Word: deviling
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Weather. When horses' tails are large, when horses scratch themselves against trees or fences, when chickens or turkeys stand with their backs to the wind, when whirlwinds lift the dust on roads, rain is coming. A sunny shower means that "the Devil is a-whuppin' his wife." A mild Christmas means a heavy harvest, but "a green Christmas makes a fat graveyard." When a cat sits down with its tail toward the fire, the hillman looks for a cold spell...
Household. When a woman drops a dishrag she knows someone dirty is coming; when two roosters fight in the yard, two young men will soon arrive. A child who eats candy in the privy is whipped for "feedin' the Devil an' starvin' God." Soap should be stirred by a member of the family, because "a strange hand skeers the soap." A menstruating woman can't pickle cucumbers and "a bad woman can't make good applesauce...
...Angel & Devil. "Out of one of his eyes," said a contemporary, of Goethe, "looks an angel, out of the other a devil." In Goethe, the elements of passion and discipline were so bafflingly mixed that he could reach the hearts and minds of millions as a poet* and yet, as government official, callously confirm the death sentence of a child-mother convicted of infanticide. "I am not the first," says Mann, "to find [this] almost as shattering as the whole of Faust...
...Before Candlemas we went be-east Kinloss, and there we yoked a plough of toads. The Devil held the plough, and John Young, our Officer, did drive the plough. Toads did draw the plough as oxen, couchgrass was the harness and trace-chains, a gelded animal's horn was the coulter, and a piece of a gelded animal's horn was the sock [ploughshare...
...Witch in Time. Sharp practices, thefts, murders were often promptly confessed by the evildoer when he heard that the local white witch was on his trail. It was this popular, pagan confidence in witchcraft that caused the Church to fear it like the Devil himself. On the European continent, a steady procession of harmless men, women and children went to terrible deaths as witches. In England, where religious problems were less acute, and the authorities considered witchcraft more a criminal offense than a heresy, the record was not so dark. Torture, to extract confessions, was rarely employed, and Author Hole...