Snake Pit

Snake pits are places of horror, torture and even death in European legends and fairy tales. The Viking warlord Ragnar Lodbrok is said to have been thrown into a snake pit and died there, after his army had been defeated in battle by King Aelle II of Northumbria. An older legend recorded in Atlakviða and Oddrúnargrátr tells that Attila the Hun murdered Gunnarr, the King of Burgundy, in a snake pit. In a medieval German poem, Dietrich von Bern is thrown into a snake pit by the giant Sigenot - he is protected by a magical jewel that had been given to him earlier by a dwarf.

Nothing however supports the assumption that snake pits were ever actually maintained or used for torture or execution. The necessary effort and the risks would have been far too big for something the effect of which could hardly been foreseen or controlled with sufficient precision.

In common metaphorical usage, a snake pit can mean any institution (such as a school, prison, hospital, or nursing home) or organization led in an inept or inhumane way, or an institution containing many people who may be hostile, untrustworthy, or otherwise treacherous ("snakes"). For example, the film The Snake Pit (1948) tells the story of a woman who finds herself in an insane asylum and cannot remember how she got there.

Famous quotes containing the words snake and/or pit:

    If this creature is a murderer, then so are we all. This snake has killed one British soldier; we have killed many. This is not murder, gentlemen. This is war.
    —Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.
    Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)