Well it seems I’ve caused a bit of a stir about a recent status update where I said that I was watching the Devil beat his wife. So here’s the deal…
1. I can see how some thought I was referring my wife with that pronoun. Nope. That’s not what I meant as you’re about to understand…
2. The phrase “the devil is beating his wife” is a phrase to describe a sunshower, or when the sun is shining while it rains.
It’s a southern thing I suppose. In fact, a friend of mine from Georgia knew the phrase and told his wife the same thing today.
I did a little looking around online about this. Of course checking out ’sunshower’ on Wikipedia reveals a good summary of what I was finding spread around the internets.
In the United States, particularly the South, a sunshower is said to show that “the devil is beating his wife.” Similar phrases occur in Hungary and Holland. A regional variant from Tennessee is “the devil is kissing his wife.”
I learned a lot looking this up. Apparently in many places in the world, there are a lot of phrases used to describe a sunshower. Many cultures use phrases that describe animal weddings such as monkeys, jackals, rats, bears, tigers, leopards, and foxes. Other cultures refer to witches making butter, elves getting married, and of course the devil beating his wife.
Additionally there is a book I found on Amazon called The Devil Beats His Wife: And other stories from the Low Country. In the Amazon book description it says:
The author offers poignant descriptions of the old abandon black churches that dot secondary roads in rural areas of the South.
So any others know what I’m talking about? And if so, you from the South?
