"Devil Went Down to Georga" question and thought

[xiphias]

In all honesty, does anyone ACTUALLY think Johnny won that contest?

Anyway, because I was getting curious about it:

A fiddle weighs somewhere around 400 grams. The specific gravity of the various woods that fiddles are made from are all over the place, but, for sake of argument, let's assume that the average specific gravity of the wood in a fiddle is somewhere around 0.6. So the volume of the stuff that a fiddle is made out of is something like 240 cc.

Gold has a specific gravity of something like 19.25, depending on purity, so a fiddle made of gold would weigh something like 4620 grams, or 4.62 kg, or a hair over ten pounds.

As of today, the price of gold is $41.92/gram; let's just call it $42 -- over the past six months, it seems to have been bouncing around $40 to $44/gram, so $42 isn't a bad number for right about now, which would come to $194,040. Given all the guesses and approximations we've been making, I think we can call it "somewhere around $200,000" or even, "maybe between $150k and a $quarter mil." It CERTAINLY wouldn't be playable.

I dunno. For ME, that'd be a bit light to wager my soul, but I can imagine someone else making a different choice. (For purposes of the argument, we're assuming that the Devil showing up and offering to wager for your soul is convincing evidence that 1. souls exist, and 2. they are alienable and therefore wager-able.)

Comments

[horizonchaser.livejournal.com]

It also seems to me that while the devil cheats big time by pulling that demon orchestra out of his ass, Johnny does commit the sin of pride by announcing that he's the best that's ever been.

Hmmm....

[bluepapercup]

However, Johnny does admit that it's a sin right up front. Is that like pre-confession?

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I never thought he wanted to play the fiddle made of gold -- he still has his proper fiddle. It was just a cute form in which to win a chunk of gold worth enough to set him up for life (even $194,040 would go quite far these days).

[ceo]

Hey, that's a better wager than the Boston version [audio very NSFW], where our hero bets his soul against a Lotto card and a pack of Marlboros.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Have you heard "The Devil Went Down To Plovdiv"?https://soundcloud.com/reptilepalaceorchestra/the-devil

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Or the punk version, "The Devil Went Down to Scunthorpe" by The Toy Dolls.

[richardf8]

I always thought that Johnny's use of his turn to announce that the Devil was there "in the house of the rising sun" was the redemptive act. It certainly wasn't Johnny's fiddling.