I recently came across some explanation of the nautical origin of various sayings. The two which come to mind are "Between the devil and the deep blue sea" and "there'll be hell to pay". It explained the first something like this (though I'm sure that I have it a bit wrong):
The plank on the deck closest to the outside of the ship was called "the devil". It was somewhat oddly shaped or sloped, and so when you were standing on it you could easily slip off. Thus to be between the devil and the deep blue sea meant that you were falling off of the boat.
"To pay" a part of the boat was to seal it with tar. "Hell" was the name of some portion of the ship which was down below and difficult to get to or stand in. Thus "paying hell" was an assignment given as a punishment, and the warning "there'll be hell to pay" meant that there were stern consequences.
I read it, and I must admit that I found it somewhat interesting. But what I found more interesting is why the author put the page together. What man, having this knowledge, would bother to keep it. And if he could not get rid of it, why would he want to spread it? If this is indeed the origin of these sayings, so much the worse for these sayings.
When a man says, "we're between the devil and the deep blue sea" he conjures up all sorts of marvelous images. When I hear it, I usually picture him standing on the shore, with the Devil in front of him and the ocean at his back. He stands, an apparent choice before him: if he goes forward he must face the devil, and if goes back, he must face the sea. The Devil is the Devil, with all the terrors that implies, but the sea is vasty, dark, and deep — it is not a place meant for men and they do not last long when they go in it. In short, it describes a point of decision between unknown terrors and likely destruction, with the faint hint of an alternative not yet realized — what is to the right and left? The Devil and the deep blue sea can only be on two sides of a man, he must yet have two more sides. They may contain more of the same — the devil may follow him — but what if they don't?
In short, "between the devil and the deep blue sea" is a beautiful image which expresses a complex idea. Moreover, it deals with choice, and presents alternatives in a light that they might not otherwise be in. Using the image of "just having fallen off of a boat" to explain the idea of "we're doomed" is complicating the matter, not simplifying it, and using an image to explain what needs no images. When people are doomed there's nothing they can do about it, and whatever it is that has doomed them will provide enough images of their doom. Doomed men need no help to understand doom, and cannot benefit from it even by understanding it. There are no choices left to a doomed man, so it cannot matter how he doesn't make them.
"There'll be hell to pay" is not as colorful, I think, but it still conjures up images of terrible consequences and of men bearing them. It has at least some of the flavor of the idea of good triumphing over evil, and perhaps if one is religiously inclined of man's share in the triumph over death won by Jesus. It suggests, even if it is not normally used about such things, great sacrifice and strength. Crude caution at being assigned an unpleasant but necessary duty has none of this.
I now recall another. "Not enough room to swing a cat" was claimed to be a reference to the men watching a flogging crowding too close around the flogger to allow him to swing the whip. Perhaps it was so, but this just needlessly mentions man's cruelty to man (for indeed flogging was a very cruel thing, if it was perhaps sometimes justified). The notion of literally swinging a cat around is just silly (we may safely assume that somehow the cat comes to no harm). Each item is about as a large as the other and the inability to swing either suggests an equal amount of crowding. But whereas the whip evokes the specter of human cruelty, the cat evokes the nonsense of human perversity. It recalls the triumph of free will over dead matter that doing something for no reason at all entails. To do something with good reason is always defensible, but it also reminds one of the terrible unbroken chain of causality. To do something for no reason reminds one of the wonderful firework of free will. It reminds one of the senseless act of God in creation. For who can offer any defense of how it was rational (in the purely practical sense of the word) for God to have created us?
So it is with so very many old sayings whose origin has been lost to time. Most of them are better off for it. Just as a man's history may haunt him, if his old age is better than his youth, so may a saying's history haunt it. There are those who want to bring back the past, and keep these sayings from enjoying their current prosperity. Cannot these men let it be? If a saying has a torrid past, can we not leave this in the past? Can we not let sleeping dogs lie?