As we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And as you all know, it’s been my intention to offer my readers a diverting image from the margins of a medieval manuscript at regular one-week intervals–but hell if I can’t actually seem to stick to that schedule. I promise I’ll be a good boy from here on out, really I will, just please don’t let me end up like these poor souls from the margins of The Taymouth Hours (a fourteenth-century English book of hours currently held at the British Library):
Actually, come to think of it the flaming-wheelbarrow-borne have a pretty sweet deal compared to the other damned souls in the margins in Taymouth. These guys on the left below have to make do with much more cramped quarters:
Then again, a piggyback ride in a demon’s basket is high cotton compared to these fellows, who don’t even get the dignity of baskets:
Then again again, I suppose it doesn’t matter whether you get folded up into little ball and carried over a demon’s shoulders or if you get a pimped out flaming wheelbarrow. In the end, it’s straight into the hellmouth for everybody:
Though one wonders where the demon in the far right margin thinks he’s going with that one sinner, exactly. Apparently, even Satan has a problem with employees helping themselves to the inventory. In his defense, I suppose the demon could always say, “Hellloooo, demon here, remember? Personification of all sin and vice? That ring a bell?”