Chapter Desdemona to Devil and his Dam of D by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Devil Represented with a cloven foot, because by the Rabbinical writers he is called seirissim (a goat). As the goat is a type of uncleanness, the prince of unclean spirits is aptly represented under this emblem.

Devil among the Tailors (The). On Dowton's benefit at the Haymarket, some 7,000 journeymen tailors congregated in and around the theatre to prevent a burlesque called The Tailors: a Tragedy for Warm Weather, which they considered insulting to the trade. Fairburn's edition of this play is headed The Devil among the Tailors, and contains an account of this fracas. (See also Biographia Dramatica, article TAILORS.) There is a Scotch reel so called.

Devil and Bag o'Nails (The). The public-house by Buckingham Gate was so called, but the sign was The Blackamoor's Head and the Woolpack. (Remarkable Trials, ii. p. 14; 1765.)

Devil and Dr. Faustus (The). Faust was the first printer of Bibles, and issued a large number in imitation of those sold as manuscripts. These he passed off in Paris as genuine, and sold for sixty crowns apiece, the usual price being five hundred crowns. The uniformity of the books, their rapid supply, and their unusual cheapness excited astonishment. Information was laid against him for magic, and, in searching his lodgings, the brilliant red ink with which his copies were adorned was declared to be his blood. He was charged with dealings with the Devil, and condemned to be burnt alive. To save himself, he revealed his secret to the Paris Parlement, and his invention became the admiration of the world. N.B. - This tradition is not to be accepted as history.

Devil and his Dam (The). Either the Devil and his mother, or the Devil and his wife. Numerous quotations may be adduced in support of either of these interpretations. Shakespeare uses the phrase six times, and in King John (ii. 1) dam evidently means mother; thus Constance says that her son Arthur is as like his father as the Devil is like his dam (mother); and in Titus Andronicus Tamora is called the "dam" of a black child. We also read of the Devil's daughter and the Devil's son.
   In many mythologies the Devil is supposed to be an animal: Thus in Cazotte's Diable Amoureux he is a camel; the Irish and others call him a black cat; the Jews speak of him as a dragon (which idea is carried out in our George and the Dragon); the Santons of Japan call him a species of fox; others say he is a goat; and Dante associates him with dragons, swine, and dogs. In all which cases dam for mother is not inappropriate.
   On the other hand, dam for leman or wife has good support. We are told that Lilith was the wife of Adam, but was such a vixen that Adam could not live with her, and she became the Devil's dam. We also read that Belphegor "came to earth to seek him out a dam."
    As women when they go wrong are for the most part worse than the other sex, the phrase at the head of this article means the Devil and something worse.

Devil and the Deep Sea (Between the). Between Scylla and Charybdis; between two evils, each equally hazardous. The allusion seems to be to the herd of swine and the devils called Legion.

"In the matter of passing from one part of the vessel to another when she was rolling, we were indeed between the devil and the deep sea." - Nineteenth Century, April, 1891, p.664.

Devil and Tom Walker (The). An American proverb, used as a caution to usurers. Tom Walker was a poor, miserly man, born at Massachusetts in 1727, and it is said that he sold himself to the Devil for wealth. Be this as it may, Tom suddenly became very rich, and opened a counting-house at Boston during the money panic which prevailed in the time of Governor Belcher. By usury he grew richer and richer; but one day, as he was foreclosing a mortgage with a poor land-jobber, a black man on a black horse knocked at the office door. Tom went to open it, and was never seen again. Of course the good people of Boston searched his office, but all his coffers were found empty; and during the night his house caught fire and was burnt to the ground. (Washington Irving: Tales of a Traveller.)

Devil catch the Hindmost (The). In Scotland (? Salamanca) it is said when a class of students have made a certain progress in their mystic studies, they are obliged to run through a subterranean hall, and the last man is seized by the devil, and becomes his imp.