Playing cards with the devil.

Capt Lightning

Capt Lightning

Well-known Member
Location
Historic Buchan, Scotland
We've recently returned from a good holiday in which we visited a number of historic buildings. The most memorable one being a tour round the "House of he Binns". Binns comes from an old Scots word meaning hill. It is also the ancestral home of the Dalyell (pronounced D-L) family. One particularly colourful character was General Tam Dalyell who allegedly used a marble-topped table in the entrance hall when he played cards with the Devil.

The Devil always won, so to beat him, Dalyell placed a mirror behind the table so that he could read the Devil’s cards. The Devil was furious and threw the table at the General who ducked and the table smashed through a window and ended up in a pond outside. The table and the tale were soon lost in the mists of time. However, almost two centuries later in 1878, there was a drought and the pond dried up. There at the bottom was the table which was retrieved, repaired and placed back in the hall. Now the strange part. On one corner of the table is what resembles a hoof mark - and it has been impossible to remove.

The Devil's mark? You decide.
 

Ahhh...the the elements that great urban legends are made of. I'd love to see a picture of that table. I wonder if the hoof mark looks carved in, etched or painted? Does it look aged as it should. The answers to those questions would have bearing on my decision.
 
OneEyedDiva said:
Ahhh...the the elements that great urban legends are made of. I'd love to see a picture of that table. I wonder if the hoof mark looks carved in, etched or painted? Does it look aged as it should. The answers to those questions would have bearing on my decision.
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It doesn't look much like a hoof mark to me and the table had been in the pond for a long time, but then again, I've never met the Devil. Still, as a journalist once told me, never let the truth get in the way of a good story.
 
In Ingmar Bergman's movie "The Seventh Seal" (1957) the knight plays chess not with the devil but with the death.

 
chic said:
Card playing is always considered devilish activity and I wonder why this is?? :unsure:
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My guess is that card games were often played for money and any money lost would have been better suited to going to the church instead.

There are those with a gambling addiction, that lost most if not all their money and therefore couldn't support their family. I've seen that happen.
 

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