Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jackson
Kipling had it as " ‘But Iron — Cold Iron — is master of them all.’ "
And, doing a bit of webreading, I find an allegation that he was the first to apply the epithet this way.
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The Grose reference is long before Kipling was even born, and since he was producing a dictionary, he was documenting existing usage. Poking around at
google ngram viewer, the oldest use that comes up is from
1672, though that was about interactions with hot lodestone so it might have actually meant cold. The second reference is a printed version of a play by Ben Jonson, though it actually dates to 1631,
The Devil is an Ass, with a single reference "And lest our cold Iron should chance to confute thee". That seems to be something to do with confounding Pug, who is a minor devil but seems like he might be related to Puck.