Today's obscure religous metaphore
"Go to heaven in a wheelbarrow" To be damned to eternal suffering; to go to hell. This obsolete expression has been traced to a window in Gloucestershire, England, depicting Satan wheeling away a termagant woman in a wheelbarrow.
This oppressor must needs go to heaven, … But it will be, as the by-word is, in a Wheel-barrow; the fiends, and not the Angels will take hold on him. (Thomas Adams, Gods Bounty, 1618)
Source
2 comments:
What about going to hell in a handbasket?
Hey Jay,
That's how I found this expression. Some think that hell in a handbasket derived from heaven in a wheelbarrow.
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