CHAPTER XIX2.

Sacred-Texts Christianity   

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OF THE INVENTION OF THE INSTRUMENTS FOR WORKING IN IRON³.

   SOME say that Cainan⁴ and Tubal-cain, who were of the family of Cain, were the first who invented the three tools of the art of working in iron, the anvil, hammer and tongs. The art of working in iron is the mother and begetter of all arts; as the head is to the body, so is it to all other crafts. And as all the limbs of the body cease to perform their functions if the head is taken away from it, so also all other arts would cease if the art of working in iron were to come to an end. In the days of Tubal and Tubal-cain, the sons of Lamech the blind, Satan entered and dwelt in them, and they constructed all kinds of musical instruments, harps and pipes. Some say that spirits used to go into the reeds and disturb them, and that the sound from them was like the sound of singing and pipes⁵; and men constructed all kinds of musical instruments. Now this blind Lamech was a hunter, and could shoot p. 30 straight with a bow; his son used to take him by the hand, and guide him to places where there was game, and when he heard the movement of an animal, he shot an arrow at it, and brought it down. One day, when shooting an arrow at an animal, he smote Cain the murderer, the son of Adam, and slew him².

Footnotes

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² Chap. xx in the Oxford MS.

³ Gen. iv. 22.

⁴ This name seems to have crept into the text by mistake. See Gen. iv. 22.

⁵ 'They put together and made all kinds of music: Jubal made flutes and cithers and pipes, and the devils entered into them and dwelt in them; and when they blew into them, the devils sang inside the flutes, and made a noise from within them. And Tubal-cain made cymbals and rattles and hand drums.' Bezold, Die Schatzhöhle, p. 14; Brit. Mus. Add. 25,875, fol. 12 a, col. 1.

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² Bezold, Die Schatzhöhle, p. 11.