Proverb Lore Part 5

Throughout the Middle Ages a great use was made, as we have seen, of these popular adages on tapestries, rings, and in fact wherever they could be employed. Shakespeare, it will be recalled, writes of a but moderately good poetaster as one "whose poetry was

For all the world like cutler's poetry Upon a knive, 'Love me, and leave me not,'"[65:A]

and we shall therefore naturally expect to find numerous allusions to this wealth of proverb-lore in the writings of the day. The works of the Elizabethan dramatists are br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with them. Such a fund of material as the "Book of Merry Riddles" must have been often drawn upon.

The first edition was printed in 1600, and contained, amongst other entertaining material, a collection of "choice and witty proverbs." It was often re-issued, and our last chapter has revealed to us how many other collections of like nature were issued and immediately became available.

We propose to devote now some little s.p.a.ce to exploring in search of proverbial allusions a little of the literary wealth of our country, and we may say at once that proverbs, like everything else, require discreet use, and it is not difficult to overdo the thing. A person who would be always dragging in these adages would be a terrible nuisance in conversation, and no less so in literature. In such a case "Enough is as good as a feast." One would quickly weary of a page or two of this sort of thing--a brochure during the days of a suggested invasion of England by "Boney"--

"Our foes on the ocean sent plenty of s.h.i.+ps, But 'It's not the best carpenter makes the most chips'; They promise to give Britain's sailors a beating, Though 'the proof of the pudding is found in the eating.'

The French have big armies, but their threats are but froth, For 'too many cooks do but spoil good broth'; They are welcome Britannia to catch when they get her, But though 'Brag is a good dog yet Holdfast's a better.'

For their threats of invasion we ne'er care a rush-- 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'; They may think, open-mouthed, to devour us like sharks, But 'Till the sky falls we must wait to catch larks.'"

"The pleasant historie of the two angrie women of Abington"[66:A] is, despite its self-a.s.sertion of its pleasantness, rendered very tedious by this abuse and superabundance of proverbs--one of the characters in the play, one Nicholas Prouerbes, introducing them _ad nauseam_. To give any notion of the drift of the play is beside our present need. We will content ourselves, therefore, with some few extracts that will suffice to indicate the point before us, the excessive use of these popular adages:

"_Nicholas._ O maister Philip forbeare. You must not leape ower the stile before you come to it; haste makes waste; softe fire makes sweet malte; not too fast for falling; there's no hast to hang true men.

"_Philip._ Now will I see if my memorie will serue for some prouerbes too. O, a painted cloath were as well worth a s.h.i.+lling as a theefe worth a halter; wel, after my heartie commendations, as I was at the making therof. He that trots easilie will indure. You have most learnedly proverbde it, commending the virtue of patience and forbearance, but yet you know forbearance is no quittance.

"_Nich._ I promise ye, maister Philip, you have spoken as true as steele.

"_Phil._ Father, there's a prouerbe well applied.

"_Nich._ And it seemeth vnto me that you mocke me; do you not kno mocke age and see how it will prosper?

"_Phil._ Why ye prouerbe booke bound up in follio, have ye no other sense to answere me but euery word a prouerbe, no other English?"

Presently a dispute arises outside, and Nicholas is asked, "Wilt thou not go see the fraye?" to which this inveterate proverb-monger replies:

"No indeed, even as they brew so let them bake--I will not thrust my hand into a flame and neede not--'Tis not good to have an oare in another man's boat--Little said is soone amended, and in a little medling commeth great rest. 'Tis good sleeping in a whole skin--so a man might come home by weeping-crosse. No, by Lady, a friend is not so soone gotten as lost--blessed are the peace-makers--they that strike with the sword shall be beaten with the zcabberd."

To this flow of wisdom Philip replies:

"Well said, Prouerbes, is ne're another to that purpose?"

The too ready Nicholas makes reply:

"Yes, I could have said to you, Syr, take heede is a good reede."

His fellow serving-man at one portion of the play sees well to call Nicholas "tripe-cheeke, fat a.s.se," and other epithets of like nature; upon which he replies:

"Good words cost nought, ill words corrupt good manners, Richard, for a hasty man never wants woe, and I had thought you had been my friende, but I see alle is not golde that glisters, time and truth tryeth all, and 'tis an old prouerbe and not so olde as true, bought wit is the best. I can see day at a little hole. I knowe your minde as well as though I were within you: goe to, you seeke to quarrell, but beware of lead I wist; so long goes the potte to the water at length it comes home broken. I knowe you are as goode a man as ever drew sword, as ere lookt man in the face, as ere broke bred or drunke drinke; but he is propper that hath propper conditions, be not you like the Cowe that gives a good sope of milke and casts it downe with his heeles. I speak, plainely, for plaine dealing is a Iewell, yet Ile take no wrong, if hee had a head as big as Bra.s.se and lookt as high as Poules steple."

Coomes, not quite liking the tone of these remarks, replies:

"Sirra, thou grashoper, thou shal skip from my sword as from a sithe. Ile cut thee out in collops and steakes and frye thee with the fier I shall strike from the pike of thy Bucklet."

To this appalling threat, not best adapted to soothe matters over, or pour oil on the troubled waters, Nicholas replies:

"Brag's a good dog: threatened folkes liue long."

Further quotation is quite needless; enough, amply enough, has been brought forward to convince us how terrible a bore the inveterate quoter of proverbs can readily become. We are prepared after this to sympathise entirely with the sentiments of old Fuller: "Adages and prouerbs are to be accounted only as Sauce to relish Meat with, but not as substantial Dishes to make a Meal on; and therefore were never good but upon proper Subjects and Occasions, where they may serve to give a lively Force and pleasant Turn to what is said: but to apply them wrong and crack them off too thick, like Sancho in 'Don Quixote,' is abominably foppish, ridiculous and nauseous." We had our eye on Sancho Panza, but any comments that we might have made on his conduct in cracking off proverbs so thick become needless, since Fuller has already said all that need be hurled against so hardened an offender.

A very curious early ma.n.u.script has come under our notice, in which the common proverbs of the time are quoted by one of the villains. It is arranged in stanzas of six lines, each being then followed by a proverb.

This latter is sometimes in two lines and sometimes in one, but is in every case attributed to the villains, "Ce dit li vilains." It deals with the proverbs current in Bretaigne, and commences:

"Qui les proverbes fist Premierement bien dist Au tans qu'alors estoit Or est tout en respit.

En ne chante ne lit D'annor en nul endroit 'Que a la bone denree A mauvaise oubliee'

Ce dit li vilains."

This quaint old French may be thus Anglicised: "He who first made proverbs spoke well to the people of his time; now all is forgotten, people neither sing nor read of honour in any place. He who has the good ware has forgotten the bad--so says the villain." The moral does not seem somehow to quite fit, unless indeed we read it to mean that when people had abundant supply of this proverb-law they had the good, and were so enamoured of it that it had supplanted in their hearts all desire for what they once preferred--the evil that was now quite driven from their hearts and forgotten.

Another verse terminates thus:

"Qui n'aime son mestier Ne son mestier lui Ce dit li vilains"--

"Who likes not his business his business likes not him." Another proverb that remains a very familiar one, as to the folly of not taking full precautions, and only shutting the stable door when the horse has already been taken, appears as

"Quant le cheval est emble Dounke ferme fols l'estable Ce dit li vilains."

The date of this poem is about the year 1300. How long the proverbs given therein date before its appearance--centuries possibly--we cannot say; but even if we took this poem as a point to start from, it is very interesting to reflect that this stolen horse and his unlocked stable have been for hundreds of years a warning to the heedless, and as well known to the men of Cressy and Agincourt as to those of this present day. However men, as Cavaliers or Roundheads, Lancastrians or Yorkists, priests or presbyters, differed from each other in much else, all agreed in this recognition of the folly of not taking better care of the steed they all knew so well.

We have an imitation of this old French poem in an English one that was almost contemporaneous, and, as in the preceding poem, each stanza is an amplification of the idea in the proverb that immediately follows, though in either case this gloss or development is not always very much to the point.

The first verse is dedicatory, invoking the Divine blessing:

"Mon that wol of wysdom heren At wyse Hendyng he may lernen That wes Marcolmes sone: G.o.de thonkes out monie thewes For te teche fele shrewes For that wes ever is wone Jhesu Crist al folke red That for us all tholede ded Upon the rode tre Lene us all to ben wys Ant to ende in his servys.

Amen, par charite.

G.o.d biginning maketh G.o.d endyng Quoth Hendyng."

"Of fleysh l.u.s.t cometh shame," and "if thou will fleysh overcome" the wisest course is flight from the temptation:

"Wel fytht that wel flyth Quoth Hendyng."

If you would avoid the evils that follow hasty speech keep the tongue with all diligence in subjection, for though one's tongue has no bone in it itself it has been the cause of many a broken bone in the quarrels that it has fostered:

"Tonge breketh bon Ant nad hire selve non Quoth Hendyng."

"Al too dere," he warns us, "is botht that ware that we may wythoute care," gather at a terrible risk to ourselves. It is the grossest folly to find a momentary pleasure in any act that will bring misery in its train, for

"Dere is boht the hony that is licked of the thorne Quoth Hendyng."

Where counsel fails, experience may step in and exact a higher price for the lesson taught:

"So that child withdraweth is hond From the fur ant the brond That hath byfore ben brend Brend child fur dredeth Quoth Hendyng."[72:A]

The Italians still more powerfully say that "A scalded dog dreads cold water," the meaning of this clearly being that those who have suffered in any direction have an exaggerated fear in consequence, and are afraid, even when there is no cause, really, for terror. This idea is even more strongly brought out in the old Rabbinical adage, "He who has been bitten by a serpent fears a piece of rope," a quite imaginable state of mind to arrive at.[72:B]