shoon

noun
1. archaic. plural of shoe

[origin: chiefly dialect; unknown origin]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Riding down the road at evening
With the stars for steed and shoon
I have heard an old man singing
Underneath a copper moon:
“God, who gemmed the topaz twilights,
Opal portals of the day,
“On your amaranthine mountains,
Why make human souls of clay?”

[from "Always Comes Evening"; to read the complete poem, see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 146; Always Comes Evening, p. 73 and Night Images, p. 67]

I saw the grass on the hillside bend
Beneath no mortal shoon;
A demon ran where the sward began
And capered in the moon.

from “Dance Macabre”; to read the complete poem, see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 203]

A granite wind sighed from the crimson clay desert.
A witch laid her shoon
On the horn of the moon;
The stars in the east
Were the robes of a priest,
And a granite wind roared from the crimson clay desert.

[from "A Far Country"; to read the complete poem, see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 281 and Shadows of Dreams, p. 73]

The night is dark; the fenlands lie asleep;
In crimson fogs is cloaked the bloody moon.
Afar the dreary laughter of a loon
Shakes with vague fear the slumber of the sheep.
The rushes stir like waves upon the deep.
I do not fear, though all about me soon
I hear the whispered tread of ghostly shoon
Glide through the night, some grisly tryst to keep.

[from "Thus Spake Sven the Fool"; to read the complete poem, see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 168 and Singers in the Shadows, p. 36]