max wrote on 12/31/69 at 16:00:11:Forrest, I'm just lookin at your signature there, and the whole thing about the saying "going to hell in a handbasket" is something I don't understand. It has mystified me for years now. Maybe its because I'm a kiwi, maybe its simply because I'm dense, but I don't get it. Could you, or anyone else, please explain what that saying is all about, if anything?
Taa.
Why you all did not just ask the 18th century person is beyond me.
The handbasket is a commonly used utensil by women going to market as far back as Egytian times. Goods carried to market where what the woman (or man) had made at home and planned to sell or trade for market goods.
Common items were mostly inert things such as eggs, candles, yarn, thread, fabric, vegetables or shellfish. However, there were also live animals such as chickens, baby pigs and lambs transported via handbasket. (Some large enough to look like a big cage, but still hand carried, thus the name).
If you were the piglet, you were not coming back home alive. And where you were going to end up was in the flames.
Replace the animal with a doomed person, results in the reference, "going to h3ll in a handbasket."
Respectfully, Your Servant Sirs,
skatnbnc