Journal of American Folk-Lore/Volume 13/Issue 51/The Devil's Grandmother
THE DEVIL'S GRANDMOTHER.
Although Satan is the hero of Milton's epic, we learn nothing from that great poem about his female relatives. Shakespeare, however, speaks some half-dozen times of "the devil and his dam." In the "Comedy of Errors" (Act IV. sc. iii.), where the person spoken of is a courtezan, we read:—
Antipholus of Syracuse: Satan, avoid! I charge thee, tempt me not.
Dromio of Syracuse: Master, is this Mistress Satan?
Antiph.: It is the devil.
Drom.: Nay, she is worse, she is the devil's dam.
But it is to folk-lore, with its general, if crude, and sometimes savage humanity, that we must go for a more or less complete genealogy of the devil.
Of all peoples, the Teutons, the modern Low Germans especially, seem to have had the most kindly feeling towards the devil, furnishing him at times with a wife, a mother, and a grandmother, the last, who is often indistinguishable from the second, being the most important and interesting character. Following are some of the proverbs and folk-sayings in which these personages appear:—
1. The devil is beating his mother (said when rain and sunshine follow quickly after each other).
2. You have brought the devil and his mother (said of unwelcome company).
3. If you are the devil, I am his mother.
4. Who are you, the devil or his mother?
5. Is he the devil, or his wife?
6. The devil and his mother (= all the world and his wife).
7. Inseparable, like the devil and his mother.
8. To ask after the devil and his mother.
9. You can go to the devil and his grandmother (= you can go where you please).
10. The devil should have had him long ago, but is waiting to find his fellow, for his grandmother wants a new pair of coach-horses.
11. Where the devil cannot come, he sends his grandmother.
12. The devil is dancing with his grandmother (said when a whirlwind occurs).
13. The devil's grandmother can dance on it (said of very thick soup).
14. As if the devil had ploughed with his grandmother (= awry).
15. As fast as the devil dragging his grandmother along (= very slow and unwillingly).
16. When the devil's grandmother has cleaned up hell, he goes off on a journey (said when the husband flees before the scrub-broom of his wife).
17. The devil and his grandmother are the best guests in the house (said when loud quarrelling takes place).
18. That must go with the devil as freight and his grandmother as deck-load.
19. The devil is bleaching his grandmother (said when rain and sunshine rapidly follow each other).
20. The devil beats his mother till the oil comes (said when it thunders while the sun shines).
Nos. 2, 12, 13–18 in the above list, as Wossidlo[1] tells us, are well-known in Mecklenburg; No. 10 is Swiss; some of the rest are known all over Germany and Teutonic Switzerland; a few in Holland and England.
For No. 19, we find in Switzerland, "The devil is beating his mother;" for No. 20, in Holland, "The devil is beating his wife;" and in France, "the devil is beating his wife" (when it rains amid sunshine).
Some of these sayings are of considerable antiquity. According to Grimm,[2] the following are very old, some being earlier than the thirteenth century:—
1. The devil brought me to you, and his mother brought you to me.
2. To run a race with the devil's mother.
3. Is it the devil riding here, or his mother, or his son?
4. The devil or his grandmother.
5. A widower a widow wedded, the devil to his dam was added (= things got worse).
6. The devil with his mother (= all sorts of evil at once).
7. I fear not the devil and his dam.
A very interesting group of folk-sayings about the devil and his grandmother consists of conversations of the latter about or with the former. Following are examples:—
1. "Old people are stiff," said the devil when he danced with his grandmother.
2. "Fundus," said the devil when he found his grandmother drunk in the gutter.
3. "No matter," said the devil when he had to mourn his grandmother.
4. "That might be a joke," said the devil as he ran his fork through his grandmother.
As may be seen from the sayings here recorded, the giants, goblins, and deities of heathen times have helped to color folk-thought about the devil. The devil's mother, or grandmother, often has the popular sympathy, and does not always appear as an evil-doing or as an ugly individual.
Enough has been given here to indicate the general character of the folk-lore in question, and it would be interesting to follow up in America among the people of German, English, and other nationalities, the folk-thought concerned with "Gotts düwel un sîn grossmudder."
Isabel Cushman Chamberlain.
Worcester, Mass.
- ↑ Wossidlo, R., Gott und Teufel im Munde des Mecklenburgischcn Volkes. Korrespbl. d. Ver. f. niederdeutsche Sprachforschung, 1891, pp. 18–32. 44–48. espec. pp. 30, 31.
- ↑ Grimm, J., Teutonic Mythology (Transl. Stallybrass), vol. iii. (Lond.. 1883), pp. 1007–1009; vol. ii. (1888), pp. 1606, 1607.