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The Smith and the Devil is an Indo-European

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic (paranormal), magic, incantation, enchantments, and mythical ...

. The story is of a

smith Smith may refer to: People * Metalsmith, or simply smith, a craftsman fashioning tools or works of art out of various metals * Smith (given name) * Smith (surname), a family name originating in England, Scotland and Ireland ** List of people wi ...

who makes a pact with a malevolent being—commonly the

Devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t ...

(in later times),

Death Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...

, a

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, ani ...

or a

genie Jinn ( ar, , ') – also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirit or demon, depending on sources) – are invisible creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems and later in Islamic mytho ...

—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 material, he then uses this power to stick the devil to an immovable object, allowing the smith to renege on the bargain. It is indexed as

ATU Atu may refer to: * Atu, a character in Samoan mythology * Atu Bosenavulagi, an Australian rules footballer * Atu, Iran, a village in Iran * Atu Moli, New Zealand rugby union player * Atu'u is a village on Tutuila Island, American Samoa ATU may re ...

330. The tale was collected by

Giambattista Basile Giambattista Basile (February 1566 – February 1632) was an Italian poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector. His collections include the oldest recorded forms of many well-known (and more obscure) European fairy tales. He is chiefly remembere ...

in ''Lo cunto de li cunti'' of 1634, then the

Brothers Grimm The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...

in their ''

Children's and Household Tales ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', originally known as the ''Children's and Household Tales'' (german: Kinder- und Hausmärchen, lead=yes, ), is a German collection of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers or "Brothers Grimm", Jacob and Wilhelm, first publis ...

'' (published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815), 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.

Edith Hodgetts Edith M. S. Hodgetts (died 1902) was a Russian-born British writer of children's stories, folk tales, and fairy tales. Biography She was born in Russia, where she spent her childhood, and was god daughter to Michael Nicolaevitch and Sophie Nico ...

' 1891 book ''Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tsar'' collects a Russian version, while

Ruth Manning-Sanders Ruth Manning-Sanders (21 August 1886 – 12 October 1988) was an English poet and author born in Wales, known for a series of children's books for which she collected and related fairy tales worldwide. She published over 90 books in her lifetime ...

included a Gascon version as "The Blacksmith and the Devil" in her 1970 book ''A Book of Devils and Demons''.. Richard Chase presents a version from the Southern Appalachians, called "Wicked John and the Devil." According to

George Monbiot George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( ; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a regular column for ''The Guardian'' and is the author of a number of books. Monbiot grew up in Oxfordsh ...

, the blacksmith is a motif of folklore throughout (and beyond) Europe associated with malevolence (the medieval vision of Hell may draw upon the image the smith at his forge), and several variant tales tell of smiths entering into a pact with the devil to obtain fire and the means of smelting metal. According to research applying

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

techniques to linguistics by folklorist Sara Graça da Silva and 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 The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch ...

speaking world from India to Scandinavia, possibly being first told in Indo-European 6,000 years ago in the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

. Folklorist

John Lindow John Frederick Lindow (born July 23, 1946) is an American philologist who is Professor Emeritus of Old Norse and Folklore at University of California, Berkeley. He is a well known authority on Old Norse religion and literature. Biography John Lin ...

, however, notes that a word for "smith" may not have existed in Indo-European, and if so the tale may not be that old. However, according to historical linguist

Václav Blažek Václav Blažek (born 23 April 1959 in Sokolov, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech historical linguist. He is a professor at Masaryk University Masaryk University (MU) ( cs, Masarykova univerzita; la, Universitas Masarykiana Brunensis) is the seco ...

: "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".

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith and the Devil, The European fairy tales Grimms' Fairy Tales Fictional smiths The Devil in fairy tales Deal with the Devil Fiction about personifications of death ATU 300-399

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