Once on a time, in the days when our Lord and St Peter used to wander
on earth, they came to a smith’s house. He had made a bargain with the
Devil, that the fiend should have him after seven years, but during
that time he was to be the master of all masters in his trade, and to
this bargain both he and the Devil had signed their names. So he had
stuck up in great letters over the door of his forge: _“Here dwells the
Master over all Masters.”_
Now when our Lord passed by and saw that, he went in.
“Who are you?” he said to the Smith.
“Read what’s written over the door”, said the Smith; “but maybe you
can’t read writing. If so, you must wait till some one comes to help
you.”
Before our Lord had time to answer him, a man came with his horse,
which he begged the Smith to shoe.
“Might I have leave to shoe it?” asked our Lord.
“You may try, if you like”, said the Smith; “you can’t do it so badly
that I shall not be able to make it right again.”
So our Lord went out and took one leg off the horse, and laid it in the
furnace, and made the shoe red-hot; after that, he turned up the ends
of the shoe, and filed down the heads of the nails, and clenched the
points; and then he put back the leg safe and sound on the horse again.
And when he was done with that leg, he took the other fore-leg and did
the same with it; and when he was done with that, he took the
hind-legs—first, the off, and then the near leg, and laid them in the
furnace, making the shoes red-hot, turning up the ends; filing the
heads of the nails, and clenching the points; and after all was done,
putting the legs on the horse again. All the while, the Smith stood by
and looked on.
“You’re not so bad a smith after all”, said he.
“Oh, you think so, do you?” said our Lord.
A little while after came the Smith’s mother to the forge, and called
him to come home and eat his dinner; she was an old, old woman with an
ugly crook on her back, and wrinkles in her face, and it was as much as
she could do to crawl along.
“Mark now, what you see”, said our Lord.
Then he took the woman and laid her in the furnace, and smithied a
lovely young maiden out of her.
“Well”, said the Smith, “I say now, as I said before, you are not such
a bad smith after all. There it stands over my door. _Here dwells the
Master over all Masters_ ; but for all that, I say right out, one
learns as long as one lives”; and with that he walked off to his house
and ate his dinner.
So after dinner, just after he had got back to his forge, a man came
riding up to have his horse shod.
“It shall be done in the twinkling of an eye”, said the Smith, “for I
have just learnt a new way to shoe; and a very good way it is when the
days are short.”
So he began to cut and hack till he had got all the horse’s legs off,
for he said, I don’t know why one should go pottering backwards and
forwards—first, with one leg, and then with another.
Then he laid the legs in the furnace, just as he had seen our Lord lay
them, and threw on a great heap of coal, and made his mates work the
bellows bravely; but it went as one might suppose it would go. The legs
were burnt to ashes, and the Smith had to pay for the horse.
Well, he didn’t care much about that, but just then an old beggar-woman
came along the road, and he thought to himself, “better luck next
time”; so he took the old dame and laid her in the furnace, and though
she begged and prayed hard for her life, it was no good.
“You’re so old, you don’t know what is good for you”, said the Smith;
“now you shall be a lovely young maiden in half no time, and for all
that, I’ll not charge you a penny for the job.”
But it went no better with the poor old woman than with the horse’s
legs.
“That was ill done, and I say it”, said our Lord.
“Oh! for that matter”, said the Smith, “there’s not many who’ll ask
after her, I’ll be bound; but it’s a shame of the Devil, if this is the
way he holds to what is written up over the door.”
“If you might have three wishes from me”, said our Lord, “what would
you wish for?”
“Only try me”, said the Smith, “and you’ll soon know.”
So our Lord gave him three wishes.
“Well”, said the Smith, “first and foremost, I wish that any one whom I
ask to climb up into the pear-tree that stands outside by the wall of
my forge, may stay sitting there till I ask him to come down again. The
second wish I wish is, that any one whom I ask to sit down in my easy
chair which stands inside the workshop yonder, may stay sitting there
till I ask him to get up. Last of all, I wish that any one whom I ask
to creep into the steel purse which I have in my pocket, may stay in it
till I give him leave to creep out again.”
“You have wished as a wicked man”, said St Peter; “first and foremost,
you should have wished for God’s grace and goodwill.”
“I durstn’t look so high as that”, said the Smith; and after that our
Lord and St Peter bade him “good-bye”, and went on their way.
Well, the years went on and on, and when the time was up, the Devil
came to fetch the Smith, as it was written in their bargain.
“Are you ready?” he said, as he stuck his nose in at the door of the
forge.
“Oh”, said the Smith, “I must just hammer the head of this tenpenny
nail first; meantime, you can just climb up into the pear-tree, and
pluck yourself a pear to gnaw at; you must be, both hungry and thirsty
after your journey.”
So the Devil thanked him for his kind offer, and climbed up into the
pear-tree.
“Very good”, said the Smith; “but now, on thinking the matter over, I
find I shall never be able to have done hammering the head of this nail
till four years are out at least, this iron is so plaguey hard; down
you can’t come in all that time, but may sit up there and rest your
bones.”
When the Devil heard this, he begged and prayed till his voice was as
thin as a silver penny that he might have leave to come down; but there
was no help for it. There he was, and there he must stay. At last he
had to give his word of honour not to come again till the four years
were out, which the Smith had spoken of, and then the Smith said, “Very
well, now you may come down.”
So when the time was up, the Devil came again to fetch the Smith.
“You’re ready now, of course”, said he; “you’ve had time enough to
hammer the head of that nail, I should think.”
“Yes, the head is right enough now”, said the Smith; “but still you
have come a little tiny bit too soon, for I haven’t quite done
sharpening the point; such plaguey hard iron I never hammered in all my
born days. So while I work at the point, you may just as well sit down
in my easy chair and rest yourself; I’ll be bound you’re weary after
coming so far.”
“Thank you kindly”, said the Devil, and down he plumped into the easy
chair; but just as he had made himself comfortable, the Smith said, on
second thoughts, he found he couldn’t get the point sharp till four
years were out. First of all, the Devil begged so prettily to be let
out of the chair, and afterwards, waxing wroth, he began to threaten
and scold; but the Smith kept on, all the while excusing himself, and
saying it was all the iron’s fault, it was so plaguy hard, and telling
the Devil he was not so badly off to have to sit quietly in an easy
chair, and that he would let him out to the minute when the four years
were over. Well, at last there was no help for it, and the Devil had to
give his word of honour not to fetch the Smith till the four years were
out; and then the Smith said:
“Well now, you may get up and be off about your business”, and away
went the Devil as fast as he could lay legs to the ground.
When the four years were over, the Devil came again to fetch the Smith,
and he called out, as he stuck his nose in at the door of the forge:
“Now, I know you must be ready.”
“Ready, aye, ready”, answered the Smith; “we can go now as soon as you
please; but hark ye, there is one thing I have stood here and thought,
and thought, I would ask you to tell me. Is it true what people say,
that the Devil can make himself as small as he pleases?”
“God knows, it is the very truth”, said the Devil.
“Oh!” said the Smith; “it _is_ true, is it? then I wish you would just
be so good as to creep into this steel purse of mine, and see whether
it is sound at the bottom, for to tell you the truth, I’m afraid my
travelling money will drop out.”
“With all my heart”, said the Devil, who made himself small in a trice,
and crept into the purse; but he was scarce in when the Smith snapped
to the clasp.
“Yes”, called out the Devil inside the purse; “it’s right and tight
everywhere.”
“Very good”, said the Smith; “I’m glad to hear you say so, but ‘more
haste the worse speed’, says the old saw, and ‘forewarned is
forearmed’, says another; so I’ll just weld these links a little
together, just for safety’s sake”; and with that he laid the purse in
the furnace, and made it red-hot.
“AU! AU!” screamed the Devil, “are you mad? don’t you know I’m inside
the purse?”
“Yes, I do!” said the Smith; “but I can’t help you, for another old saw
says, ‘one must strike while the iron is hot’”; and as he said this, he
took up his sledge-hammer, laid the purse on the anvil, and let fly at
it as hard as he could.
“AU! AU! AU!” bellowed the Devil, inside the purse. “Dear friend, do
let me out, and I’ll never come near you again.”
“Very well!” said the Smith; “now, I think, the links are pretty well
welded, and you may come out”; so he unclasped the purse, and away went
the Devil in such a hurry that he didn’t once look behind him.
Now, some time after, it came across the Smith’s mind that he had done
a silly thing in making the Devil his enemy, for, he said to himself:
“If, as is like enough, they won’t have me in the kingdom of Heaven, I
shall be in danger of being houseless, since I’ve fallen out with him
who rules over Hell.”
So he made up his mind it would be best to try to get either into Hell
or Heaven, and to try at once, rather than to put it off any longer, so
that he might know how things really stood. Then he threw his
sledge-hammer over his shoulder and set off; and when he had gone a
good bit of the way, he came to a place where two roads met, and where
the path to the kingdom of Heaven parts from the path that leads to
Hell, and here he overtook a tailor, who was pelting along with his
goose in his hand.
“Good day”, said the Smith; “whither are you off to?”
“To the kingdom of Heaven”, said the Tailor, “if I can only get into
it”—“but whither are you going yourself?”
“Oh, our ways don’t run together”, said the Smith; “for I have made up
my mind to try first in Hell, as the Devil and I know something of one
another, from old times.”
So they bade one another “Good-bye”, and each went his way; but the
Smith was a stout, strong man, and got over the ground far faster than
the tailor, and so it wasn’t long before he stood at the gates of Hell.
Then he called the watch, and bade him go and tell the Devil there was
some one outside who wished to speak a word with him.
“Go out”, said the Devil to the watch, “and ask him who he is?” So that
when the watch came and told him that, the Smith answered:
“Go and greet the Devil in my name, and say it is the Smith who owns
the purse he wots of; and beg him prettily to let me in at once, for I
worked at my forge till noon, and I have had a long walk since.”
But when the Devil heard who it was, he charged the watch to go back
and lock up all the nine locks on the gates of Hell.
“And, besides”, he said, “you may as well put on a padlock, for if he
only once gets in, he’ll turn Hell topsy-turvy!”
“Well!” said the Smith to himself, when he saw them busy bolting up the
gates, “there’s no lodging to be got here, that’s plain; so I may as
well try my luck in the kingdom of Heaven”; and with that he turned
round and went back till he reached the cross-roads, and then he went
along the path the tailor had taken. And now, as he was cross at having
gone backwards and forwards so far for no good, he strode along with
all his might, and reached the gate of Heaven just as St Peter was
opening it a very little, just enough to let the half-starved tailor
slip in. The Smith was still six or seven strides off the gate, so he
thought to himself, “Now there’s no time to be lost”; and, grasping his
sledge-hammer, he hurled it into the opening of the door just as the
tailor slunk in; and if the Smith didn’t get in then, when the door was
ajar, why I don’t know what has become of him.