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Smiths and Magic

Kondoru

Kondoru

Beloved of Ra
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I was reading in a book called `Albion, a guide to legendary britain by Jennifer Westwood, in it it mentions an archelogical dig

The calling of smith has long been associated with secrecy and magic in his `prehistoric communities of the british isle (1947) V Gordon Childe tells us that a group of smiths lived and worked in a limestone cave excavated by a branch of the heathery burn near stanthorpe in country durham. various tools of their trade were found, as well as products and evidence of wealth, yet they lived apart from the community in a dank and narrow cave

isnt this a fastinating tale? has anyone any more info??
 
do you mean stanhope?

never heard of stanthorpe but will ask about
 
I think smiths have had a love-fear relationship with others in several cultures. Due to being very useful, but at the same time seen as having special powers which scared people. As for dank and narrow, might be for practical purposes. Direct sunlight is supposed to make it difficult to tell apart the different kinds of iron, so a lot of smith workshops would be open to the north.
 
Smiths were the specialist technicians, the backroom boys if you will, of the Bronze Age and then the Iron Age.

As such, they were highly prized by the local gang leaders, er, war lords, er, rulers, of the post neolithic societies.

Smiths were often described as cripples, the idea being that their masters deliberately handicapped them to prevent them taking their skills off to some rival war lord.
 
rynner said:
Smiths were often described as cripples, the idea being that their masters deliberately handicapped them to prevent them taking their skills off to some rival war lord.
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It's a recurrent theme with mythical figures as well. The Anglo-Saxon Weland or Wayland the smith (aka the Norse Volund) was hamstrung by a vengeful king, Hephaestus the Greek god of smiths and craftsmen was described by Homer as being crippled and needed a stick with which to walk, Vulcan, his Roman equivalent was also lame. So perhaps smiths were deliberately crippled as tribute and in emulation of the gods as much as to stop them scarpering.
 
Then again, perhaps it's representation of a common job-related injury that was amalgamated into the overall imagery? After all, it's not exactly the safest of jobs.
 
Wayland the smith? Isn´t that guy from Simpsons called Wayland Smithers?
 
Yes, and in Oxfordshire there's an earthwork called Wayland Smithy. There were some people talking about it on the radio the other day, who were also asserting that smiths used to be seen as having almost mystical/magical power. At this time (not sure which time) they would be itinerants with no fixed abode, and closely guarded metalworking skills.
 
One theory that I've harboured for quite a while now is that alchemy is actually based on some root memory derived from metalworking. Of course, over time alchemy changed into something else (perhaps erroneously or in an abstract way, but that's the human imagination for you), but it may have started up as a way of protecting the art and skill of metalworking itself.
 
I´m just wondering how the hell smelting came about in the first place. Who first found some shiny rocks and decided to try and smash them to pieces and them heat them to hundreds of degrees and let the melt run off?
 
Re. crippled smiths, Jerry B wrote
Then again, perhaps it's representation of a common job-related injury that was amalgamated into the overall imagery? After all, it's not exactly the safest of jobs.
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I'd say it's a very strong possibility, especially where farriers (i.e. blacksmiths who specialise in shoeing horses) are concerned. They're fascinating to watch. They work with a) red hot metal, b) very sharp pointed or bladed tools, and these they apply to c) horses, which are big, strong, unpredictable flight animals.

Xanatico wrote:
Wayland the smith? Isn´t that guy from Simpsons called Wayland Smithers?
Click to expand...

It's Waylon Smithers in The Simpsons, but still, close enough to be interesting :)
 
Jerry_B said:
One theory that I've harboured for quite a while now is that alchemy is actually based on some root memory derived from metalworking. Of course, over time alchemy changed into something else (perhaps erroneously or in an abstract way, but that's the human imagination for you), but it may have started up as a way of protecting the art and skill of metalworking itself.
Click to expand...

Aren't there some thoughts on this being the genesis of the sword and the stone myths?
 
But I may be barking up the wrong tree. Having googled "horse shoeing history", as far as I can gather, people began shoeing horses with metal shoes in the 4th or 5th century AD, though they may have done so earlier. But this was cold-shoeing, where the metal was shaped and then fitted cold to the hoof.

Hot-shoeing did not become common until the 16th century AD.

Still, working with hot metal and sharp tools - even if no horses were involved - still a high possibility of injury.

A legend of Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire - a horse left there overnight with a small silver coin would be shod by morning - reminds me of a similar legend in one of Pratchett's Discworld books. You left your horse and sixpence at a certain ancient site, and by morning the sixpence and your horse would both have mysteriously disappeared! :lol:
 
Any work involving molten metal is dangerous, even today. Way back in time, it would of course have been even more precarious.

I raised the point about alchemy because I was wondering how people in the past may have evaluated the process of extracting metal from rocks, especially as rocks are such basic stuff (a 'prima materia') fom which spring things like copper, iron, gold, etc.. One wonders whether it attracted a certain amount of esoteric thinking - partly because the processes involved were not understood, but the techniques were - and were valuable - and thus needed to be protected for whatever reason(s).
 
gold silver and copper can be found free and cold worked. many societies did this before they learned metal work.

Iron comes from the sky in a meteorite. The Thule people of the arctic went in search of such a stone in northern Canada.

Most communities were self sufficient in most things, apart from metal work and also pottery. pottery was magic too, but not as magic as the smiths
 
Yes you can sometimes find iron in pure form, but even then you have to heat it to work it.

And let´s see if we can keep Morrisey out of this. :lol:
 
I think the suggested beginnings of smelting ores for smithing are said to be as simple as in the camp fire. Surrounding the fire with stones (as we do today in wild camping) or using them to cook on/with and them happening to use rocks containing metal-bearing ore. After the fire they then noticed that in the heat the ore rocks had been smelted into a hard metal substance that they could then give a decent and hard wearing edge to. Then it's simply a process of discovering which sort of rocks they need in order to make metal tools much better than stone.
I think on balance it probably did start exactly like that.

Alchemy might have started from smithing, after all the best weaponsmiths probably tried all sorts of substances to improve the quality of their steel. For example, high-carbon steel, quenching in water, salt-water or olive oil gives it different properties. Master smiths probably would have jealously guarded their secrets as well.
 
Give me a large camp fire (or one in a living room) and if nothing else is happening I would sit and 'play' with it to my hearts content - easily input anything to hand to see how it burns or what happens. Not for scientific reasons - just an urge to interact with the flame.

I would have thought that eventually, you'd put something interesting in, which would spur some more research to replicate the astounding results....I can see the whole alchemy/metal working etc... areas starting pretty spontanously. Although of course it would be luck that you would stumble across the right sort of ores that transmute in a way that you could detect in a camp fire...
 
Early potters may have been viewed as magicians, people with power over earth, water and fire. One of the oldest known hearths was found at Dolni Vestonice. No pottery but dozens of baked clay figurines, so it seems to have been used for art/magic before someone found a practical use.

There's also a theory that potters may have been involved in the discovery of smelting. Kilns get much hotter than campfires and burn for longer. Or possibly some potter was trying to cook up some new glazes. It's fun to speculate.
 
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