o, and
ere the song is finished, the iron is again hot and malleable. Behold, I
place it once more on the covantza, and recommence hammering; and now I
am somewhat at fault: I am in want of assistance; I want you, brother, or
some one else, to take the bar out of my hand and support it upon the
covantza, whilst I, applying a chinomescro, or kind of chisel, to the
heated iron, cut off with a lusty stroke or two of the shukaro baro, or
big hammer, as much as is required for the petul. But having no one to
help me, I go on hammering till I have fairly knocked off as much as I
want, and then I place the piece in the fire, and again apply the
bellows, and take up the song where I left it off; and when I have
finished the song, I take out the iron, but this time with my plaistra,
or pincers, and then I recommence hammering, turning the iron round and
round with my pincers: and now I bend the iron, and lo, and behold, it
has assumed something the outline of a petul.

I am not going to enter into farther details with respect to the
process--it was rather a wearisome one. I had to contend with various
disadvantages: my forge was a rude one, my tools might have been better;
I was in want of one or two highly necessary implements, but, above all,
manual dexterity. Though free of the forge, I had not practised the
albeytarian art for very many years, never since--but stay, it is not my
intention to tell the reader, at least in this place, how and when I
became a blacksmith. There was one thing, however, which stood me in
good stead in my labour, the same thing which through life has ever been
of incalculable utility to me, and has not unfrequently supplied the
place of friends, money, and many other things of almost equal
importance--iron perseverance, without which all the advantages of time
and circumstances are of very little avail in any undertaking. I was
determined to make a horseshoe, and a good one, in spite of every
obstacle--ay, in spite o' dukkerin. At the end of four days, during
which I had fashioned and re-fashioned the thing at least fifty times, I
had made a petul such as no master of the craft need have been ashamed
of; with the second shoe I had less difficulty, and, by the time I had
made the fourth, I would have scorned to take off my hat to the best
smith in Cheshire.

But I had not yet shod my little gry; {69a} this I proceeded now to do.
After having first well pared the hoofs with my churi, {69b} I a