Proverb Lore Part 12

On the contrary, if he would prosper, let him "Set up shop on the Goodwin sands," a most unpromising locality, one would imagine, until we realise that the saw-maker means "good win." "As plain as the Dunstable road" sounds straightforward enough, especially when we recall that Dunstable is on Watling Street, one of the n.o.ble main roads of the Romans; but the humour (save the mark!) of the thing is in the play on the idea of "dunce." In "Redgauntlet" we read: "If this is not plain speaking, there is no such place as downright Dunstable"--_i.e._ the meaning of the remark is so plain that even a mere fool, the veriest dunce, could not fail to grasp it.

In Lincolnshire, when anyone is not over-acute, they delicately say, "He was born at Little Wittham," hence the cause of his having so little wit: the actual spelling is Witham. On the decease of anyone it is said, "He is gone to Deadham." In Suss.e.x, if a man were slow over his work, they would say, "He is none of Hastings," the idea of haste being somehow involved. The dwellers in the little town of Ware were pleased to say that it was "worth all London." Fuller, who wrote a delightful folio on the counties of England, says: "This, I a.s.sure you, is a masterpiece of the vulgar wits in this county, wherewith they endeavour to amuse travellers. The fallacy lieth in the h.o.m.onymy of Ware, here not taken for that town so named, but appellatively for all vendible commodities." In the fen districts the frogs are called "Cambridgeshire nightingales." At night, and especially before rain, the frogs make a tremendous croaking. At Ripley, in Surrey, where there is a pond near the village, we have heard them called "The town band."

To be "stabbed with a Bridport dagger" was a delicate way of saying that a man had been hanged. The best hemp used to be grown round this Dorsetshire town, and the place was famous for its manufacture of rope; in fact, an ancient statute was long in force requiring that the cables for the royal navy should be made there.

To be "As thin as Banbury cheese" was a favourite simile with our ancestors. Bardolph, it will be recalled, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," compares Slender to a Banbury cheese. In "Jack Drum's Entertainment," 1601, we find: "Put off your cloathes and you are like a Banbury cheese, nothing but paring"; while, in a pamphlet issued in 1664, on "The Sad Condition of the Clergy," we read, "Our lands and glebes are clipped and pared to become as thin as Banbury Cheese."[156:A] Another cheese that became proverbial was that of Suffolk. It was locally called "Bang" or "Thump."

"Unrivall'd stands thy county cheese, O Giles!

Whose very name alone engenders smiles, Whose fame abroad by every tongue is spoke, The well-known b.u.t.t of many a flinty joke; Its name derision and reproach pursue, And strangers tell of three times skimm'd sky-blue."

--_Blomfield._

"Hunger will break through stone walls, or anything but Suffolk cheese,"

was one depreciating proverb, and Mowbray says that "It is only fit to be cut up for gate-latches, a use to which it is often applied." Other suggestions for its use are the making of millstones or grindstones or the wheels of barrows. The mention of a wheelbarrow reminds us of the saying, "A Coggleshall job." The residents in Coggleshall were the b.u.t.ts of the country round, and one of the tales against them is that a mad dog running through the place snapped at a barrow, and the people, fearing it might go mad as well, chained it up in a stable till they saw how things would go with it. "The wise men of Gotham," in Nottinghamshire, were similarly made the victims of many stories reflecting on their sagacity. A Gothamite, Andrew Boyde, wrote the "Menye Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham," wherein many of the follies that have been fathered on them are duly set forth. Men in all ages have made themselves merry with singling out some place as the special seat of stupidity; thus the Phrygians were accounted the fools of all Asia, and the anvil for other men's wits to work upon. The men of Gotham were so enamoured of the singing of a cuckoo, we are told, that a number of them joined hands round the hawthorn bush in which it was perched to prevent its escape; while, on another occasion, they endeavoured to divert the course of their river by putting a line of hurdles across.

Local products sometimes figure in these proverbs: thus "a Yarmouth capon" is a bloater,[157:A] and "Colchester beef" is a dish of the sprats that are caught abundantly in that neighbourhood, while the language of "Billingsgate" is a local growth that has attained to proverbial fame. Dryden refers to it in the line, "Parna.s.sus spoke the cant of Billingsgate."

When a man of Newcastle-on-Tyne suspected his companion of anything doubtful he would say, "Let's have no Gateshead," marking the popular local opinion of the folks in the sister town--a case of "the pot calling the kettle black," and no doubt duly resented by a Gateshead sarcasm of equal strength.

The "fair maids of Suffolk" and the "Lancashire beauties"[157:B] were recognised, by their respective counties at least, as worthy of proverbial recognition for their special charm; while the men of Ess.e.x, doubtless unfairly, were dubbed "As valiant as an Ess.e.x lion," these lions being the calves for which this county is famous. "As wise as a Waltham calf" was another ironical reference to the Ess.e.x folk. In a book written in 1566 we find a man called in to mediate between man and wife declaring--

"Ye will me to a thanklesse office heere, And a busy officer I may appeare, And Jack out of office she may bid me walke, And thinke me as wise as Waltam's calf to talke."[158:A]

In "Dyet's Dry Dinner," 1599, after dispraise of veal as an article of food, the author says that "Ess.e.x calves the proverb praiseth, and some are of the mind that Waltome calfe was also that countrey man."

A common proverb in Yorkshire is, "A Scarborough warning," equivalent to "a word and a blow and a blow first." Several explanations have been given of this adage. One explanation was that if ships pa.s.sed the castle without saluting it a shot was fired into them, but in an old ballad another theory is started--

"This term, Scarborow warning, grew, some say, By hasting hanging for rank robbery theare, Who that was met, but suspect in that way, Strait he was trust up, whatever he were."

We need scarcely point out that when several reasons are given for anything it is an indication that nothing very satisfactory is forthcoming.

That "Tenterden Steeple is the cause of the Goodwin Sands" is a proverb that was at one time often brought forth when any ridiculous cause was a.s.signed as an explanation of anything. We have already seen how very colloquial Bishop Latimer could be on occasion, and he tells us that a "Mr Moore was once sent with commission into Kent to try out, if it might be, what was the cause of Goodwin's Sands which had 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. Among the rest came one in before him, an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little less than a hundred years old. When Mr Moore saw this aged man he called him unto him and said, Father, tell me, if you can, what is the cause of the great arising of the sand here about this harbour, which stops 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 in all likelihood can say most of it. Yea, forsooth, good Mr Moore, quoth the old man, for I am well-nigh one hundred years old, and no man in this company anywhere near my age. Well then, quoth Mr Moore, how say you to this matter, what think you to be the cause? Forsooth, sir, I think that Tenterden Steeple is the cause of Goodwin's Sands. I remember the building of Tenterden Steeple, and before that was in building there was no manner of talking of any flats or sands that stopped up the haven, and therefore I think that the Tenterden Steeple is the cause of the decay and destroying of Sandwich Haven." This was the tale as the bishop told it, and the explanation seems particularly far-fetched; but one story is good until another is told, and though this as it stands supplied the material for the proverb, there is really a supplement. Time out of mind money was constantly collected to fence the eastern sh.o.r.e of Kent against the inroads of the sea, and such sums were deposited in the hands of the Bishop of Rochester. For many years, the work being so well done, no irruption took place, and the bishop diverted some of the money to the building of a steeple to Tenterden Church. People dwelt in a false security, and the d.y.k.es were gradually growing weaker, until at last the catastrophe came. The old man's tale was quite rational, had he been allowed to finish it, but the audience, impatient of his garrulousness, and ready for a laugh at his expense, did not give him an opportunity to do so. It was not the ignorance of the speaker but the impatience of the auditors that supplies the true moral of the story.

Any extended reference to old collections of proverbs, to county histories, to old plays, and such-like sources of information would readily yield a large harvest of these local allusions, but enough has been brought forward to ill.u.s.trate the nature of them, and for our purpose a specimen twenty is as satisfying as an ill.u.s.trative hundred.

FOOTNOTES:

[125:A] A South African species of this genus is called by the settlers and natives, "Waht en beetje"--wait a bit, because its crooked thorns catch their clothes as they journey.

[125:B] A quaint and true old proverb that says cheese and means it too is this, "The king's cheese goes half away in parings," so many dependants being ready to help themselves to a share of it.

[126:A] Holland's translation.

[129:A] The Italians have it, "Chi prende, si vende"--"He sells himself who accepts a gift."

[130:A]

"Easy it is Of a cut loaf to steal a shive."--"t.i.tus Andronicus."

[131:A] "Every man has just as much of vanity as he wants understanding."

[131:B] Another old English proverb says, "Send a fool to market and a fool he will come back." The Italians have it, "Chi bestia va a Roma bestia retorna," and the ancient Romans made the discovery that "Clum non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt."

[131:C] "The man that once did sell the lion's skin while the beast lived, was killed with hunting him."--SHAKESPEARE, _Henry V._

[132:A] "Kleine Diebe henkt man, vor grosser zieht man den Hut ab"--"Petty thieves are hanged," say the Germans, "but people take off their hats to great ones."

[134:A] Or again: "If you crush spice it will be the sweeter."

[136:A] A poem full of suggestive thoughts, as, for instance:--

"He that in southe no vertu usit, In age alle honure hym refusit."

"Ever the hiere that thou art, Ever the lower be thy hert."

"Deme the best of every doute, Tyl the truthe be tryed out."

[136:B] "'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours, and ask them what report they bore to heaven." "Think nought a trifle, though it small appear, sands make the mountain, moments make the year, and trifles life."

[137:A] "To wilful men the injuries which they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters"; or, in more colloquial phrase, "Experience is a dear school, but fools learn in no other."

[140:A] This side of the question may be seen somewhat forcibly put in John Halle's "Historick Expostulation against the beastlye Abuses of Chyrurgerie and Physicke," 1565.

[141:A]

"Aske Medicus counsell ere medcine ye make, And honour that man for necessitie's sake, Though thousands hate physick because of the cost, Yet thousands it helpeth that else should be lost."

"Five hundred pointes of good husbandrie," by Tusser, 1573. It will be noted that it is "ye make"; nowadays it would have to be written "ye take." The verse is from a section on "Good huswifelie physicke." The farmer's wife herself cultivates a goodly store of

"Cold herbes in her garden for agues that burne, That ouer strong heate to good temper may turne,"

such as "Endiue and Suckerie," "Water of Fumentorie, liver to coole."

"Conserve of the Barbarie, quinces as such, With Sirops that easeth the sickly so much," must also be provided, to say nothing of "Spinnage ynough."

[145:A] In Shakespeare's "Henry V." we read how the Constable of France and the Duke of Orleans thus bandied proverbs: "_Orl._ Ill will never said well. _Con._ I will cap that proverb with--there is flattery in friendship. _Orl._ And I will take that up with--give the devil his due.

You are the better at proverbs, by how much?--a fool's bolt is soon shot."

[149:A] "Set thee up waymarks."--_Jeremiah_ xxi. 21.

"Is this the path of sanct.i.ty? Is this To stand a waymark in the road to bliss?"

--COWPER, _Progress of Error_.

[150:A] In some cases it is "backer," as though the comparative, "more back."

[151:A] "Nydyote" is really an idiot, even as "naddere" in old books is really an adder.