Penny -- *nod* I may have mis-remembered, and my brain put in mercury where lead should have been.

Though -- and this will be one of the points I will make in my B.A.D.D. entry, in a week -- the focus on how smithing causes lameness distracts from the point that, maybe, so many Smith gods were depicted as lame is because it is the sort of work a real lame person could do, with a little bit of adaptation. As contemporary paintings of Hephaestus show, the god often worked sitting down. And smiths' workshops were places where many people worked with divided labor, so if help was needed, helpers were there.

Hence, my comment up the thread that I wonder if 3,000 years from now archeologists and anthropologists will speculate how singing the blues "Causes" blindneess.

Jack -- or maybe the story of the wish-granting fist started in Asia. Many times, I've encountered the argument that "Cinderella" started in ancient China, and that the fascination with her small feet is an outgrowth of the practice of Foot binding.