Telling the Bees and Other Customs by Mark Norman

Author:Mark Norman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

Where iron is normally employed to keep witches out of a property, here the blacksmith does the opposite and traps one inside. In a similar way, cemeteries were often surrounded with an iron fence because it was thought that this would contain the souls of the dead and stop them from wandering.

Although there are many connections between blacksmiths and the devil, witches or the supernatural, we do find connections of a more religious type as well. In many places it is considered to be wrong for a blacksmith to handle shoes and nails on Good Friday. Nails would not be hammered on that day out of respect, in remembrance of the crucifixion. Similarly, it is said that the blacksmith is lucky, as is his place of work, because he refused to make the crucifixion nails. The tinker (a wandering tin-smith) is always down on his luck because he was willing to do so.

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