The association between iron and magic is widespread, and stems from long before the Iron Age. The basic story is that of a blacksmith who outwits the devil, causing him to be fixed to a spot and only given leave when he had shared the dark magical arts of smelting and metalworking with the smith. A story ‘as old as time’ has of course mutated and diverged through innumerable retellings, and been adapted to fit varied cultural values. These findings were made known during 2016 in an article published in the Royal Society Open Science Journal, in which Sara Graça da Silva and Jamshid Tehrani traced population migrations and linguistic commonalities to determine that the oldest tale of all was “The Smith and the Devil”. Some fairy tales are older than any of the languages used to tell them… and the oldest ‘folk-tale’ of all seems to be that of a blacksmith forging a deal with the devil.
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