If you read Tony Hillerman's novels about the Navaho peoples: a boot on a fence post means no one is at home.
JMM

>>> Barbara Hickman <[log in to unmask]> 11/17/99 03:46PM >>>
If shoes are considered objects of good luck and protection, and people secrete footwear in house walls and foundations, do shoes left in other places also contain such charm?  In the western US, I've seen shoes up in tree canopies and on fences.  Commonly boots are placed upside down on the posts of barbed wire fences.  As a kid on the ranch, I was told some vague explanation about boots on fences were wards against snakes.  The best kind of boot was one with a rattlesnake fang inbedded in it. [As sort of a warning to inquiring snakes?]  My guess is that the half-remembered tradition was far removed in time/space, and that people sometimes follow rituals without quite knowing why.  After reading what I just wrote, this sounds even to me partly pretentious and silly, but people do silly things.  And, I really want to get away from this dead cat line of thought.  

I don't understand Pekinese as symbols of power in the UK, though.  Maybe in Beijing.....

Barbara Hickman, TxDOT--not their collective opinion!

>>> Martin Perdue <[log in to unmask]> 11/17/1999 2:45:46 PM >>>
HistArch'ers:

Ron May asked me to again express his gratitude for all of the helpful
comments posted to the list regarding his question about architectural
concealment.  He also asked that I post the following on his behalf.  (My
apologies in advance if the cut-and-paste is formatted oddly.)

Marty Perdue
[log in to unmask] 
===================

I want to let you know that the National Museum of Wales sent me a package

of material on "House Charms" from that part of the world. The letter was
hand-written by Robin Gwyndaf, who provided newspaper accounts, letters,
articles and more references.  Unfortunately for me, several news clips
were
published in Welsh.  It seems the tradition began with human sacrifices to

appease earth spirits, then substituted large animals like horses and
bulls.
The earth spirits were alleged to be angry the people cut into the soil to

build house floors and cellars.  After a time, horse skulls substituted
for
freshly killed animals.  The next transition came in the form of cats,
whose
spirits were intended to keep rodents down.  At the same time as the
appearance of cats charms in the 16th century, witch bottles, shoes and
notes appeared.  The latter seem to have had multiple reasons beyond the
earth spirits.  Written charms and curses, shoes and boots, and the
occasional cat seem to be late 19th and early 20th century survivals of
those practices.  This practice seems to be associated with Western
Civilization.

The National Museum dutifully records these features in houses just like
we
record stone walls, trash pits, and rock art.  Their term is "House
Charms."
An article by Larch S. Gaarad, "Additional Examples of Possible House
Charms
in the Isle of Man," Folklore, Vol. 100, page i, 1989, The Manx Museum:
Isle
of Man, notes "stones with powerful associations," stone axes, cold iron,
animals (pig jaw bone, cats, Pekinese dog, human bones) were placed in
houses as charms to accomplish different magic.  The power stones were
often
used as cornerstones for new houses. Iron Age stone axes were frequently
re-used in house floors and also for medicinal purposes.  Cold iron was
believed to ward off evil and keep out rats.  The cats served to keep
rodents out, skeletal remains were installed in chimneys and church
transepts for a variety of reasons.

These practices intensified during the anti-witch campaigns during the
16th
and 17th centuries.  They were quite common in the 18th century, declined
through the19th century and are quite rare as a practicing behavior today.

The Christian campaigns to wipe out pagan sects by maligning them as
sources
of evil coincided with charms concealed in houses, castles and businesses.

Horse skulls were quiet common in 17th century England.

For my issue of boots in the chimney, charms associated with rituals were
placed in the fabric of the building in the base of the chimney breast or
under the doorstep" (Joyce Rushen, 1983, "Hidden Secrets of Old Houses,"
The
Period Home, Period Home Publications, Ltd., Caxton House, High Skeets,
Tentesden, Kent).  The practice also included burying cold iron, like
scissors and knives, at the threshold of the house.  The cats were
believed
to have magical powers against vermin. In one case in a 16th century house

in Southwark, London, a mummified cat with a rat in the mouth was found
hidden in the walls.  The Salisbury Museum exhibits a mummified cat with
mummified young duckling that was concealed in a 1811 house in Cambridge.
In a chimney cavity in Sudbury, England, a 300-year old cat was found and
recorded by the King's Lynn Preservation Society. A female cat with
kittens
was mummified in a wall of a house in Essex.

Oral history associates shoes with good luck and protection.  Over 300
shoes
have been found concealed in houses and inns in England and Wales. The
practice generally involved one shoe or several left foot shoes.  Two such

shoes were found bricked inside a chimney of an old cottage at Sidestrand
and are now in the Cromer Museum.  There is an account of a Dun Hysbys
(wizard) who placed a written charm on a piece of paper sealed in a bottle

that was built into a house in the late 1930s. Of course, both the spoken
words and note of the "builder's rite" are long gone and only the bottle
survived.

The point in all this information is to provide ethnographic evidence for
the many anecdotes discussed in the HistArch Email.  I have learned a
great
deal in the past few weeks concerning folk magic and its vestigial
survival
in North America.  I hope everyone achieved the same level of learning as
I
have in this path.

Ron May
17 November 1999