When the Romans set out to crucify Yeshua ben Miriam whom others now call Jesus, they required 4 stout nails for his hands and feet. In those days nails were scarce and valuable and had to be crafted individually for the occasion. So they sent out 2 soldiers with 80 pennies in the currency of the day, to purchase the nails from a local blacksmith. But the soldiers, being indolent, stopped at an inn and spent half the coppers drinking the foul wine of Jerusalem. It was late in the day before they emerged, having spent half the money. They were due back with the nails by dusk and they were half-drunk, so they hurried to the nearest blacksmith and demanded that he make the 4 nails. But the man had seen Jesus, and refused to forge the nails to crucify him. Angry, the soldiers set his beard on fire, but he remained adamant. They had to go elsewhere for the nails.
The soldiers were half-drunk, but they had the sense not to mention the name of the victim to the next blacksmith. They simply told him to make 4 nails for the 40 pennies they had. He protested that he could make only 4 small nails for that price. They threatened to run him through with their lances if he did not get to work. Suspicious, he refused. Enraged, the soldiers made good their threat, and killed him, and went on to a third blacksmith.
This one they gave no choice; he would make the nails immediately, or they would kill him. Frightened, he went to his forge--but then a voice of the dead blacksmith seemed to cry out, telling him that these nails were to crucify an innocent man, and he threw down his tools and refused to work. So the drunken soldiers struck him down and hurried on to a fourth blacksmith.
This one was a Gypsy, who was just passing through and new nothing of the local politics. He was glad to take the money and make the nails. As he made each one, the soldiers took it and put it in a bag. But as he forged the fourth nail, the soldiers said that these were to be used to crucify Jesus. At those words, the voices of the other blacksmiths sounded, pleading with the Gypsy not to make the final nail. Frightened by this manifestation, the soldiers fled with the 3 nail they already had.
The Gypsy finished the fourth nail and tried to cool it, but the water went up in steam and the nail continued to glow. Alarmed, he packed away his tent and equipment and fled, leaving the hot nail behind. But when he sought to pitch his tent at another place, that glowing nail appeared, still sizzling. He fled again-- but wherever he stopped, that hot nail was there.
But an Arab had a wheel that needed patching. So the Gypsy blacksmith took the hot nail and used it to patch the iron hoop. When the Arab left, the wheel carried the nail away. But months later the blacksmith was brought a sword to repair, and its hilt began to glow. It had been forged from the iron nail in the wheel and returned to haunt him.
He fled, but the nail reappeared wherever he went. All his life that dread nail pursued him and when he died it haunted his descendants. Jesus had been crucified with only 3 nails, his feet pierced by one instead of two, and the fourth one pursued the members of the tribe who had forged them. So it has been to this day, and it is supposed to be the reason that we constantly travel, so that it will not catch up. That is why the Gypsies are always moving. The cure to this is a song called the Llano. This song is what the world is made of. Only with the Llano can we cool the nail and stop our wanderings.
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