Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Between the Devil and the deep blue sea (and another sea shanty!)

 

Continuing our nautically-themed slang-o-rama posts (but it'll be hard to top last week's sea shanties), let's tackle between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

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Or, maybe, let's not, because according to the Cambridge Dictionary, the phrase means "to have two choices that are both equally unpleasant or not convenient," or as The Phrase Finder puts it even more ominously, "faced with two dangerous alternatives." The origin of the phrase is uncertain. Phrase Finder notes it could be as simple as "the devil is bad, falling into the deep ocean is bad," and offers up this interesting mythological tie:

People who like that explanation can point back to Greek mythology for an earlier version of the idea of being caught between evil and the sea. Homer's Odyssey refers to Odysseus being caught between Scylla (a six-headed monster) and Charybdis (a whirlpool).

Ocean by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1896
WikiArt

However, there is a possible nautical origin as well. In the same post, The Phrase Finder turned to an expert, who explained that the devil is the seam between the deck planking and the topmost plank of the ship's side. To caulk this seam would probably "require a sailor to be suspended over the side, or at least to stand at the very edge of the deck." And there you have it: some poor fellow teetering between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The phrase itself dates back to Robert Monro's His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes, from 1637: "I, with my partie, did lie on our poste, as betwixt the devill and the deep sea." But which devil is Monro speaking of? He does not say.

Word Histories goes with the Devil = Satan explanation, noting that the added word blue popped up in the latter part of the 19th century. Word Histories tracks down first appearance of devil = seam around 1744. So, most likely the earlier phrases—between the devil and the Dead Sea, and between the devil and the deep sea—did not apply to seams and caulking and such.

Oh well! How about another sea shanty, then, to ease the disappointment?

To my mind, "Barrett's Privateers" has a bit of the between the devil and the deep blue sea feel to it!

The above is a shortened version. If you want to hear ALL the lyrics, then listen to this one, by Canadian folksinger, Stan Rogers (who died too young, alas):