FLYING DUTCHMAN. FOALED 1846
From a life-size painting by Herring
Shall I be charged with indulging a flight of imagination if I venture to declare that, before three decades more have passed, the horse will have become so completely dethroned that it will be with us only for racing purposes and to assist us in the artificial chase?
If about the year 2030 some student of past history shall come upon these lines I trust that he will quote them with appropriate comment.
Horses famous in history other than that of the Turf occur but rarely in the records of the last century or so. Lord Cardigan had a chestnut thoroughbred that carried him unscathed through the memorable Balaclava Charge, but there does not appear to be any story of interest attaching to the animal—it had two white stockings and its name was Ronald.
I have tried to trace the origin of the superstitious belief that the possession of a horseshoe must bring luck, but without any very satisfactory result. The superstition reached its height apparently towards the middle of the eighteenth century, or a little later, and by the middle of the nineteenth it was steadily dying out.
A horseshoe nailed to a house door was in the first instance supposed to keep away witches, a belief which gradually developed into the supposition that the possession of the shoe would in some way bring good fortune to the owner. According to several writers, most of the houses in the west end of London at one time had a horseshoe on the threshold, and it is said that in the year 1813 no less than seventeen shoes nailed to doors were to be seen in Monmouth Street alone.
Also it is asserted that as late as the year 1855 seven horseshoes remained nailed to different doors in that street alone.