The Boy and the Devil
There was once a boy who cracking nuts as he walked. At about the same moment that he found a worm inside the nut, he met the devil on the road.
“Is it true,” asked the boy, “as they say, that the devil can make himself so small as he wishes, and force himself into the eye of a needle?”
“Yes!” answered the devil.
“Oh, let me see it, and creep into this nut!” said the boy; and, the devil did so.
When the devil had crept well inside the nut, the boy inserted a pin to close the nutshell. “Now I have you in there,” said he, and stuck the nut in his pocket.
When he had walked quite a bit, he came upon a smithy, went inside, and asked the blacksmith if he would crack the nut for him.
“Yes, that is easy,” answered the blacksmith, and he took his smallest hammer, lay the nut on the anvil and struck at it; but it wouldn’t crack. So he took a bigger hammer, but it was not heavy enough either. That made the blacksmith angry and he grabbed the huge hammer. “I will smash you to pieces!” he said, and he struck with all his might that shattered the nut into tiny little bits, so that half of the anvil flew off, and the sound was so loud that it would have broken down the cottage too.
“I think the devil himself was in that nut!” said the smith.
“Yes, so he was,” said the boy
