Here, Los, a protagonist in several of Blake’s poems, is tormented at his smithy by the figure Spectre in an illustration Blake’s poem Jerusalem. The artist William Blake used the blacksmith as a motif in his own extensive mythology. Kurdalaegon prepares a type of tower or scaffold above a quenching bath for Xamyc, and, when the time is right, lances the cyst to liberate the infant hero Batraz as a newborn babe of white-hot steel, whom Kurdalægon then quenches like a newly forged sword. One of his greatest feats is acting as a type of male midwife to the hero Xamyc, who has been made the carrier of the embryo of his son Batraz by his dying wife the water-sprite Lady Isp, who spits it between his shoulder blades, where it forms a womb-like cyst. In the Nart mythology of the Caucasus the hero known to the Ossetians as Kurdalægon and the Circassians as Tlepsh is a blacksmith and skilled craftsman whose exploits exhibit shamanic features, sometimes bearing comparison to those of the Scandinavian deity Odin. In Celtic mythology, the role of Smith is held by eponymous (their names do mean ‘smith’) characters : Goibhniu (Irish myths of the Tuatha Dé Danann cycle) or Gofannon (Welsh myths/ the Mabinogion). Brigid or Brigit, an Irish goddess, is sometimes described as the patroness of blacksmiths. From the Ardre image stone VIII on Gotland.
Between the girl and the smithy, Wayland can be seen in an eagle fetch flying away. Wayland’s smithy in the centre, Níðuð’s daughter Böðvildr to the left, and Níðuð’s dead sons hidden to the right of the smithy.
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