Bartholomew, in his book “On the Properties of Things,” makes certain statements about iron which are interesting:  “Though iron cometh of the earth, yet it is most hard and sad, and therefore with beating and smiting it suppresseth and dilateth all other metal, and maketh it stretch on length and on breadth.”  This is the key-note to the work of a blacksmith:  it is what he has done from the first, and is still doing.

In Spain there have been iron mines ever since the days when Pliny wrote and alluded to them, but there are few samples in that country to lead us to regard it as aesthetic in its purpose until the fifteenth century.

For tempering iron instruments, there are recipes given by the monk Theophilus, but they are unfortunately quite unquotable, being treated with mediaeval frankness of expression.

St. Dunstan was the patron of goldsmiths and blacksmiths.  He was born in 925, and lived in Glastonbury, where he became a monk rather early in life.  He not only worked in metal, but was a good musician and a great scholar, in fact a genuine rounded man of culture.  He built an organ, no doubt something like the one which Theophilus describes, which, Bede tells us, being fitted with “brass pipes, filled with air from the bellows, uttered a grand and most sweet melody.”  Dunstan was a favourite at court, in the reign of King Edmund.  Enemies were plentiful, however, and they spread the report that Dunstan evoked demoniac aid in his almost magical work in its many departments.  It was said that occasionally the evil spirits were too aggravating, and that in such cases Dunstan would stand no nonsense.  There is an old verse: 

  “St. Dunstan, so the story goes,
   Once pulled the devil by the nose,
   With red hot tongs, which made him roar
   That he was heard three miles or more!”

The same story is told of St. Eloi, and probably of most of the mediaeval artistic spirits who were unfortunate enough to be human in their temperaments and at the same time pious and struggling.  He was greatly troubled by visitations such as persecuted St. Anthony.  On one occasion, it is related that he was busy at his forge when this fiend was unusually persistent:  St. Dunstan turned upon the demon, and grasped its nose in the hot pincers, which proved a most successful exorcism.  In old portraits, St. Dunstan is represented in full ecclesiastical habit, holding the iron pincers as symbols of his prowess.

He became Archbishop of Canterbury after having held the Sees of Worcester and London.  He journeyed to Rome, and received the pallium of Primate of the Anglo-Saxons, from Pope John XII.  Dunstan was a righteous statesman, twice reproving the king for evil deeds, and placing his Royal Highness under the ban of the Church for immoral conduct!  St. Dunstan died in 988.

[Illustration:  WROUGHT IRON HINGE, FRANKFORT]