The Devil & Simon Flagg

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The Devil is a great one for riddle games. Sometimes he will appear and, without even making a decent offer for your soul, he will start asking you questions, and if you cannot answer them he will carry you off.

One of the earliest British ballads is “The False Knight on the Road,” which is a question and answer dialogue that begins:

Folklorists tell us that the false knight is the Devil, but the steadfast wee boy bests him. In many Scandinavian and Baltic legends the Devil buys a soul, but agrees to let him off if he can answer certain questions, for example, “How far is it from heaven to earth?” There are two answers given to that one, “You ought to know, for you fell the distance,” a reply which apparently satisfies the Devil, and the other, “One step, for my grandfather has one foot in the grave and one in heaven.”

Another situation is the converse of this: the mortal is let off if he can ask the Devil a question he cannot answer, or set him a task he cannot perform.

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