Loki Listens

Here’s a Jack Tale. It’s less than famous, even for Jack Tales.

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Jack was a mean old blacksmith in this small town, in the Smokie Mountains. This was a different time, mind you, when people still rode horses mostly, and blacksmiths were really important.

Jack was the meanest man anyone had every met. He hated the men, women, and children of the town. And they were scared of him. The only time anyone ever talked to Jack, it was to buy horse shoes, or plows, or the like.

Jack was so mean, if children ran into his shop, he’d throw hot coals at them. Yeah, he was that mean.

So one day Jack was hammering away at a horse shoe, or a plow, he really wasn’t that sure, and he up and died.

So mean-old Jack floating up, towards Heaven. And there he saw the pearly gates of Heaven, and Saint Peter holding a book.

“Hmmmm…. Jack! Oh, my no!” says Saint Peter. “You were much too mean. Just wait here.”

So Saint Peter calls his old buddy Lucifer, and tells him he’s got the meanest, baddest man that ever lived just waiting right here at the Gates.

Lucifer gets very excited. He calls up his two eldest, strongest, meanest sons, and tells them they have to go to the Gates of Heaven and get old Jack for him.

A few days later, Lucifer has not seen his sons or Jack. There’s a knocking at the Gates of Hell. Lucifer hears all kinds of crazy noise outside, I mean all of Hell was breaking loose!

So he runs outside, and about that time, Jack is walking up the steps to his castle.

Jack had beaten the devil’s sons and then crashed down the Gates, madder and meaner than ever.

No one much knows what happened after that, there’s a few different endings, some say Jack beat the devil and left. Other’s say that Lucifer had to chase Jack out of Hell with a hickory switch!

All we really know is that Jack was hammering horse shoes in that village again in just a day or two. Some say Jack is still in that place, hammering away, and since he’s so mean, and no one talks to him, and they all know Heaven wouldn’t take him, no one knows how long it’s been.

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- Loki

(Jack and the Devil, a Folk Tale, as told by me, in the tradition of Jack Tales)

Tags: age, book, cast, crazy, devil, jack, jack and the devil, jack tale, Jack Tales, mind, now, old, OS, people, says, talk, time, tradition, US, walking