The Smith and the Devil

genie—selling his soul for some power, then tricks the devil out of his prize. In one version, the smith gains the power to weld any materials, then uses this power to stick the devil to an immovable object, allowing the smith to renege on the bargain.^[1] It is indexed as ATU 330.^[2]

Children's and Household Tales (published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815),^[4] although they removed it in editions of 1822 and later, substituting "Brother Lustig" and relegating references to it to the notes for "Gambling Hansel", a very similar tale.^[5] Edith Hodgetts' 1891 book Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tsar collects a Russian version,^[6] while Ruth Manning-Sanders included a Gascon version as "The Blacksmith and the Devil" in her 1970 book A Book of Devils and Demons.^{[citation needed]} Richard Chase presents a version from the Southern Appalachians, called "Wicked John and the Devil."^[7]

phylogenetic techniques to linguistics by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and anthropologist Jamie Tehrani,^[2] "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.^[1][9][10] Folklorist John Lindow, however, notes that a word for "smith" may not have existed in Indo-European, and if so the tale may not be that old.^[10] However, according to historical linguist Václav Blažek: "The apparent fact, that there is no common designation of "smith" in the Indo-European lexicon, could be disappointing at first sight, but the same may be said about other crafts, including those using more ‘archaic’ technologies than smithery." According to Blažek, the inherited designations for smith attested in the mythological context are "a witness of a remarkably important role of the institution of smithery in the period of disintegration of the Indo-European dialect continuum".^{[citation needed}