THE SPIRITUALITY OF BLACKSMITHS - Susan Price
'HEAD AND TALES' by Susan Price: cover by Andrew Price The first story in my new e-book collection of folk-legends, HEAD AND TALES, is ‘ The Boy and The Blacksmith’ . In short, the story is of a blacksmith challenged to a trial of skill by the King’s goldsmith. On his way to the trial, the blacksmith meets ‘a raggedy navvy-boy’, who tags along with him. Before the king and court, the blacksmith makes mundane horse-shoes, a scythe blade and a ploughshare – which will, he claims, ‘feed people’. The navvy-boy visits the goldsmith’s shop and reports that the goldsmith is making wondrous things – a living apple-tree, a living fish, a corn-wreath, all of gold. With the boy’s help, the blacksmith creates an iron deer, which kills the gold tree; an iron o...