"Devil’s Dulcimer"- By Janice N. Harrington

The “Devil’s Dulcimer” by Janice Harrington is about a girl named Nell who lived in a settlement area with mostly poor folks. The Master Fiddlers were known to entertain folks with music and they got paid just enough to get by and lived better than most of the other people in the settlement. Nell lived as poor as everyone else so she wanted to win as Master Fiddler because it meant she would no longer starve and be poor again. She receives advice from a wise old woman who tells her where to seek a man who could help give her a fine dulcimer. The road and cabin where she goes as well as the man she sees creeps her out, but yet she forces herself to keep going because of her eagerness to get that fine dulcimer. She makes a weird deal with the man who is actually the “devil” that she’d bring the head of the one she loved best in exchange for the dulcimer first. She does this knowing she wouldn’t keep her word having no idea there’d be any consequences that would follow. Although she enters and wins the contest, the devil’s voice haunts her asking of the head. In result to her not keeping her word to the devil, the next day she’s found dead, fingers worn off and headless.

The two values that I found to be important in this story is karma and greed. All Nell wanted was to become the Master Fiddle so that she could make enough money to make a living. She was desperate to do or say anything just to get her hands on the new dulcimer, so she deceits the man who is actually a devil that gives her the fine dulcimer. She makes a promise she knew from the start she wouldn’t keep. In result to her dishonesty to the devil, she is killed and is the one that suffers in the end. Greed is also a value that appeared in the story. By getting her dulcimer and lying to the devil, she thought she’d get away with it and live happily ever after with money. She thought that she was smarter than the devil to get away with what she wanted without giving anything in return and the outcome of that was her life.

The lesson I learned from this story is that when some of us go through a time in our life where we are desperate to get a certain thing, we become vulnerable to do or say almost anything. It may drive us to be greedy go great distances not realizing the consequences that can hurt us in the end