Recently I've been spending rather a lot of time in the garden and this caught my eye:
Which got me thinking about others I've seen in the garden. There's a few, placed in old trees and on old walls.
And it got me curious as to why there's so many of them around. We live in a really old house, which was an old working farm. So that's the logical explanation? Perhaps they used to keep lots of horses (very likely) and would just leave the shoes where they fell? 
Or perhaps previous occupiers over the last few hundred years were superstitious? I've been doing a spot of reading about it, I knew horseshoes were considered lucky by some but I wanted to know whether it made a difference which way they were hung up.? As with many superstitions it turns out different cultures have different thoughts.
Overall though, they used to be hung in and around homes to protect and attract good fortune to the family living there. Some people believe that if it is hung with the ends pointing upwards it acts as a container to store good luck, others believe that if its displayed with the ends hanging downwards that the good luck can flow out and into the home.
One of the things I love about our home is the history behind it and I love the thought of someone going around the garden and choosing various spots to place their horseshoes to protect their home and land. Perhaps they were of the 'it doesn't matter which way it sits' camp?
What do you think - horseshoe facing upwards or downwards?
My father was a very superstitious old country boy and he used to say hang them to catch the luck, ends up.
ReplyDeleteGillx
I've always gone for one of each, just to be on the safe side. My best friend's dad, when I was growing up, was a horse trainer and Irish too....a very superstitious man and he insisted you had had to have one each way up. Juliex
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid we were told they had to be hung with the open ends up so that the luck didn't fall out, but also they had to be firm (nailed to a door or like your's wedged in a tree), not swinging because elves or something (can't remember now) might use it as a swing and cause mischief!
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