To hell in a handcart

Posted by ESC on March 08, 2004

In Reply to: To hell in a handcart posted by Smokey Stover on March 08, 2004

: : : : In Fairford church, Gloucestershire, the great West window (installed before 1517 AD) shows the Day of Judgment in stained glass, with the innocent going to heaven and the guilty going to hell. Among the latter is an old woman in a wheelbarrow, being pushed to her doom by a blue devil. So the idea of "going to hell in a handcart" is a good 500 years old.

: : : That is interesting.

: : Out here in the former colony, we sometimes say "Going to hell in a handbasket." I was never sure exactly what a handcart was, but I'm even more baggled by "handbasket." Nonetheless, I think I get the general drift of the expression. SS

: You say you're not familiar with "baggled"? Actually, neither am I. Perhaps my subconscious tried to mate "boggled" with "baffled." SS

You've coined a new word!!

Here are my notes from previous discussions of the phrase:

GOING TO HELL IN A HAND BASKET/HANDCART/WHEELBARROW/BUCKET - "'hell in a handbasket' poses one of the most perplexing problems that has crossed our desk in years," according to the "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrases" by William and Mary Morris. The authors couldn't find the expression in any of the usual references. From an online source: Accessed June 3, 2003. "But a semantic equivalent to our mysterious phrase appears in a source quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (as the thorough Mr Laing has logged). It is from a sermon of 1626 by Thomas Adams, whom I find Robert Southey called 'the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians'. Adams published a 'massive folio' of his sermons in 1629, and an augmented collection came out in 1862. If I had these I might, though I doubt it, be able to understand what he means by the following: 'This oppressor must needs go to heaven.... But it will be, as the byword is, in a wheelbarrow: the fiends, and not the angels, will take hold on him.' I can see that 'Go to heaven in a wheelbarrow' means the same as 'Go to hell in a handcart', but I do not see why wheelbarrows are susceptible to fiends . Mr Laing suggests that handcart or wheelbarrow is the equivalent of hell-cart, which is a name given in the early 17th century to a carriage used by prostitutes..."

• To hell in a handcart Smokey Stover 08/March/04
  • To hell in a handcart Dr. Rick M. Burton 17/March/04
  • To hell in a handcart ESC 08/March/04