ABSTRACT
There lived and dwelt this blacksmith and he had a son who was about six, a lad boisterous and clever. Once an old man went to church and stood before an icon of the Last Judgment and there he saw a devil drawn there, and he was truly fearsome, black with horns and a tail. "Oh, how awful," he thought, "I'll paint one of those in my smithy." So he hired a painter and ordered him to sketch on the doors of the smithy a devil exactly like the one he had seen in the church. So the painter sketched it and from then on the old man, whenever he went into the smithy, always looked at the devil and said, "Greetings, fellow countryman!" And then he would stoke up the fire in his furnace and set to work. So this smith lived at peace with the devil for about ten years and then he took sick and died. Then his son became the master and took up the blacksmith's occupation. But he didn't want to respect the devil as the old man had. When he would come into the smithy in the morning, he never greeted him and instead of a kind word, he'd take the biggest hammer he had around, heat it up, and then touch it to the devil's forehead about three times before he started to work. And then when God ordained a holiday, he would go to church, place candles for the saints, and then go up to the devil and spit in his eyes. Three years passed by and he still treated the unclean one every morning either to the hammer or to some spit.
