Literal Translation
To pull the devil by the tail
Actual Meaning
Struggle to make ends meet
Etymology
The French lexicon has two other similar expressions: ‘avoir la queue du diable dans sa poche’ (to have the devil’s tail in one’s pocket) or ‘avoir le diable dans sa bourse’ (to have the devil in one’s purse), which also means to be in need, to be without money (example: ‘Here I am, at two in the morning, far from home, abandoned on the streets, hungry, frozen, and with the devil’s tail in my pocket.’ ‘ – Alphonse Daudet, Trente ans de Paris, 1888). There is also the following expression, which has fallen into disuse: ’Il mangerait le diable et ses cornes‘ (He would eat the devil and his horns), which means to be ’so hungry that you would eat anything”.
In all of those, the devil is associated with the idea of poverty and physical hardship. For some, it is an image of a poor person who would resort to the devil to grant his wishes and who would refuse to ‘let go of the devil’s tail’ until he had responded to his requests.
For others, more pragmatic, the devil’s tail represents the purse strings, as it was said that an empty purse contained the devil. We refer you to the expression ‘to harbour the devil/to have the devil in one’s purse’, which dates back to the time when coins were stamped with a cross on one side, which was believed to protect against the devil. The expression was popularised by Jean de La Fontaine in his fable Le Trésor et les deux hommes (The Treasure and the Two Men): ‘A man who had neither credit nor resources / And housed the Devil in his purse, / That is to say, housed nothing in it…’).
Finally, a third interpretation gives the term ‘devil’ an ancient definition. Indeed, ‘diable’ is also the name of a large rake that peasants used to gather what was left in the fields during times of great famine. However, we do not have enough sources to confirm the veracity of this theory.