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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"

I googled it, and sure enough, the phrase has an old history. There's a cave in Cornwall by this name; in 1864, Harper's Weekly had a story called 'The Devil's Frying pan (where it's clearly intended to be a place name in America)'; and last but not least, we have the Devil's Frying Pan on Dartmoor.

The legend with the Dartmoor frying pan is:

Devil's Frying Pan

This is a naturally formed rock basin which is found on Great Mis tor. It measures about 3 feet in diameter and 8 inches in depth, the bottom is flat with a small drainage channel which leads to the edge of the rock. However, this 'Frying Pan' was said to have been used by The Devil for frying the souls of those sinners who had been sent down to hell.

And there we have the answer as to why the devil (or Beelzebub) carries a frying pan. Nowadays, we have a far less literal belief in the fires of hell, and the old medieval style pictures of the devil personally torturing each and every sinner just seem funny to us. Back in a time when people had a far more literal interpretation of hell, an image like the one below would be far more familiar.

This one lacks a frying pan, but there's a nice cauldron.

Found this picture from an Irish mumming group while looking for medieval devils. Couldn't resist.



Beelzebub

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.

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'Beelzebub' looks more like Worzel Gummidge than the devil incarnate, not that I'd know of course! :-)

The rhyme you quote is similar to one mentioned by Colin Wilson in 'Mysteries'(p.101 Granada paperback version; I can bring it to Redemption if you wish) - it's quoted from an 1920 article by a writer called I.O.Evans in connection with Cornish giants:

Here I am, old Hub-bub-bub,
And in my hand I carry a club,
And on my back a frying pan,
Am I not a valiant man?

That's all Wilson quotes of it. I'm tries to find the citation in full but he didn't list it (naughty man!). Presumably it's "Romantic Britain; The National Heritage Of Beauty History And Legend by Tom (Editor) STEPHENSON (Hardcover)" found via Amazon.

That's very interesting.

The full text of your play is probably this one http://moneycentral.groups.msn.com/HOROSCOPESCHAT/mythology.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=20862&LastModified=4675420917162460317

It makes no mention of Hub-bub-bub being a giant, though. (and I can't find any reference to a giant of that name in cornwall)

I found this (it's from a pretty old article - http://www.archive.org/stream/englishfolkplay027958mbp/englishfolkplay027958mbp_djvu.txt -, but there are some interesting bits if you wade through it)
:Beelzebub becomes Beelzebub the Fool, Old Billy
Beelzebub, Belcibub, Belzeebug, Bellzie Bub, Bellsie
Bob, Bellesy Bob, Bells Abub, Baal Zebub, Hub-bub-
bub-bub, Lord Grubb. On the whole, apart from
orthography, the Bible has kept his name in remem-
brance. Instead of a 'club', he may carry a 'nub' or
c nob', and the 'frying-pan' may be a 'dripping-pan',
'warming-pan', 'pack and pan', 'empty can'.

Fascinating how the game of Chinese Whispers progresses!

It makes no mention of Hub-bub-bub being a giant, though. (and I can't find any reference to a giant of that name in cornwall)

Wilson thought that 'Hub-bub-bub' sounds like 'Gogmagog', a giant whose image was portrayed on what is now Plymouth Hoe. There are also the 'Gogmagog Hills' in Cambridgeshire, which Wilson says were known a century ago as the 'Hogmagog Hills'. I can certainly see a link with 'Beelzebub', but 'Gogmagog' seems to be pushing it. But as you say, Chinese Whispers... :-)

Yes, it is fascinating stuff, thank you for the links, I'll save them and read offline.

Gog and Magog are Biblical in origin, but they're not devils.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gog_and_Magog

Like you, I can easily hear Hub-bub-bub from Beelzebub, but Gogmagog seems a lot less likely.

EVerything I read keeps making me want to read more!

The characters are very similar to our figures from Masopust but here the origin is fogged very much - and I am not interested in this, I admit. I am sure there might be SOME common features with yours :-)

What is/are Masopust?

http://www.myczechrepublic.com/czech_culture/czech_holidays/easter/masopust.html
I tried to get something in English - I hope this is enough however there are not those pictures I wanted to show you...

It looks as though Masopust is a very different tradition to the mummer's play, but might bear a link to mummer's parades (which we don't have in England).

I note the reference to sword dances though. There is an English tradition of sword dancing and it is sometimes loosely connected to mumming. Sword dancing (the kind where the swords are linked in a circle) is something I'll probably be trying to learn more about as well. I've done sword dancing in the past and enjoyed it.

The Rychtar, the monster with the horse's head ( did I spell that right, my eyes are tired and I couldnt get the accents on my keyboard?)is like the Mari Lloyd I mentioned before - a Mare's head, which knocks on doors and demands entry for the mummers. Folklore associations spring to mind of horses as vehicles to the otherworld, Odin's horse with the 6 legs Sleipnir, The Night Mare ( old hag version of the Goddess) and more.

The Czech connections are fascinating - been a while since I looked into any Slavic folklore. I used to (probably) still know a reasomable amount about Russian folklore and beliefs thanks to my Russian connections (first husband from Moscow). When I lived in Bavaria in 1986-7 we had the Carnival (Fasching)it was quite eerie.

You have got the rychtar quite right, minus the diacritic "hook" over R = Ř :-)
I just love those connections, so after all there are some common roots for us:-)

and the Devil's Punchbowl is also a common geographical feature.

Which again asks the fascinating question - why would the devil have a punchbowl?

The one on the A3 in Surrey (near Hindhead) was supposed to have been carved out by the Devil whilst tormenting Thor by chucking lumps of stone at him.

Seems odd to call it a "punchbowl" though.

David's pretty sure Devils only started carrying pitchforks as an exclusive implement in Victorian times.In medieval imagery for example and in the paintings of Bosch they are carrying/using as instruments of torture anythig they can lay their grubby little claws on.

Or it could be demons,rather than devils - in all magical texts you get specific demons associated with specific objects. Asmodeus for example is the "devil on two sticks"

Ah, so devils and pitchforks is a bit like witches with pointy hats. A relatively modern thing, probably due to popular images in newspapers or whatever.

Essentially it's like Santa wearing a red suit- it's a 19th Century, and largely American - invention. Up until the end of the 18th Century, the Devil had wings and horns, but carried either a club or a staff (relating to magician's staves, of course) or a spear - as in pictures like this (which for some reason I can't actually post, as trying gives me an error message telling me to fix an error that it doesn't actually identify):

http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g1/Lonemagpie/TheDevil.jpg

THanks. I hadn't known pitchforks came from America. The analogy with Santa is a good one.

Well, pitchforks themselves didn't "come from" America, of course, but the idea of the devil carrying one as part of his uniform came from there.

Well, there's your mythology/folkore/ folk belief/paganism intersection for a start - the fight between two warriors.Summer and Winter, the battle of the seasons. See Graves,The White Goddess ( though with a pinch of salt as some of it has been discredited since) For original textual examples the first one that spings to mind is the Mabinogion where Gwnn map Nudd, King of the underworld fights his rival Gwythir every year If you can keep hold of the salt cellar and read John and Caitlin Matthews' stuff you will find a lot of good source material in there on the subject. Mathews related the folk song " Two Brothers" to this theme, for example.

The theme is present and popularised in the Arthurian romances as well and its in the Mad songs I mentioned earlier, which were a contemporary vogue around the same time your mumming plays start - 400 yrs ago, you said. Paging my old friend Tom of Bedlam again who says;

"By a knight of ghost and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end
Methinks it is no journey"

Nojourney,perhaps because he is battling his own double/doppelganger?.

I'l have a hunt in my bookshelves and see what I can bring you to Redemption
on this lot.

BTW, The figure of a DOctor is interesting - is it a folk memory of the local quack/healer/cunning man? ( for more on this figure See Ronald Hutton's books - there is a recent one on the origins of Modern Paganism which I will have to bring you - should be prescribed reading for anyone who wants to go down that road as a religion/path in life)

Earthworks do get associated with the devil. Our local one is in a wood called Hetchell Wood, otherwise known lcoally as Hellwood. I suspect, since there is a confirmed Anglo- Saxon settlement nearby that it probably started out with one "l" as in Hel, underworld, belief in access to via mounds.

Any dragon, rather than Devil traditions associsted with your local landscsape features, out of interest?

I'd love to borrow Hutton's book on Modern Paganism - thanks.

NO dragon associations with the Cerne Abbas Giant - or none that I can find at any rate.

The figure of the doctor is an odd one. Hutton has no convincing idea where he comes from (and being Hutton is unwilling to make one up - which is why I love him).

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