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09/10/2006 Entry: "Devil beating his wife"

The Devil's Beatin' his Wife is what Mom always said when the was sunshining during a rain shower. When I repeat this little tidbit of folksy weather persnickerdoodle to my friends -- which I do every time the sunshines when it rains -- they usually make some wry comment about southerners or ask about my upbringing.

However, as I first remember Mom uttering the phrase for the first time when we were driving down an English countryside, knowing how much she read up about England when we lived there I assumed it was an old English saying. As it turns out, my friends where right about the expression being a southern thing:

Here is what little Wiki has to say about that.

They suggest that the rain is symbolic of the wife's tears. This much is easy; but why the sunshine, I always wondered. The idea then came to me when I read the longer version of the phrase: "The devil’s behind his kitchen door beating his wife with a frying pan."

In a folkish sense, dark and stormy weather could easily be credited to the malicious whims of evil entities such as our mythical devil. So here, one could suggest that the devil is not out at the moment trying to do harm on the world, but he's back home -- in the kitchen -- meting out abuse upon his own. Meanwhile on terra firma, all is well save a little sprinkling.

And after all, who of you has ever cursed being caught in a sunshower on an otherwise perfect summer day like the one last weekend; soon there was a rainbow that, from Albertplatz, it seemed to span across the entire Neustadt.