SOURCE: “The Construction of ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’: A Study of Irving's Later Use of Folklore,” in New York Folklore, Vol. 24, No. 4, December, 1968, pp. 243-60.

In the following essay, Zug traces folklore elements in Washington Irving's “The Devil and Tom Walker,” viewing the story as a masterful blending of German and American folk motifs.

Although it is unquestionably one of Washington Irving's finest tales, “The Devil and Tom Walker” has never attracted much critical attention. First published in 1824 in Part IV of Tales of a Traveller, the tale recounts the fate of an avaricious New Englander, who sells his soul to the Devil in return for Captain Kidd's treasure, and is finally carted off to Hell after a long and profitable career as a usurer in colonial Boston. For the most part, critics have been content to note that the tale is “a sort of comic New...