What do you mean, ‘The Devil’s beating his wife?’ - you strange, strange man

When my son finally arrived in Scotland to continue his education at the University of Stirling, he first stopped to eat at a restaurant in the town of Stirling. And what song was playing when he walked in the door?

“Sweet Home Alabama,” of course, by Lynyrd Skynyrd. As we all know, that tune is based on an old Scottish tune that Highlanders would sing as they stormed castles, terrorized sheep, while loving the governor and not bothered by Watergate.

As a Columbus native, born just across the river from Alabama, the poor kid must have thought that he would never escape that great but way overplayed song. Then again, it gave him a sense of strange comfort 4,000 miles away knowing that the world is a lot smaller than it used to be. You’re never really that far from home anymore. You’re just a Snapchat or tweet away.

It also was reassuring to know that for all of Scotland’s wonderful differences such as cooler weather and universal health care, there were still a good many similarities. But just because the folks speak English like he does, that doesn’t mean there aren’t occasional language barriers.

For instance, as rain was falling a few days ago even as the sun was shining, Saylor looked up and noted, “The Devil’s beating his wife.”

Now, he learned that saying from me, and I have no idea where I learned it. I would Google it to find its origin, but I’m scared I’ll find out that no one but me has ever said that and it originated from a very scary place — inside my head.

Of course, when Saylor said this, his Scottish friends looked at him as if he had worms crawling out of his ears or if he’d just said something crazy like, “Haggis is awful.”

In their defense, it truly is a strange statement. When rain falls in the bright sunshine, it really is quite beautiful. It’s not something that probably should be equated with spousal abuse.

It also brings up some questions. One, is Satan married? I mean, I know a lot of women seem to fall for bad guys, but that kinda takes the cake. If so, who married them? It’s hard enough for gay couples and interracial couples to find places to get hitched. It must be truly difficult for the Prince of Darkness to find a decent wedding spot. As for the honeymoon, did they go somewhere that’s hot as hell or cold as hell?

And do we really know that Satan beats his wife? After all, I’ve heard it’s really tough for men out there these days as they could be falsely accused at any moment. If we willy-nilly make a statement like that, American evangelicals might trip all over themselves to defend Satan and claim it’s a conspiracy led by the Clintons from a sex-slave dungeon in the basement of a pizzeria under the very mosque where Obama was born in Kenya.

Not only do such sayings as “The Devil’s beating his wife” not translate from country to country but also from not even from town to town, even from a small town in Georgia to another small town in Georgia.

My wife, who hails from tiny Richland, Georgia, had never heard the phrase until she heard it from me, who hails from tiny Oglethorpe, Georgia, less than an hour apart. Perhaps it is all in my head.

Then she came up with a phrase I’d never heard as she was dealing with cat drama in the house. (Trust me, you don’t want to know the drama unless litter box excitement is your kind of thing.) As she put it, “I dropped my basket.”

I was fixin’ to ask her what that meant, but she was madder than a wet hen, and it really didn’t amount to a hill of beans so heaven’s to Betsy if I wasn’t worn slap out so much that I just reckoned I’d sit over yonder ‘til the cows came home. Besides, there’s only one thing you can say to someone who just dropped her basket:

“Bless your heart.”

Chris Johnson’s books and more available at KudzuKid.com.