hell-kettle
A deep black gulf or abyss; a name locally applied to holes or pools popularly supposed to be bottomless.
| 1577 Harrison England i. xxiv. (1881) iii. 164 What the foolish people dreame of the hell kettles, it is not worthie the rehearsall..There are certeine pits, or rather three little pooles, a mile from Darlington..which the people call the kettles of hell, or the diuels kettles. 1634 Relat. Short Survey (in Longstaffe Darlington), The three..deepe pitts called Hell Kettles, we left boyling by Darlington. 1698 Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 250 An huge Casm, or Hell-Kettle was left where the mountain had emptied its self. |