Hellmouth

[Kathleen Miller]

I just finished this one for Mr. Safire. His curiousity was piqued by a
Times Magazine article back in October. The OED has Edmund Spenser's Faerie
Queene 1590 - "Betwixt them both was but a little stride, That did the
house of Rishesse from Hell-mouth divide." Kipling used it as well.
Almost all of the other references I could find (that didn't come from
Buffy) had to do with the stage design of Medieval plays. They depicted the
mouth to hell as a huge dragon's (Leviathan's)gaping mouth.