Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/329

 OLD CLEM" CELEBRATIONS AND BLACKSMITHS' LORE.

HE ancient craft of a smith has had its heroes and legends from the days of Tubal Cain, " an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron,"* and Vulcan, down to S. Clement, who has been adopted by the smiths as their patron saint, and whose festival is annually celebrated on Nov. 2ard.

The well-known legend, of S. Dunstan seizing the devil by the nose, is generally connected with Glastonbury; and Bishop Stubbs observes,! that the story is so famous one can hardly doubt that it had some foundation; and it seems not unlikely that S. Dunstan may have taken some one by the nose, and the identification was an afterthought. In modern times, however, Mayfield, in Sussex, is assigned as the place of the occurrence, and the tongs are still shown there. As Mayfield was undoubtedly an archiepiscopal possession, and a residence of S. Dunstan, besides being the centre of the Sussex ironworks, it is pos- sible the legend originated in some Sussex forge.

Saint Clement, whose name appears in the Calendar on Nov. 23rd, was the third Bishop of Kome, and is referred to by S. Paul.| He died in 100 a.d. and his emblem is an anchor, on account of his being drowned with one round his neck, and consequently an anchor forms the vane of the church of S. Clement Danes, London. This church is specially connected by English blacksmiths with their craft. The Kev. W. J. Loftie, in his History of London, \ states, this church was so called, either on account of the settlement here of a colony of


 * Gen. iv. 22.

t Memorials of S. Dunstan, Archhishop of Canterbury (Rolls Series), Introduction, p. Ixv. t Phil. iii. 3. § 2nd edit. 1884, vol. ii. p. 71.

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