A. WHO COLLECTED IT?
The Norwegian folk tale “The Smith and the Devil” was collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe and published in Asbjørnsen and Moes Norwegian Folkeeventyr 1841-1844, and in Asbjørnsen's Norwegian Folkeeventyr: New Collection 1868. The present edition “Folk and Fairy Tales”, 7th edition (New York, 714 Broadway; A. C. Armstrong and Son) was published in 1883. This collection contains 33 tales and was translated in English by Hans Lien Braekstad.
According to the folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and the anthropologist Jamie Tehrani "The Smith and the Devil" may be one of the oldest European folk tales, with the basic plot stable throughout the Indo-European speaking world from India to Scandinavia, possibly being first told in Indo-European 6,000 years ago in the Bronze Age.
B. SUMMARY
The tale is about a smith who made a deal with the devil that if in seven years’ time he can make the smith the best master in his profession he will be his. But in those days two saints were travelling on earth. When they saw the message: “Here lives the Master over all Masters”- written on the smithy door, they asked him who he was. He answered that they should read what was written on the door. So the saints decided to teach him a lesson and one of them shoed a horse in a different way from the normal: he took the legs of the horse, made the shoes in the forge and then put them back in their place. When the smith’s old mother came to ask him to go and eat dinner, the saint took her and put her in fire and forged a young lady out of her. After the smith had dinner he came back to the smithy and he had to shoe the horse of a second client. He thought that he could use the method taught by the saint, but he didn’t succeed. On the contrary, he burnt the legs of the horse and had to pay for it. In addition, when he heard a poor old woman begging he thought that he could show his mastery/ craftsmanship, but instead he killed her.
The saints appeared again and told him that what he did was not good at all. One of them gave him three wishes. The wishes were: 1. “when I ask anybody to climb up the pear-tree just outside the smithy, he must sit there till I myself ask him to come down again”; 2. “any one whom I ask to sit down in the arm-chair in the smithy there, must remain in it till I myself ask him to get up”; 3. “I wish that if I ask anybody to creep into the steel-ring purse (...) he must remain there till I give him leave to creep out again.” After he made his three wishes the saint concluded that his wishes aren’t good enough and that he should have wished to go into Heaven.
At the time agreed, the Devil came for the smith and the smith made him pass through the first challenge: climb the pear-tree – because the thought that the Devil was hungry after the journey. The Devil had to stay in the pear-tree for four years, sufficient time for the smith to get the head of the nail finished. When the time was up the Devil reappeared and the smith made him stay in the arm-chair, telling him that he must be tired. Again the Devil had to sit down on that arm-chair for another four years, until the smith could get the point of the nail properly sharpened. After the Devil promised to return only in four years’ time the smith let him go. Those four years passed and the Devil came again for the third time. During this last visit the smith asked him to make himself as small as he could and creep into his steel-ring purse to see if there are any holes at the bottom just to make sure that he was not going to lose his money for the journey. The Devil made himself small, crept into the purse and the smith locked him there, put the purse in fire until it became red, took his sledge-hammer and hammered it away hardly. The Devil begged for endurance and the smith let him go.
Thinking that he had made a mistake by making the Devil his enemy he thought that he will remain homeless and might not be accepted neither in Heaven nor in Hell. He started a journey to these two places taking with him only one object: his sledge-hammer. When he got to a place, the road divided into two small roads: one was leading to paradise and the other one to Hell. That was when he met a tailor with his smoothing-iron in his hand. They greeted one another and the tailor told him that he was going to paradise, the smith then answered that he wanted to go to Hell to try his luck. When the smith got to the gate of Hell and after the Devil was informed about his apparition there, the gatekeeper was told to lock the nine locks of the gate and put an extra padlock as well. It was the moment that made him change his mind and try the other way: the paradise. Following the road taken by the tailor, he got to the gate of the paradise just as “St. Peter opened it a little”. The tailor entered the paradise, but about the smith the author tells us that he’s not quite certain whether he entered the Heaven or not and not even what has happened to him from then on.
C. Position in the Aarne-Thomson-Uther Index:
It belongs to the category of the RELIGIOUS TALES 750-849, the subcategory 753: Christ and the smith - Christ takes off the horse's foot in order to shoe him and rejuvenates an old woman by putting her in the fire. The smith tries disastrously to do the same.
D. Characters and functions according to Vladimir Propp
1. Initial situation: The smith made a deal with the devil that in seven years’ time his soul will belong to him if the smith will be the best in his profession.
9. Villainy: The smith kills both the horse and the poor old woman.
Lack : The smith is in search of an eternal place – there is “a risk of being homeless” once he ended his relationship with the devil.
12. Departure: The blacksmith starts a journey to two places: Hell and Heaven.
13. Testing: The smith tests the Devil by making him pass through three challenges, but also the saints test the smith and give him a lesson – he is not the best in his profession.
14. Reaction: Finally the smith lets him go, but the Devil forbids him to enter the Hell. The smith tries the other way – the Paradise.
15. Receipt of a magical agent: The saints that offer the smith the three wishes represented by the pear-tree, the arm-chair and the steel-ring purse.
16. Guidance: Earth, paradise, Hell.
17. Struggle: There is a “fight” between the Devil and the smith to gain his soul and also between the saints and the smith.
18. Branding: The devil is harassed by the smith when he’s inside the iron purse and finally the smith “opened the purse, and the devil rushed away in such a hurry that he did not even look behind him.”
26. Task: The smith must shoe a horse and make an old woman young.
31. Punishment: The tale doesn’t say whether the smith entered or not in Heaven. He must be still waiting at the door.
The hero of the story: the smith.
The villain: the Devil.
The magical helper: the Saints.
3. SOME COMMENTS ON SIMILAR FAIRY TALES
A similar story is “The old man made young again” by Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm, in which we find out that our Lord and Saint Peter stopped one evening at the house of the smith. An old and ill beggar passed by and the Lord made him young again in the forge of the smith. The next day the smith tried this with his mother, but instead of making her younger he only tormented her. At that time his wife and daughter-in-law were pregnant and by hearing the woman’s cry they born two boys. The newborns that were not looking like men, but like apes, ran away in the forest, “and from them sprang the race of apes.”
SOURCES:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Folktaleshttps://archive.org/stream/MorphologyOf ... 7/mode/2uphttps://archive.org/stream/folkandfairy ... 7/mode/2uphttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Old_ ... oung_Again
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