Anvil

“ Next morning, the strange journeyman was to begin to work, but when the master brought the glowing bar, and the youth struck his first blow, the iron flew asunder, and the anvil sank so deep into the earth, that there was no bringing it out again. ”

“ The men had come forward to surround the anvil, with the tiny little chap upon its massive top, and not one in all the groups was there who did not feel that, left alone with the timid bit of a pilgrim, he could get him to talking and laughing in the briefest of moments. ”

“ Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations. ”

“ No wild animal stirred in his uneasy rest or even breathed less deeply in his hunting dreams, at the flitting of the shadows across his hidden lair.
The mystery, the beauty, and the terror went beyond the black border of the forest. Out in the open and over the clearing, the mists from the swamp mingling with the darkness gave everything a look of fantastic unreality yet wilder than it had worn earlier in the night. Dense earth-clouds were thus massed about the base of Anvil Rock. ”

“ Build we a Bower for heavens darling in the grizly deep
Build we the Mundane Shell around the Rock of Albion
The Bands of Heaven flew thro the air singing & shouting to Urizen
10 Some fix'd the anvil, some the loom erected, some the plow
And harrow formd & framd the harness of silver & ivory
The golden compasses, the quadrant & the rule & balance
They erected the furnaces, they formd the anvils of gold beaten in mills
Where winter beats incessant, fixing them firm on their base
15 The bellows began to blow & the Lions of Urizen stood round the anvil ”

“ The smith’s anvil is generally placed loose upon a wooden block, the root-end of an oak tree being preferred. The anvils used in cutlery, and for files, are fastened into a large block of stone, which is doubtless better than having the anvil loose upon a small block. The more firmly the anvil is connected with the earth, and the substance it stands upon, the greater will be the effect of the blow of the hammer. ”

“ THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY
He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she sang:
“When God was making the world, (Swift is the wind and white is the fire) The feet of his people danced the stars; There was laughter and swinging bells, And clanging iron and breaking breath, The hammers of heaven making the hills, The vales on the anvil of God. (Wild is the fire and low is the wind.) ”

“ After hardening, the face is ground till it is perfectly even, and the edges made sharp, or round, as may be required. When the anvil is required for planishing metals, it is polished with emery, and afterwards with crocus. ”

“ Every one who feels sick or unwell now steps up to the anvil, and the master of the ceremonies sprinkles a mixture of pigs’ blood, water, and herbs on the joints of his body, and finally on his head, wishing him a long life. Lastly, the patient takes the chopping-knife, heats it in the furnace, lays it on the anvil, and strikes it seven times with the hammer. After that he has only to cool the knife in water and the iron cure is complete. ”

“ A devil entering a hovel is set upon by a peasant, who pummels him with a stick, while an old man cries out, "Hit him hard, hard, my son; he is an aristocrat;" and under the whole is written, "Is the devil, then, to be always at our door?" Again, we have the three orders forging the constitution with great ardor, the blacksmith holding the book on the anvil, while the priest and noble swing the sledge-hammer. ”

“ Addressing a young man, I asked him if he would help me to carry the anvil outside, which we proceeded to do, before the old fellow realized what we were about, taking it to a safe distance, and leaving him sitting there with his work all around him. ”

“ The length is just sufficient for them to be held fast between the finger and thumb, and so strong as not to bend with the strokes of the hammer, the intensity of which may be best conceived by the depth of the impression. The anvil is placed in the face of a strong wooden post, to which a wooden seat is attached, at a small distance below the level of the anvil’s face. ”

“ And when matins and the first mass was done, there was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, like unto a marble stone, and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that said thus:—Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England. ”

“ Sometimes there are properties and effects that take special ingenuity and skill. Many boys have unusual ability in solving these problems. In the first scene of Men of Iron an anvil was needed. One boy asked to be responsible for the anvil. There was a miniature anvil in the classroom that had been used 104the year before by the class that had given Sigurd, the Volsung. ”

“ After having led me from workshop to workshop, the director took me into a model smithy. Imagine three tiers of anvils, as many bellows beating out, with their Aeolian breath, the rhythm of the red dance of the flames; a hundred men, their chests and stomachs protected by leather aprons as inflexible as armor, hairy, bearded, black, strong, their arms bare to the bulging muscles, quickly tapping hammers ”

“ And on life’s anvil flung it down, white hot:
A glowing thing, of selfishness and fire,
With blow on blow, I made the anvil ring;
(Ere Thou cam’st questioning) .
‘The hammer, Self-Control, beat hard on it ”

“ An oblong piece of iron on the ground was the anvil, and a small vice was fixed on the projecting root of a tree outside. These, with a few files and hammers, were literally the only tools with which an old man makes these fine guns, finishing then himself from the rough iron and wood. ”

“ Sometimes they fall back on a stratum that crumbles away from behind them more easily: but then again p. 230they have to roll over rock that yields to them scarcely more perceptibly than the anvil to the serpent. ”

“ In general, they confine themselves to small articles, such as rings and nails; they mend old pots and kettles; make knives, seals, and needles; and sometimes they work in tin and brass. Their materials, tools, and apparatus, are of a very inferior p. 50kind. The anvil is a stone ”

“ Not a big beast, you will say; but in the wild he ruled big, being snaky and of a fighting turn, so to say. He was, in fact, the very devil, and he looked it—hard as nickel-steel. A dull, tawny devil, with a peculiar purplish sheen in some lights—due to the longer hair—on his short, hard coat, turning black on his throat, legs, and tail—as if he had walked in black somewhere—and finished off with patches of creamy white on head and ears. There was an extraordinary air of hard, tough, cool, cruel, fighting-power and slow ferocity about the beast—a very natural born gladiator of the wild places. ”

“ The devil manufactures arrows, Lempo leaf-headed spears from branches of the 'fiery' oak, from splinters of the evil tree in a doorless, windowless smithy. An arrow from the devil, a leaf-headed spear from Lempo whizzed into a wretched human being's skin, into the body of one born of a woman. ”

“ Why should God curse the serpent for what had really been done by the devil? Did Satan remain in the body of the serpent, and in some mysterious manner share his punishment? Is it true that when we kill a snake we also destroy an evil spirit, or is there but one devil, and did he perish at the death of the first serpent? Is it on account of that transaction in the Garden of Eden, that all the descendants of Adam and Eve known as Jews and Christians hate serpents? ”

“ In gloomy caves I see the sacred serpents coiled, waiting for their sacrificial prey. I see their open jaws, their restless tongues, their glittering eyes, their cruel fangs. I see them seize and crush in many horrid folds the helpless children given by fathers and mothers to appease the Serpent-God. I look again. I see temples wrought of stone and gilded with barbaric gold. I see altars red with human blood. I see the solemn priests thrust knives in the white breasts of girls. I look again. I see other temples and other altars, where greedy flames devour the flesh and blood of babes. ”

“ Whilst the rain descended in pitiless torrents, a continual chuckle of the highest merriment, which ran through all the various notes of a clear throat, resounded afar amid the crunching of bones and munching of flesh—a deeper growl from some larger beast of prey, now and then varying the infernal harmony, to be followed by another ringing laugh as of a whole legion of devils. ”

“ Not a blade of grass, not a flower, not even the hardiest lichen, springs up to relieve the utter deathliness of the scene. The eye wanders from one black, shapeless mass to another, and there is ever the same suggestion of hideous monster life—of goblin convulsions and strange fiend-like agonies in some age gone by. ”

“ The whole heaven was darkened by the dense cloud of arrows, through which the flashes, made by the arrows striking against one another, played like lightning, and rivers of blood flowed, swollen with the gore of many elephants and horses wounded with weapons, in which the bodies of heroes moved like alligators. ”

“ Along the banks stand devils with long iron poles with burning hooks, who fish them out again, mutilate their bodies with the red-hot iron, and when they cry aloud in their madness for water, pour molten iron down their scorching throats. ”

“ Beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking East between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones’ throw from us appeared and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. ”

“ And I saw the devils hovering about over the young man like flies, and some of them wished to settle on his eyes, and some on his mouth, and behold, the angel of the Lord was going round him, and was driving away from him the devils with a sword of fire; now the devils did not dare to approach the elder man. ”

“ Upon this, the devils being very much exasperated, one night, made a noise so dreadful, that the walls shook. “They transformed themselves into the shapes of all sorts of beasts, lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, asps, scorpions and wolves; every one of which moved and acted agreeably to the creatures which they represented; the lion roaring and seeming to make towards him, the bull to butt, the serpent to creep, and the wolf to run at him, and so in short all the rest; so that Anthony was tortured and mangled by them so grievously that his bodily pain was greater than before.” ”

“ To this evil being, among others, the following designations are applied in the Hebrew Scriptures: Serpent, as in Gen. iii.: “Jehovah Elohim said unto the serpent, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” Thee, the “tempter,” “the dragon, that old serpent which is the Devil and Satan.” Rev. xx. “The great dragon, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” Rev. xii. The apostle expresses his fear “lest by any means” the false teachers should corrupt his converts, “as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety.” ”

“ At Hurdwar, in the great fair, among jugglers and tumblers, horse-tamers and snake-charmers, fakirs and pilgrims, I saw a small boy possessed of a devil,—an authentic devil, as of yore, meet for miraculous driving-out. ”

“ That “the devil is an ass” is a truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the débris of exploded mythologies adrift on the [Pg 85] stream of popular tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies, rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents, toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as incarnations and instruments of the devil ”

“ I alluded to the boiling of the herbs according to the charmer’s orders, with the result, among other things, of bringing the witch to the spot. This is, however, not the only instance of the importance and strange efficacy of fire. For when a beast dies on a farm, of course it dies, according to the old-fashioned view of [305] things as I understand it, from the influence of the evil eye or the interposition of a witch. ”

“ If the beauty of a creature fascinates you, remember that the serpent of Hell lies hidden beneath it, anxious and ready to kill or at least wound you, and say to him—"Ah, accursed serpent, with what subtlety dost thou lay wait to devour me!" ”

“ Accordingly we are told that the devils appear clad in filthy and tattered garments; that they dwell in deserts, bogs, and miry places—some of them in caves and dens like those of wild beasts; that among the objects by which they are surrounded, are dreary deserts, rocky and barren wastes, thorns and thistles, ferocious beasts and venomous reptiles, dirty pools and heaps of filth. And these things (all of which are spiritual in their nature) are but the embodied forms, under the law of correspondence, of the filthy and infernal loves of the evil spirits themselves. ”

“ They have goggle eyes and open mouths, and their faces are in distorted and exaggerated action. One, painted bright red, tramples on a writhing devil painted bright pink; another, painted emerald green, tramples on a sea- green devil, an indigo blue monster tramples on a sky-blue fiend, and a bright pink monster treads under his clawed feet a flesh- coloured demon. ”

“ The wolves all the while were prowling about, and sniffing in the air, to make sure I was there. Not a bit of sleep did I get that night, and when the morning came, I was thankful, for one by one the wolves slunk off and I was left alone. When all was still again and things looked safe, my thoughts turned to the monk's threat, so I got down off my perch, and crept upon my knees, searching for traces of the blood and feathers of the crow. ”