What happened
The flat summit of Table Mountain above Cape Town is often covered by a white layer of cloud known as the “tablecloth.” A Cape Town legend explains it with a wager made three hundred years ago. Around 1700 a retired pirate named Jan van Hunks, a devoted pipe smoker whose wife drove him out of the house whenever he lit up, lived at the foot of the neighboring peak. One day, sitting on the slope, he met a mysterious stranger who was also smoking. The two began boasting about who could smoke more and settled it with a contest. The smoke from their pipes wrapped the mountain – and so the tablecloth was born. The stranger turned out to be the devil; in some versions he lost, in others he carried van Hunks away, and their duel goes on to this day whenever clouds gather over the mountain. The story is said to explain the name of Devil's Peak (Duivelskop), which rises to about 3,280 feet beside Table Mountain.
Witnesses
A story repeated in guidebooks and by Capetonians. A similar tale of a Dutch smoker's wager with the devil was told by the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his ballad “Jan Van Hunks” (begun in 1846/1847, finished in 1882).
Explanations and hypotheses
The “tablecloth” is an orographic cloud: the southeasterly wind pushes moist air up the slopes, where it cools and condenses, and on the other side the cloud sinks and dissolves – hence the impression that it is “pouring” off the mountain. The legend itself has puzzling origins. Rossetti's ballad was based on John Rutter Chorley's story “Henkerwyssel's Challenge” of 1829, set in Europe rather than at the Cape. In Charles Pettman's dictionary “Africanderisms” (1913), the entry for Devil's Peak explains the name as a literal translation of the Dutch Duivels Kop and says nothing about van Hunks. Everything suggests the Cape Town version is a European tale adapted to the local landscape.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Rossetti Archive – Jan Van Hunks (The Dutchman's Wager)
- Charles Pettman, Africanderisms: a glossary of South African colloquial words and phrases and of place and other names (Longmans, Green and Co., 1913)
More: Wikipedia (en)