dwarf directed the education of this prince, and spoke to him of the wonderful treasure of the Nibelungen, raising in him the desire to carry it off to Tafnir. He forged for him the sword 'Gram,' the blade of which was so sharp, that, when plunged in the Rhine, it cut in two a lock of wool carried against it by the current. He also attended to the incomparable steed 'Grani.'[1] This skill in fabricating arms, and in the management of the horse, appears to have been a particular feature in the history of this people. In the middle ages, so highly were the services of the farrier esteemed, that at the court of the Dukes of Burgundy, on Saint Eloy's day, a piece of silver plate was given to the individual who shod the ducal horses.[2]
St Eloy, Eligius, or Euloge, was Bishop of Noyon in the 7th or 8th century, and by some means or other became the patron saint of farriers, and a gentle name to swear by in the days of Chaucer, who, in his 'Canterbury Pilgrims,' speaks of the 'Nonne'
'That of hir smiling was full simple and coy;
Hir greatest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy.'
The prioress's very tender oath, which custom of swearing was not at all an indelicate one for ladies, even for some centuries after Chaucer's time, has excited much contention among the commentators of the old poet. Warton declares that St Loy (the form in which the word appears in all the manuscripts) means, St Lewis: but in Sir David Lyndesay's writings St Eloy appears as an independent personage, in connection with horses or horsemanship, in
