Proverbs of All Nations, Compared, Explained, and Illustrated

He that loves law will get his fill of it.

Agree, for the law is costly.

Law's costly; tak a pint and 'gree.—Scotch.

Lord Mansfield declared that if any man claimed a field from him he would give it up, provided the concession were kept secret, rather than engage in proceedings at law. Hesiod, in admonishing his brother always to prefer a friendly accommodation to a lawsuit, gave to the world the paradoxical proverb, "The half is more than the whole." Very often "A lean agreement is better than a fat lawsuit" (Italian).[747] "Lawyers' garments are lined with suitors' obstinacy" (Italian);[748] and "Their houses are built of fools' heads" (French).[749] Doctors and lawyers are notoriously shy of taking what they prescribe for others. "No good lawyer ever goes to law" (Italian).[750] Lord Chancellor Thurlow did so once, but in his case the exception approved the rule. A house had been built for him by contract, but he had made himself liable for more than the stipulated price by ordering some departures from the specification whilst the work was in progress. He refused to pay the additional charge; the builder brought an action and got a verdict against him, and surly Thurlow never afterwards set foot within the house which was the monument of his wrong-headedness and its chastisement.

Refer my coat, and lose a sleeve.—Scotch.

Arbitrators generally make both parties abate something of their pretensions.

Fair and softly, as lawyers go to heaven.

The odds are great against their ever getting there, if it be true that "Unless hell is full never will a lawyer be saved" (French).[751] "The greater lawyer, the worse Christian" (Dutch).[752] "'Virtue in the middle,' said the devil as he sat between two attorneys" (Danish).[753]

PHYSIC. PHYSICIANS. MAXIMS RELATING TO HEALTH.

If the doctor cures, the sun sees it; if he kills, the earth hides it.

"The earth covers the mistakes of the physician" (Italian, Spanish).[754] "Bleed him and purge him; if he dies, bury him" (Spanish).[755] It is a melancholy truth that "The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease" (French).[756] "Throw physic to the dogs" is in effect the advice given by many eminent physicians, and by some of the greatest thinkers the world has seen. "Shun doctors and doctors' drugs if you wish to be well,"[757] was the seventh, last, and best rule of health laid down by the famous physician Hoffmann. Sir William Hamilton declared that "Medicine in the hands in which it is vulgarly dispensed is a curse to humanity rather than a blessing;" and Sir Astley Cooper did not scruple to avow that "The science of medicine was founded on conjecture and improved by murder." It is a remarkable fact that "The doctor seldom takes physic" (Italian).[758] He does not appear to have a very lively faith in his own art. As for his alleged cures, their reality does not pass unquestioned. It is true that "Dear physic always does good, if not to the patient, at least to the apothecary" (German);[759] but "It is God that cures, and the doctor gets the money" (Spanish).[760] Save your money, then, and "If you have a friend who is a doctor take off your hat to him, and send him to the house of your enemy" (Spanish).[761]

The best physicians are Dr. Diet, Dr. Quiet, and Dr. Merriman.

Every man at forty is either a fool or a physician.

A creaking gate hangs long on its hinges.

Valetudinarians often outlive persons of robust constitution who take less care of themselves. A French saying to this purpose, which is too idiomatic to be translated, was neatly applied by Pozzo di Borgo in a conversation with Lady Holland. Her ladyship, exulting in the duration of the Whig government, notwithstanding the prevalent anticipations of their fall, said to him, "Vous voyez, Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, que nous vivons toujours." "Oui, madame," he replied, "les petites santés durent quelquefois longtemps." "Creaking carts last longest" (Dutch).[762] "The flawed pots are the most lasting" (French).[763]

A groaning wife and a grunting horse ne'er failed their master.

Seek your salve where ye got your sore.—Scotch.

Take a hair of the dog that bit you.

Advice given to persons suffering the after-pains of a carouse. The same stimulant which caused their nervous depression will also relieve it. The metaphor is derived from an old medical practice to which Seneca makes some allusion, and which is commended in a rhyming French adage to this effect, "With the hair of the beast that bit thee, or with its blood, thou wilt be cured."[764] Cervantes, in his tale of La Gitanilla, thus describes an old gipsy woman's manner of treating a person bitten by a dog:—"She took some of the dog's hairs, fried them in oil, and after washing with wine the two bites she found on the patients left leg, she put the hairs and the oil upon them, and over this dressing a little chewed green rosemary. She then bound the leg up carefully with clean bandages, made the sign of the cross over it, and said, 'Now go to sleep, friend, and with the help of God your hurts will not signify.'"

One nail drives out another.

This is the doctrine of homœopathy. "Poison quells poison" (Italian).[765]

If the wind strike thee through a hole,

Go make thy will and mend thy soul.

"A blast from a window is a shot from a crossbow" (Italian).[766] "To a bull and a draught of air give way" (Spanish).[767]

One hour's sleep before midnight is worth two hours after it.

Ladies rightly call sleep before midnight "beauty sleep."

Old young, and old long.[768]

You must leave off the irregularities of youth be-times if you wish to enjoy a long and hale old age; for

Young men's knocks old men feel.

"The sins of our youth we atone for in our old age" (Latin).[769]

Rub your sore eye with your elbow.

He who laid down this rule of sound surgery was a man qui ne se mouchait pas du talon; he did not blow his nose with his heel. If a speck of dust enters your eye, close the lid gently, keep your fingers away from it, and leave the foreign body to be washed by the tears to the inner corner of the eye, whence it may be removed without difficulty.

CLERGY.

It's kittle shooting at corbies and clergy.—Scotch.

Crows are very wary, and the clergy are vindictive; therefore it is ticklish work trying to get the better of either. "One must either not meddle with priests or else smite them dead," say the Germans;[770] and Huss, the Bohemian reformer, in denouncing the sins of the clergy in his day, has preserved for us a similar proverb of his countrymen: "If you have offended a clerk kill him, else you will never have peace with him."[771] "The bites of priests and wolves are hard to heal" (German).[772] "Priests and women never forget" (German).[773] "How dangerous it was," says Gross, "to injure the meanest retainer of a religious house is very ludicrously but justly expressed in the following old English adage, which I have somewhere met with:—

'Yf perchaunce one offend a freere's dogge, streight clameth the whole brotherhood, An heresy! An heresy!'"

There is an old German proverb to the same purpose, which Eiserlein heard once from the lips of an aged lay servitor of a monastery in the Black Forest: "Offend one monk, and the lappets of all cowls will flutter as far as Rome."[774]

What was good the friar never loved.

Popular opinion attributes to the clergy, both secular and regular, a lively regard for the good things of this life, and a determination to have their full share of them. "No priest ever died of hunger" is a remark made by the Livonians; and they add, "Give the priests all thou hast, and thou wilt have given them nearly enough." "A priest's pocket is hard to fill,"[775] at least in Denmark; and the Italians say, that "Priests, monks, nuns, and poultry never have enough."[776] "Abbot of Carzuela," cries the Spaniard, "you eat up the stew, and you ask for the stewpan."[777] The worst testimony against the monastic order comes from the countries in which they most abound: "Where friars swarm, keep your eyes open" (Spanish).[778] "Have neither a good monk for a friend, nor a bad one for an enemy" (Spanish).[779] "As for friars, live with them, eat with them, walk with them, and then sell them, for thus they do themselves" (Spanish).[780] The propensity of churchmen to identify their own personal interests with the welfare of the church are glanced at in the following:—"The monk that begs for God's sake begs for two" (Spanish, French).[781] "'Oh, what we must suffer for the church of God!' cried the abbot, when the roast fowl burned his fingers" (German).[782]

There's no mischief done in the world but there's a woman or a priest at the bottom of it.

SEASONS. WEATHER.

If the grass grow in Janiveer,

It grows the worse for it all the year.

"When gnats dance in January the husbandman becomes a beggar" (Dutch).[783] An exception to these rules is recorded by Ray, who says that "in the year 1667 the winter was so mild that the pastures were very green in January; yet was there scarcely ever known a more plentiful crop of hay than the summer following."

February fill dike, be it black or be it white.

All the months in the year curse a fair Februeer.

The hind had as lief see his wife on the bier

As that Candlemas day should be pleasant and clear.

Candlemas day is the 2nd of February, when the Romish Church celebrates the purification of the Virgin Mary. On that day, also, the church candles are blessed for the whole year, and they are carried in procession in the hands of the faithful. Then the use of tapers at vespers and litanies, which prevails throughout the winter, ceases until the ensuing Allhallowmas: hence the proverb,—

On Candlemas day

Throw candle and candlestick away.

Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says there is a general tradition in most parts of Europe that inferreth the coldness of the succeeding winter from the shining of the sun on Candlemas day, according to the proverbial distich:—

Another version of this proverb current in the north of England is,—

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

March comes in with adder heads and goes out with peacock tails.—Scotch.

A peck of March dust is worth a king's ransom.

A dry March never begs its bread.

A peck of March dust and a shower in May

Make the corn green and the fields gay.

March winds and April showers

Bring forth May flowers.

March wind and May sun

Make clothes white and maids dun.

So many mists in March you see,

So many frosts in May will be.

March grass never did good.

"When gnats dance in March it brings death to sheep" (Dutch).[784]

When April blows his horn it's good both for hay and corn.

"That is," says Ray, "when it thunders in April, for thunder is usually accompanied with rain."

A cold April the barn will fill.

April and May are the keys of the year.

A May flood never did good.

This applies to England. In Spain and Italy they say, "Water in May is bread for all the year."[785]

To wed in May is to wed poverty.

There were fewer marriages in Scotland in May, 1857, than in any other month of the year: it is an "unlucky month." The proverb is recorded by Washington Irving.

A dry summer never made a dear peck.

Drought never bred dearth in England.

The same thing, and no more, is meant by the following enigmatical rhyme:—

The first of these two contingencies occurs after a wet summer—the second after a dry one; and, as there is more clay than sand in England, there is a better harvest in the second case than in the first.

Dry August and warm doth harvest no harm.

They think differently on this point in the south of Europe. "A wet August never brings dearth" (Italian).[786] "When it rains in August it rains honey and wine" (Spanish).[787]

September blow soft till the fruit's in the loft.

November take flail, let ships no more sail.

A green Christmas makes a fat churchyard.

It is a popular notion that a mild winter is less healthy than a frosty one; but the Registrar-General's returns prove that it is quite the contrary. The mortality of the winter months is always in proportion to the intensity of the cold. The proverb, therefore, must be given up as a fallacy. There is some truth in this of the Germans, "A green Christmas, a white Easter." The probability is that a very mild winter will be followed by an inclement spring.

A snow year, a rich year.

Under water, dearth; under snow, bread.

Winter's thunder and summer's flood

Never boded an Englishman good.

NATIONAL AND LOCAL CHARACTERISTICS. LOCAL ALLUSIONS.

A right Englishman knows not when a thing is well.

It would seem, too, that he does not know when a thing is ill; for the French say the English were beaten at Waterloo, but had not the wit to know it.

A Scotsman is aye wise ahint the hand.—Scotch.

A Scotsman aye taks his mark frae a mischief.—Scotch.

Scotsmen reckon aye frae an ill hour.—Scotch.

That is, they always date from some untoward event. "A Scottish man," says James Kelly, "solicited the Prince of Orange to be made an ensign, for he had been a sergeant ever since his Highness ran away from Groll."

The Englishman weeps, the Irishman sleeps, but the Scotsman gaes till he gets it.—Scotch.

Such, according to Scotch report, is the conduct of the three when they want food.

The Welshman keeps nothing till he has lost it.—Welsh.

The older the Welshman, the more madman.—Welsh.

As long as a Welsh pedigree.

The Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate.—Italian.[788]

This is the testimony of Italians. Of our country they say,—

England is the paradise of women, the purgatory of purses, and the hell of horses.—Italian.[789]

War with all the world, and peace with England.—Spanish.[790]

Beware of a white Spaniard and of a swarthy Englishman.—Dutch.[791]

Apparently because they are out of kind, and therefore presumed to be uncanny.

He has more to do than the ovens of London at Christmas.—Italian.

They agree like the clocks of London.—French, Italian.

Which clocks disagree to this day. (See Household Words, No. 410.) "The city time measurers are so far behind each other that the last chime of eight has hardly fallen on the ear from the last church, when another sprightly clock is heard to begin the hour of nine. Each clock, however, governs, and is believed in by, its own immediate neighbourhood."

Shake a bridle over a Yorkshireman's grave, and he will rise and steal a horse.

He is Yorkshire.

He is a keen blade. "He's of Spoleto" (E Spoletino), say the Italians.

The devil will not come into Cornwall for fear of being put into a pie.

Cornish housewives make pies of such unlikely materials as potatoes, pilchards, &c.

Surnames beginning with these syllables—e.g., Trelawney, Polwhele, Penrose—are originally Cornish.

A Scottish man and a Newcastle grindstone travel all the world over.

Newcastle grindstones were long reputed the best of their kind. Another version of the proverb associates them with rats and red herrings, things which are very widely diffused over the globe, but not more so than Scotchmen.

Three great evils come out of the north—a cold wind, a cunning knave, and a shrinking cloth.

He's an Aberdeen's man; he may take his word again.—Scotch.

An Aberdeen's man ne'er stands to the word that hurts him.—Scotch.

The people of Normandy labour under the same imputation: "A Norman has his say and his unsay."[792] This proverb is said to have arisen out of the ancient custom of the province, according to which contracts did not become valid until twenty-four hours after they had been signed, and either party was at liberty to retract during that interval.

Wise men of Gotham.

Gotham is a village in Nottinghamshire, declared by universal consent, for reasons unknown, to be the head quarters of stupidity in this country, on whose inhabitants all sorts of ridiculous stories might be fathered. The convenience of having such a butt for sarcasm has been recognised by all nations. The ancient Greeks had their Bœotia, which was for them what Swabia is for the modern Germans. The Italians compare foolish people to those of Zago, "Who sowed needles that they might have a crop of crowbars, and dunged the steeple to make it grow."[793] The French say, "Ninety-nine sheep and a Champenese make a round hundred,"[794] the man being a stupid animal like the rest. The Abbé Tuet traces back the origin of this story to Cæsar's conquest of Gaul. Before that period the wealth of Champagne consisted in flocks of sheep, which paid a rate in kind to the public revenue. The conqueror, wishing to favour the staple of the province, exempted from taxation all flocks numbering less than a hundred head, and the consequence was that the Champenese always divided their sheep into flocks of ninety-nine. But Cæsar was soon even with them, for he ordered that in future the shepherd of every flock should be counted as a sheep, and pay as one.

Tenterden steeple's the cause of the Goodwin Sands.

This proposition is commonly quoted as a flagrant example of bad logic, illustrating the fallacy of the reference post hoc, ergo propter hoc. A very quaint account of its origin is given in these words in one of Latimer's sermons:—"Mr. Moore was once sent with commission into Kent, to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin's Sands, and the shelf which stopped up Sandwich Haven. Thither cometh Mr. Moore, and calleth all the country before him; such as were thought to be men of experience, and men that could of likelihood best satisfy him of the matter concerning the stopping of Sandwich Haven. Among the rest came in before him an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little less than an hundred years old. When Mr. Moore saw this aged man he thought it expedient to hear him say his mind in this matter; for, being so old a man, it was likely that he knew most in that presence, or company. So Mr. Moore called this old aged man unto him, and said, 'Father, tell me, if you can, what is the cause of the great arising of the sands and shelves here about this haven, which stop it up so that no ships can arrive here. You are the oldest man I can espy in all the company, so that if any man can tell the cause of it, you of all likelihood can say most to it, or at leastwise more than any man here assembled.' 'Yea, forsooth, good Mr. Moore,' quoth this old man, 'for I am well-nigh an hundred years old, and no man here in this company anything near my age.' 'Well, then,' quoth Mr. Moore, 'how say you to this matter? What think you to be the cause of these shelves and sands, which stop up Sandwich Haven?' 'Forsooth, sir,' quoth he, 'I am an old man; I think that Tenterton steeple is the cause of Goodwin's Sands. For I am an old man, sir,' quoth he; 'I may remember the building of Tenterton steeple, and I may remember when there was no steeple at all there. And before that Tenterton steeple was in building there was no manner of talking of any flats or sands that stopped up the haven; and therefore I think that Tenterton steeple is the cause of the decay and destroying of Sandwich Haven.'"

After all, this is not so palpable a non sequitur as it appears, for, says Fuller, "One story is good till another is told; and though this be all whereupon this proverb is generally grounded, I met since with a supplement thereunto: it is this. Time out of mind, money was constantly collected out of this county to fence the east banks thereof against the irruption of the sea, and such sums were deposited in the hands of the Bishop of Rochester; but because the sea had been quiet for many years without any encroaching, the bishop commuted this money to the building of a steeple and endowing a church at Tenterden. By this diversion of the collection for the maintenance of the banks, the sea afterwards broke in upon Goodwin Sands. And now the old man had told a rational tale, had he found but the due favour to finish it; and thus, sometimes, that is causelessly accounted ignorance of the speaker which is nothing but impatience in the auditors, unwilling to attend to the end of the discourse."

A loyal heart may be landed under Traitors' Bridge.

Every one who has passed down the Thames from London Bridge knows that archway in front of the Tower, under which boats conveying prisoners of state used to pass to Traitors' Stairs.