold, and the girl speedily recovered her health.[179]