This shoe was for some time, while it was plentifully found in France, regarded as of Celtic make; but this is certainly not the case, as it is of Hunish and Hungarian “nationalitat” (nationality).  An exactly scientific proof, it is true, according to our present knowledge, cannot be furnished; however, it will stand well enough until the error is proved.

This peculiar kind of horseshoe has been found in South Germany and Northeast France, as far as the region of Orleans, where, as it has been proved, the Huns appeared.  This, therefore, speaks for their descendants:  1st, the far extended and yet sharply limited places of finding the shoe; 2d, the small size corresponds to the historically proved smallness of the Hunish horse; 3d, the hasty and careless make, which does not indicate that it was made by settled workmen; 4th, the horseshoe (Fig. 15) bespeaks the Hunish workmanship of the present Chinese shoe, which, in making of the nail holes, shows to-day related touches of the productions of the Mongolian ancestors.

[Illustration:  FIG. 15.]

Aside from the peculiar shaped nail holes, the characteristic of the Hunish shoe consists in the changes of the calks for summer and winter shoeing, as well as in the sinking of the nail heads.  The Huns, therefore, aside from the indistinctly marked attempts of the Romans in this direction, which are the only ones known to me, must be regarded as the inventors not only of the calks, but partly, next to the Normans, also of the sharpened winter shoeing, and of the not unimportant invention of sinking the nail heads observed in Fig. 15.

The Hunish shoeing was therefore an important invention for the Germans.  After centuries later, wherever horseshoeing was practiced, it was done solely according to Hunish methods; whereby the shoe was very possibly made heavier, was more carefully finished and in course of time showed an attempt to bend the toe (Fig. 16a).

[Illustration:  FIG. 16.]

[Illustration:  FIG. 16A.]

In the Bomberg Dom we find an equestrian statue, not unknown in the history of art, which was formerly held to be that of Emperor Conrad III.  At present however the opinion prevails generally that it represents “Stephen I., den Heiligen” (Stephen I., the Saint).

Stephen I., the first king of Hungary, formerly was a heathen, and was named “Najk.”  He reigned from 997 to 1038.  His important events were the many victorious wars led against rebellious chieftains of his country, and he was canonized in 1087.  His equestrian monument in Bomberg Dom was, in consequence, hardly made before the year 1087.  Notwithstanding that the Huns had been defeated 500 years before on the plains of Catalania, the horse of the above mentioned monument carries, as I have convinced myself personally, Hunish horseshoes, modified, however, by blade-shaped calks just then coming into use.  This is proof that, at least in Hungary, the Hunish method of shoeing was preserved an extraordinary long time.  By this it has not become improbable that at least the many shoes of this kind which were found on the Lechfield come, not directly from the Huns, but from their successors, the Hungarians, whose invasions took place in the first half of the tenth century.