The Devil's Frying pan

While pondering over the questions of the Cerne Abbas Giant, Beelezbub and frying pans, a phrase came into my mind: "the devil's frying pan"
( The probable origin of the frying pan. )

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And the final example of the model maker's craftsmanship is Beelzebub who is a dirty lookin clart.

"Here comes I Beelzebub,
And in my hand I carry a club,
And over my shoulder, a frying pan,
A'm'nt I a horrible old man,
And if you don't believe in what I say
Enter in the bold slasher
And he'll soon clear the way"

So, there we have what I've got so far.  The frying pan is for torturing the damned souls (and must have been used for commedy value to claim to fry other things on occasion).  'the Devils Frying pan' was a phrase with familiarity in some areas at least. The club (rather than pitchfork) is speculatively there because it rhymes with Beelzebub.

As you can see from the similarity of phrasing between the different mumming plays, they likely started from one original source and changed as they moved onwards.  The characters change and develop as they move (beelzebub isn't that common a character, I just happen to be focusing on him) and the script changes too, but the common elements of a fight between two warriors, a death and a cure by a quack doctor (and often an appeal for money) all remain as core elements of the play.

Where does that leave me with regard to the Cerne Abbas Giant?

It now seems likely to me that people at one time regarded the figure as representing the devil.  Probably at a time long enough after it was carved for it's origins to have been forgotten, and a time when all pagan-looking figures were associated with the devil.  If he was the devil, then the earthwork (also ancient and generally a bad thing, espcially with all those dodgy May Day revels) was obviously his frying pan.

Frustrating Scrabble

I'm having one of the most frustrating Scrabble games of my life.

Owing to some bug in Scrabble Worldwide, instead of a game with megamole , it set me up with someone else.  As the other person seemed quite happy to play, I decided to continue with the game.

She's an absolutely terrible player (14% wins in 157 games), though I realised she was bad from her opening move which wasted a number of good tiles for hardly any score at all.

The laughable thing about it is that her playing style (all two and three letter words, spread out along the double word scores) is actually making it quite difficult to beat her (that and a lucky play that gave her a two letter word with Z in a good position that netted her 60 points).  There's simply nowhere to play long words.  I've already had to discard one bingo as there was nowhere to place it.

I guess it's good for me in a way. For once, I'm actually having to think hard about how to create hooks and bingo lines, whereas normally, I just rely on them appearing in the normal course of the game.

It's actually possible that she'll beat me through sheer grinding board-lock. (I'm not the world's best player, but I expect to win around 2/3 of my games - with a bit of help from Richard)

She's just blocked a 'I' that I'd set up so there would be something to cross through. I wouldn't mind so much if it had been a better use of the position.  She wasted her Q there for 11 points, when there was a free U not far from a double word score which she could surely have used to much better effect if she'd waited to collect whatever she needed.  (The U would still have blocked me, but at least I'd have felt it was doing something useful)

Anyway, enough moaning. I'd better try and set up a new bingo line.  I nearly did it this time, but I could only make six letter words from the tiles I had in hand.