Blacksmithy

“ In south Germany and the Tyrol, when a blacksmith rests from his work on a Saturday evening, he strikes with his hammer three blows upon the anvil, thereby chaining up the Devil for the ensuing week. And so likewise, while hammering a horse-shoe into shape, he strikes the anvil instead of the shoe every fourth or fifth blow, and thus makes doubly secure the chain wherewith Satan is bound. [103]
Blacksmiths are usually clever enough to recognize the Devil, even when disguised as a gentleman. ”

“ He was afraid that if he told the truth his companions would think him a coward for not fighting the demon.
'What a pity!' cried the Prince, 'but we must just cook some more. Here! you Blacksmith! do you prepare the dinner, while the Carpenter and I have another look at the city.'
Now, no sooner had the Blacksmith begun to sniff the savoury smell, and think how nice the cakes and stew would taste, than the little warrior appeared to him also. And he was quite as brave at first as the Knifegrinder had been, and afterwards he too fell on his knees and prayed for mercy. ”

“ Near the Mill House half a mile below it began to hurry, and always I had the stir of the rapids in me.
Feet accustomed to the pace of the plow were going into town. The clink of an anvil broke the silence. I had often watched the great blacksmith as he worked. That clinking indicated the flow of his thought and the strength of his convictions. Words fell between hammer-strokes, and were often as hot as the beaten metal.
The shop of B. Crocket & Son, whither I was bound, stood on a narrow byway bordered with small wooden buildings. ”

“ She takes her place by the window as if perfectly at home.
Blacksmith and horse are old friends who understand each other well. The man has won the animal’s confidence by the care he has taken to fit the shoes comfortably. Though a plain, rough fellow, he is of a kindly nature and knows his business thoroughly. The shop is a quaint little place such as one finds in English villages. The thick masonry of the walls shows how old the building is; the floor is paved with large blocks of stone. Between the anvil and the forge there is only space enough for the horse to stand. ”

“ Some of my readers may, perhaps, remember that English blacksmiths are equally independent of lucifer matches, flint and steel, and other recognised modes of fire-raising. They place a small piece of soft iron on the anvil, together with some charcoal-dust, and hammer it furiously. The result is that enough heat is evolved to light the charcoal, and so to enable the blacksmith to set to work. ”

“ As the smith wields his hammer with an energy which has something fierce and vengeful about it, he automatically contracts his brow into a frown. He does this partly, no doubt, to protect his eyes from the flying flakes of metal; but if you watch the face of the man who holds the iron on the anvil, you will find that although he lowers his eyebrows somewhat as the sledges descend, he does not scowl as do the strikers. In most blacksmiths the constant exercise of the corrugator supercilii muscles causes a permanent frown, and gives the face a somewhat hard expression ”

“ The smith's tools were of many sorts; but the chief were his hammer, pincers, chisel, tongs, and anvil. It is astonishing what a variety of articles he turned out of his smithy by the help of these rude implements. In the tooling, chasing, and consummate knowledge of the capabilities of iron, he greatly surpassed the modern workman; for the mediaeval blacksmith was an artist as well as a workman. The numerous exquisite specimens of his handicraft which exist in our old gateways, church doors, altar railings, and ornamented dogs and andirons, still serve as types for continual reproduction. ”

“ As we go by, the smith is hard at work, the sparks fly merrily, and under the ponderous strokes of his hammer the anvil rings as melodiously as it did a hundred years ago, when, on a bright morning, Handel, while taking a constitutional with his host, Charles Legh, of Adlington, listened to it and first conceived the idea of the “Harmonious Blacksmith,” the score of which he wrote down immediately on his return to the hall, where it was long preserved. The park, which is well stocked with deer, is of considerable extent, varied and picturesque, and marked by much unrestrained beauty ”

“ The blacksmith's shop, the centre of the primitive civilization, had soon an expectant group in its widely flaring doors, for the smith had had enough of the war, and had come back to wistfully, hopelessly haunt his anvil like some uneasy ghost visiting familiar scenes in which he no more bears a part;—a minié-ball had shattered his stanch hammer-arm, and his duties were now merely advisory to a clumsy apprentice. ”

“ There is no other blacksmith in the village to whom people can go. Besides, I like to work.”
It would seem so, from the way the sturdy old man rained blow after blow on a glowing piece of iron, hammering it into shape, while the red sparks flew all around.
When the iron cooled he thrust it into the forge [144] fire, and, with bared arms he worked the bellows handle causing the flames and sparks to shoot up the chimney, and lighting the smithy with a yellow glow.
“Can’t I help at something?” asked Dan. ”

“ The elder brother rode to the king's court just as he had said he would; and as time went on he won great honor there and was made one of the king's counselors.
And the younger brother built himself a blacksmith's shop by the side of a road and worked there merrily from early morn till the stars shone at night. He was called the Mighty Blacksmith because of his strength, and the Honest Blacksmith because he charged no more than his work was worth, and the [17] Master Blacksmith because no other smith in the countryside could shoe a horse so well and speedily as he. ”

“ So the Knifegrinder king remained behind with his bride and his barley plant, but Prince Lionheart, the Blacksmith, and the Carpenter set forth on their travels.
By and by they came to another desolate city, lying deserted in the wilderness, and as before they wandered through it, wondering at the tall palaces, the empty streets, and the vacant shops where never a human being was to be seen, until the Blacksmith, suddenly recollecting, said, 'I remember now! This must be the city where the dreadful ghost lives which kills every one. ”

“ Blacksmiths are, as a class, the most unenlightened, pig-headed men in the world. I can trace the history of this poor beast's sufferings right down. First some man, with more theory than sense, took her feet, perfect from the hand of the Creator, who, knowing enough to make a horse, knew enough to make its feet, and with his knife trimmed the frog and thinned the sole until he could feel it yield when he pressed on it. ”

“ If in a blacksmith's forge you incautiously placed your hand upon a piece of iron, and it burned your fingers, and if the blacksmith told you that the iron had lain there for half an hour, you would not doubt that it must have been much hotter when the blacksmith drew it from the fire than you found it to be. ”

“ On another occasion, the blacksmith of the village, a fellow who cared neither for ghost nor devil, slept with John, the footman, that he also might hear the disturbances, and be cured of his incredulity, when there "came a noise in the room, as if one had been shoeing a horse, and somewhat came, as it were, with a pair of pincers," snipping and snapping at the poor blacksmith's nose the greater part of the night. ”

“ Thus the open space between the river and the House of Stone was thronged and clamorous all day, captives rubbed elbows with their friends, concerted plans of escape, or then and there slipped into the thickest of the crowd and made their way to the first blacksmith, with whom the price of iron outweighed any risk he took. But even on their way to the blacksmith's shop, their fetters called for no notice in Omdurman. Slaves wore them as a daily habit, and hardly a street in all that long brown treeless squalid city was ever free from the clink of a man who walked in chains. ”

“ The draw-well is the source from which they pump up idle rumours, and the blacksmith’s shop is the place at which they forge the proofs, and turn them to shape, ‘giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’ They lie like devils through thick and thin. They tell and believe all incredible things; and the greater the improbability, the more readily and greedily is it swallowed, for it imposes more on the imagination. ”

“ A blacksmith was lately pleasing himself at his anvil, with observing that though his trade was hot and sooty, laborious and unhealthy, yet he had the honour of living by his hammer, he got his bread like a man, and if his son should rise in the world, and keep his coach, nobody could reproach him that his father was a tailor. ”

“ Travelling from the Anglo-Saxon period to other lands and recent times, we come to Abyssinia, where the trade of blacksmith is hereditary, and considered as more or less disgraceful, from the fact that blacksmiths are, with very rare exceptions, believed to be all sorcerers, and are opprobriously called 'Bouda.' They are supposed to have the power of turning themselves into hyænas, and sometimes into other animals; as being, in fact, either tormented by or allied with evil spirits, like the Middle-Age saints. ”

“ How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish- spear! Still happier were they, when, at night, with his sons and nephew, they were allowed to huddle on the forge, sitting on the bottoms of old buckets or boxes, and watching the fire, from the paly blue border of flame in the edge of the damp charcoal, to the reddening, glowing column that shot with an arrowy stream of sparks up the wide-throated chimney. ”

“ I ask you to salute the blacksmith Arras, who, when his country was in danger, crushed the invaders as effectually as ever his right arm, wielding sledge, crushed hot iron.”
A red flush of confusion overspread the face of the blacksmith, but loud murmurs broke out among the nobility, and none stepped forward to salute him. One, indeed, stepped forward, but it was to appeal to the Emperor.
“Your Majesty,” exclaimed Count Bertrich, “this is an unwarranted breach of our privileges. It is not meet that we, holding noble names, should be asked to consort with an untitled blacksmith. ”

“ As they came near they heard the sound of hammers, and judged that it must be a blacksmith’s forge. Entering in, they found the goodman of the place busy with his work. He was of a mean and wretched aspect, spent, it would seem, with weariness. His eyes were hollow, and his cheeks fallen in, like to one who had been many months in a prison cell; his face was begrimed with smoke and his beard ragged, as if neither comb nor shears had ever passed upon it. Rude were his garments, and hanging in rags, and his hands were blistered with burning, with nails long left unpared. ”

“ Nominoë rose, took up and opened his traveling wallet, and drew from it the iron head of a heavy blacksmith's hammer.
"Look at this, Bertha! This shall be joined to our family relics—sad and painful relics of a serf family."
"What sort of a hammer is that? It carries, cut into the iron head the Breton words Ez-Libr."
"They mean To Be Free. It was the device of Tankeru the blacksmith. He used this hammer as his weapon during the insurrection. I arrived this morning before dawn in the forest of Mezlean, feeling greatly alarmed over the fate of Tina's father. ”

“ But to be a blacksmith in ever so rude and humble a way, certain tools are absolutely necessary; the ambitious one must have a fire, a hammer, an anvil, and last, though most important of all, a pair of bellows. A fire he has; for a hammer his old stone-headed club does service; a handy bit of rock serves as an anvil; it is the bellows which is the toughest obstacle ”

“ Cattle and horses were now to be shod, and they began to feel greatly the need of a blacksmith. If a chain or axe was broken, a horse or yoke of oxen to be shod, there was no smith nearer than eleven miles, and no road except a bridle-path through spotted trees. Previous to this, they had worked their oxen without shoes, and horses were only shod forward. But now they wanted to haul logs and shingles on the ice of the river, and they must be shod. They were in great need of a smith, and yet there was not work sufficient to afford a blacksmith constant employment, and consequently, a living. ”

“ In this case he fastens an iron spike to the point. On the same principle the blacksmith’s anvil is used as a hail charm, and any one who dares to sit on it is likely to be punished for the contempt by an attack of boils. ”

“ A country blacksmith often unites in his own person, by the very necessity of his position, the various talents of the locksmith, the edge-tool maker, the gunsmith, the machinist, the wheel-wright, and the horse-doctor: the world of thought would be astonished at the knowledge that is under the hammer of this man, whom the people, always inclined to jest, nickname brule-fer. ”

“ The natives of Southern Africa are wonderful proficients in forging iron, and indeed a decided capability for the blacksmith’s art seems to be inherent in the natives of Africa, from north to south and from east to west. None of the tribes can do very much with the iron, but the little which they require is worked in perfection. As is the case with all uncivilized beings, the whole treasures of the art are lavished on their weapons; and so if we wish to see what an African savage can do with iron, we must look at his spears, knives, and arrows—the latter indeed being but spears in miniature. ”