Jacqueline Simpson | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

A supplement to my note on angel and devil at one’s right and left shoulder. Will Ryan’s The Bakehouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (Sutton, 1999) mentions on page 55 the association of left with damnation on the basis of Matthew 25:33:

And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left.

This is followed in 25:41 by:

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

Ryan goes on:

“Perhaps for this reason one of the euphemisms for the Devil in some parts of Russia is simply levyi, ‘the left one’… There was a common dualist belief in Russia that a child at birth was allocated not only a guardian angel, who always hovered on the right, but also an attendant devil, who took up his position on the left. Consequently many Russians would never spit to the right and would always sleep on their left side so as to be facing the angel and not see the devil in nightmares. This belief in a good and bad guardian spirit has analogues in Greek and Jewish popular belief.”

Ryan gives as references for the Greek belief, Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil, Princeton 1991, p. 178, and for the Jewish, Stanley Coren, The Left -Hander Syndrome, London 1992, pp. 12-13.

I suspect that the earlier examples of the belief will all turn out to say “at” one’s shoulder, or “at” one’s side, and that “on” is part of the modern tendency to miniaturize supernatural beings, especially fairies, but sometimes angels too. In Disney’s Pinocchio, does Jiminy Cricket perch on Pinocchio’s shoulder?

I have just been re-reading Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner, and was surprised to notice that the innocent and persecuted brother always sees his demonic brother standing to his right (not his left) glaring at him. However, I think this is due to the influence of the terrible Psalm 109 (“the cursing psalm”), a metrical version of which is quoted in the story.

This Psalm contains the lines:

Set thou the wicked over him; and upon his right hand
Give thou his greatest enemy, ev’n Satan, leave to stand.

Postscript: The reference to Everyman in my previous note on this subject was wrong. I was probably confusing it in my mind with Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus , where a bad angel and a good angel appear on stage from time to time, to argue with Faustus.