Hugh Donnelly was born in London of Irish parents. He wrote to me recently to ask if I could throw any light on the origin of the name of a hornpipe called The Devil Among the Tailors. He recalls hearing something, somewhere, long long ago, about the matter; perhaps from his grandfather, who was, he tells me, a very good traditional fiddler.
There was a children's game of that same name mentioned by Mayhew, in his book London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851. It appears rows of little "tailors" in the form of small, light wooden pegs were set up on a long board. A top, "the devil", was set spinning in the centre of the board and whipped into the tailors; the result depended on the number of tailors knocked over by the devil. The hornpipe is a dance of English origin, I believe; perhaps Mr Donnelly's tune was named after the London children's game.
Satan is called the divil in most places in rural Ireland; I was surprised to find this is also the case in many places in rural England. A contributor to Wright's dialect dictionary explained that in Lincolnshire, "Old fashioned people at the end of the (nineteenth) century used to make it a manner of conscience when they read Holy Scripture, or talked on religious matters, to speak of the devil; but when they had occasion to use the word in oaths or in talk of a lighter sort, they were careful to say divil".
I used to play cards in Kilkenny long ago; around Glenmore I heard the four of clubs spoken of as the divil's bedpost, the unluckiest card in the pack. A century before I began to lose money to the hurler Eddie O'Connor's uncle, the academic journal Notes and Queries reported from a Worcestershire farmer: "There was never a good hand of cards if the four of clubs were in it. It's the divil's four-post bedstead".
In certain places along the Border the magpie is the divil's bird. If the magpie can be got to hatch a clutch of gamecock's eggs, the chicks hatched will turn out to be courageous. The divil's bird is thought to have a drop of the devil's blood in its beak: if it scratches its tongue and inserts into the wound a drop of human blood, it may receive the gift of speech. Yes, An Fear Dubh has cast a long shadow over lore and language.