Origins of The Name
Devil's Peak was originally known as Wind-berg or Charles Mountain. The English term Devil's Peak is a 19th century translation from the Dutch Duiwels Kop, and supposedly comes from the folk-tale about a Dutch man called Jan van Hunks, a prodigious pipe smoker who lived at the foot of the mountain circa 1700. He was forced by his wife to leave the house whenever he smoked his pipe. One day, while smoking on the slopes of the peak, he met a mysterious stranger who also smoked. They each bragged of how much they smoked and so they fell into a pipe-smoking contest. The stranger turned out to be the Devil and Van Hunks eventually won the contest, but not before the smoke that they had made had covered the mountain, forming the table cloth cloud. The story was captured by the 19th century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his poem Jan van Hunks (alternatively called The Dutchman's Wager).
It has also been claimed that the name is a corruption of Duifespiek ("Dove's Peak") to Duiwelspiek ("Devil's Peak"), since the Dutch the words for devil and dove are relatively close in sound. The Dutch word "Duiwelspiek" has been the common Afrikaans language name for the mountain and the suburb on the east side of the city bowl. The name is also thought to have been derived from the mountain's 'three pronged' spear shape, which is reminiscent of the spear held by the Devil in many images.
Read more about this topic: Devil's Peak (Cape Town)
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