The Devil You Say! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Lilith

Since Ishtar and Ashtaroth are the same entity (Ishtar is the Babylonian moon goddess and Ashtaroth is her Phoenician equivalent) and Astarte is the Greek rendering of Ashtaroth, that leaves Lilith. According to Jewish rabbinical tradition, Lilith was the first wife of Adam. He found her extremely difficult to live with because she was arrogant, vicious and mean-spirited, so he asked God to make another wife for him. God obliged with Eve and Lilith went off to live with the Devil, thereby becoming his dam (an old English word meaning both mother and wife). Lilith is a night demon (her name derives from the proto-Semitic word for night - 'LYL') and she tends to hang out in the wilderness when it is stormy. She also has a predilection for harming children. The King James Version version of the Bible refers to Lilith as a screech owl, the Revised Standard Version has her down as a night monster, and the New English Bible as a nightjar. Only the New Revised Standard Version calls her Lilith (Isaiah 34:14).

One wonders if Sarah McLachlan knew who Lilith really was when she named her travelling all-female-artists musical festival 'Lilith Fair'. I doubt if Lilith would be interested in the fact that Ms McLachlan and the other women have raised over ten million dollars for women's charities by their efforts.

Answer: Printers' apprentices

Printers' apprentices have been called printer's devils since Moxon made his comment. Before he was appointed as Charles II's hydrographer, Moxon had been a printer of maps, mathematical works and Bibles, so he should know. The apprentices were responsible for removing the printed sheets from the printing press and no doubt got liberally smudged with printer's ink. I'm sure that pitboys, masons' apprentices and chandlers' apprentices (who worked with tar in the making of rope) also covered themselves in black dust, tar and so on, but nobody thought to refer to them as devils.

Answer: In a church

If you visit some of the mediaeval churches still extant in England you will find the Devil's door set into the north wall (although many of them have been blocked up in these more enlightened times). The Devil's door was opened during services of baptism and Holy Communion "to let the Devil out" (one wonders how he got into the church in the first place!).

In parts of rural Britain, the north side of the church is still referred to as "the Devil's side" where Satan and his minions supposedly lurk to pounce on churchgoers as they leave church, and even today some families object to having their loved ones buried in the north section of a cemetery because of the association with the north side of the church. You'll find a great many churches in the UK with graves on the east, west and south side of the church but none on the north side.

Nowadays, churches aren't built with either Devil's doors or lepers' squints.

Answer: Playing cards

It was the Puritans who referred to playing cards as the Devil's picture books, probably on the basis that they considered card games sinful. Even as recently as my childhood in Wales, I can remember that playing cards on a Sunday was considered a definite no-no by the more Calvinistic of our neighbours - even if it was a hand of Patience (Solitaire in the US).

Some etymologists maintain that the term also came about as the 16th century Calvinist response to the common phrase 'The Kings' Books' used to describe a deck of cards (which contained four face cards depicting kings, of course). Since cards were used in gambling and gambling was a vice, Puritans and Calvinists were naturally against them. One wonders if Puritans had any fun at all!

Answer: Complaining

The Paternoster is the Latin term for the Lord's Prayer (in Latin it begins "Pater noster, quis es in caelis...) and the Devil's Paternoster is a litany of complaints about one's sorry state in life.

Answer: All of them

The saying is most often attributed to William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, but William was pre-dated by both Charles Wesley, co-founder, with his brother John, of Methodism and Martin Luther, the reformer who founded Lutheranism.

All three religious leaders cited set well-known hymns to currently popular tunes which raised more than a few pious eyebrows. In addition to adapting old hymns to new music, Charles Wesley also wrote more than 2,000 hymns which are still sung in the Anglican Churches around the world today. Despite being cofounders of Methodism, both Charles and John Wesley were ordained priests of the Church of England and remained so until they died.

Martin Luther was a former Augustinian monk, priest and professor of theology who turned the church on its head when he wrote the 95 Theses calling for reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope excommunicated him as a heretic, Martin married a former nun (Katherine Bora) and settled down to teach, preach, write hymns and translate the Bible into German.

William Booth was raised as an Anglican, converted to Methodism as a young man, and feeling a strong call to served the neediest of God's children, founded the Salvation Army for that purpose. To this day, the Sally Ann can be found wherever there is need, and many Second World War veterans remember the Salvation Army lasses with tea and doughnuts at railway stations as troop trains were pulling in or pulling out.

Thank you to FT member Queproblema for providing better information than I originally had for this question. (I'm an Anglican and we've always assumed that it was Charles Wesley who said it first - how religiocentric can one be?)

Answer: Aboard ship

The phrase stems from the days of sailing ships. The Devil in question was the outboard plank between the gunwale and the waterline of a ship. The seam between it and the side of the ship was wider than the seams between the other planks and very difficult to get at. Because of its proximity to the water the Devil required frequent re-caulking and hot pitch was used to caulk the seams. Caulking was called paying back then, and it was not unknown for the ship's maintenance crew to run out of hot pitch before they got down to the difficult task of paying the Devil, which always required more pitch than the other planks. Makes sense now, doesn't it?

Of course, if I was in charge, we'd do the difficult job first and pay the Devil before we payed any other planks. But then we wouldn't have such a lovely phrase to roll off our tongues when we run out of the necessities. We also get the phrase "Between the Devil and the deep blue sea" from the era of sailing ships and it refers to that same plank. It means the same as the modern term "Between a rock and a hard place".

Answer: All of these

Nowadays, the term Devil's Advocate is applied to any one who takes a position in an argument, even one with which he or she may disagree, in order to test the validity of the of the premise and identify any weaknesses in its structure. Debaters will often take the con side in a debate even if they agree with the pro side.

The term originated in the Roman Catholic Church when the office of Devil's Advocate was established in 1587. Pope Sixtus V, dissatisfied with the number of spurious saints in the calendar, wanted to ensure that all candidates for canonization were (a) genuine and (b) worthy of sainthood. The office was filled by a canon lawyer of the church whose actual title was Promotor Fidei (Promoter of the Faith) and it was his job to be the skeptic, to argue against canonization in order to ensure that all miracles attributed to the candidate were authentic and that the candidate's character was such that conferring sainthood would be appropriate. The Devil's Advocate stood in opposition to God's Advocate (Advocatus Dei, also known as the Promoter of the Cause).

In 1983 Pope John Paul II reformed the office, streamlining the canonization process. The person now in charge of examination of the lives of candidates for sainthood is the Promotor Justitiae (the Promotor of Justice) and he is charged with proving the accuracy of the inquiry into the saintliness of the candidate. By reforming the process, Pope John Paul II was able to canonize nearly 500 saints and beatify over 1,300 more candidates for sainthood (beatification is the step before canonization) during his papacy. Match that record with that of all his 20th century predecessors who managed to canonize only 98 saints between them!

However, in cases of of controversial nominations, the Vatican may still call on outside help to determine the case and ask someone to play the Devil's Advocate. In 2002, Christopher Hitchens (who had not yet written his book 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything') was invited to testify against the beatification of Mother Teresa. He later described the experience as rather like "representing the Evil One, as it were, pro bono."

Answer: Midnight

The Devil's dancing hour is midnight, of course. The tradition is that witches would foregather at midnight and the Devil would appear and dance with them. (Remember Macbeth's description of the Three Witches? He called them "Secret, black and midnight hags.")

The clue? In 1945 Jack Benny starred in an odd little film called 'The Horn Blows at Midnight'. The film was billed as a comedy fantasy and was a huge flop. For the rest of his performing life, Benny used references to 'The Horn Blows at Midnight' as a running gag in his radio and television shows.

Answer: A play by John Webster

'The White Devil' by John Webster premiered very early in 1612 and was presented by Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull Theatre in Clerkenwell, London. It was the second of a two-part bill. The first presentation was a tragicomedy by Thomas Dekker called 'If This Be Not a Good Play', which was well-received by the audience. The same audience, however, was not impressed by 'The White Devil' and Webster, writing to a friend, castigated the audience as donkeys and also complained about the fact that the play had been performed "in winter weather" (theatres in those days were open to the elements because they were roofless). The play was not produced again until 1631. It is loosely based on an actual 1585 murder in Padua, Italy (if you want that story Google Vittoria Accoramboni).

Back in the 16th and 17th centuries a person who was corrupt and yet managed to dupe others into believing him or her to be pure and good was called a white devil, which makes me wonder why 16th and 17th century prostitutes were called white devils. Surely no one could have thought them pure!

I made up the other three choices, by the way.