The routledge book of world proverbs

P R E FAC E ‘Wisdom is learned through the wisdom of others.’ – Yoruban In his small book of Persian proverbs, Lawrence Elwell-Sutton relates the fable of a sparrow into whose nest the wind chances to blow a cotton seed. Not knowing what it was, the sparrow inquired of his neighbor and learned that, at length, the seed, if planted, would grow to produce cotton, which could be spun into thread, which could be woven into cloth, which could be dyed and sewn into fine coats, which then could be sold at the bazaar. Delighted by the prospect of gain, the sparrow thereupon took the seed to a peasant farmer, saying, ‘Sow this seed! Half for me, half for you.’ The farmer agreed. After a time, the seed produced a plant whose ripened cotton bolls the farmer divided with the sparrow. Next, the sparrow took his share of cotton to the spinner, saying, ‘Spin this cotton! Half for me, half for you.’ The spinner agreed, and when the thread was spun, he divided it with the sparrow. The sparrow then took the thread to the weaver, saying, ‘Weave this thread! Half for me, half for you.’ The weaver agreed and gave the sparrow half of what he had woven. Next, the sparrow took the cloth to the dyer, saying: ‘Dye this cloth! Half for me, half for you.’ The dyer agreed and dyed the cloth a brilliant blue. But when the sparrow saw the cloth drying on the line, he marveled at the color and thought to himself, ‘What a pity to divide such a fine piece of cloth.’ So, the sparrow swooped down, snatched the cloth, and took it to the tailor, saying, ‘Sew this cloth into coats! One for me, one for you.’ The tailor made two fine coats and hung them on a peg. But, seeing the coats, the sparrow marveled at the stitching and thought to himself. ‘What a pity to share them with the tailor.’ So, the sparrow swooped down, snatched the coats, and took them to the mullah to keep until the weather grew cold and they could be sold at the bazaar. But after the sparrow had flown away, the mullah thought to himself, ‘What need has a xi PREFACE sparrow for a coat,’ and decided to keep them for himself. When winter approached, the sparrow came for his coats, but the mullah pretended to know nothing and offered instead to pray for the sparrow. Angry at being cheated, the sparrow flew off, but from a distance he saw the mullah washing the two coats and hanging them up to dry. When the mullah had gone off to pray, the sparrow swooped down, snatched both coats, and took them to the bazaar to sell. But on the way, a great wind blew and carried the two coats away, dropping one coat before the dyer and the other coat before the tailor. In this way justice was done. Hence the proverb, ‘What is brought by the wind will be carried away by the wind’ (see Elwell-Sutton 1954: 33–4). This fable, reminiscent of those told by Aesop, offers an apt example of how a simple tale can teach a profound lesson. Not only is justice served, even to double-dealing sparrows and mullahs, but one learns that the wind, in bestowing her gifts, can be just as capricious as a bird. Indeed, one can almost hear the sparrow’s neighbor – perchance having witnessed the whole affair from afar – sigh and then recite quietly to himself this very proverb, ‘What is brought by the wind . . .,’ his voice trailing off into a faint laugh. In this instance, ‘recite’ is perhaps the best word to use. For just as this sparrow’s misadventure brought to mind the proverb cited above, who among us has not greeted the day by glancing out the window while reciting the line, ‘Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning . . .,’ or greeted someone with a handshake and not instinctively said to ourselves, ‘Cold hand, warm heart,’ or has not recited any of a number of proverbs hoping to ‘snatch opportunity from the passing day’? Proverbs guide our thoughts and actions, and warn us of the hidden dangers along life’s way. For, as Archbishop Richard Trench had counseled, ‘There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it’ (see Champion 1938: 3). When hearing the word ‘proverb,’ one most often thinks of the wisdom imparted by King Solomon in the Bible or of the clever analects of the sagely Confucius. But proverbs are common to nearly all cultures, both ancient and modern, literate and non-literate. Generally speaking, proverbs are popular sayings that express commonly held truths, with their chief ingredients, according to James Howell, being ‘sense, shortness, and salt.’ They are, to quote Lord Russell, ‘the wit of one and the wisdom of many.’ And, as Sir Francis Bacon had pointed out, ‘the genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.’ But such observations are not limited to the English. Some 2,000 years before Bacon’s time, Aristotle had gathered his own collection of ‘ancient’ proverbs, referring to them as ‘fragments of an elder wisdom’ whose ‘brevity and aptness’ had preserved xii PREFACE them ‘amidst wreck and ruin’ (see Westermarck 1930: 1 and Champion 1938: xvii). Proverbs are indeed bits of ancient wisdom that, as Max Müller had argued, bear ‘the impress of the early days of mankind.’ But their charm is not simply to be found in their being artifacts of an earlier day, or in their brevity and wit, but in the way they draw upon, and reflect, the common human experiences that are shared across time and space. The Spanish, after Cervantes, described the proverb as ‘a short sentence based on long experience,’ while the Dutch called it ‘the daughter of daily experience.’ To the Germans, proverbs can be compared to butterflies in that ‘some are caught and some fly away.’ Or, for the Arab, ‘a proverb is to speech what salt is to food.’ What is even more intriguing about the proverb is its freshness, applicability, and continued relevance to every age, including our own. Its is an ancient voice that appeals to every generation. For, when King Solomon compared a gold ring in a pig’s snout to a beautiful woman who lacks discretion, he gave both a word of caution to his time and a knowing wink to our own. A similar observation is made by Elwell-Sutton: ‘In East and West alike people “bury the hatchet,” they “lay the axe to the root,” they ask “who will bell the cat,” they observe that “dog does not eat dog,” and they laugh at “the pot for calling the kettle black” ’ (1954: 4–5). Even a cursory glance at vintage collections of proverbs, such as those by Burton Stevenson and S.G. Champion, or the more recent ones by Rosalind Fergusson and Wolfgang Mieder, gives evidence of shared human concepts and experiences, if not borrowed turns of phrase. The similarities are certainly remarkable. But, lest we see only a broad river with no rivulets flowing into it, Elwell-Sutton goes on to remind us that ‘There may be a common stream of ideas, but as they pass through each cultural area they become changed and transmuted through contact with and absorption by local character, tradition and custom’ (1954: 8). This comment calls to mind the old Latin proverb: ‘Si duo dicunt idem non est idem’; that is, ‘If two languages say the same thing, it is not the same thing.’ And so, as Elwell-Sutton writes further, ‘a loaf of bread means one thing to us, another thing to a Persian.’ And again, ‘in Persia . . . the sun is generally a torment from which one is glad to escape, [but] in Britain it is a rare and welcome visitor’ (1954: 9). The value and importance, then, of a collection of ancient and modern proverbs from peoples around the world, lies in what we can learn about customs and cultures different from ours. Proverbs can also teach us something about the character of our own. As Elwell-Sutton puts it, ‘A study of their proverbs and folk-lore attached to them will not only give us an idea of outside influences to which they have been subjected in the past, xiii PREFACE but will also illumine their ways of thought and their national characteristics to an extent that perhaps no other medium can do’ (1954: 8). In this way, by presenting a treasury of ancient and modern proverbs, The Routledge Book of World Proverbs seeks to provide its readers with a collection of wise sayings drawn from humanity’s shared experiences in the world as well as miniature portraits of humankind’s likewise distinct cultural characteristics. But, while the aim throughout has been to compile as comprehensive a treasury of world proverbs as possible, it did not seem desirable, or even prudent, to heap proverb upon proverb without some way to ‘separate the wheat from the chaff.’ In preparing his comprehensive book of world proverbs, S.G. Champion expressed frustration over the careless way by which others before him had classified proverbs. He was determined to define more precisely the kinds of sayings that would belong more properly in a collection of proverbs. He writes: ‘I can conceive of no greater mental punishment than to be compelled to wade through a collection of so-called proverbs which almost invariably consists of a heterogeneous conglomeration of sayings, colloquialisms, idioms, slang, bon mots, rhymes, riddles, and a mass of stupid, silly, commonplace proverbs, producing in my unfortunate translators and myself a boredom verging on tears’ (1938: xiii). To Champion’s complaint, I would add that a great number of the proverbs that I have encountered in standard works were little more than statements of obvious facts, insults, similes, hackneyed phrases, or humorous asides. Some examples include: ‘Go and wake up your luck’ (Persian); ‘Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs’ (French); ‘He has too many lice to feel an itch’ (Chinese); ‘Let the big dog eat’ (American); ‘Either a man or a mouse’ (Scottish); ‘He cannot find water in the sea’ (Spanish); ‘You have hit the nail on the head’ (Roman); and ‘He goes as willingly as a thief to the gallows’ (German). Thus, in this present collection, I have endeavored to include only those proverbs which most folklorists and paremiologists would recognize as such. Beside the initial problem of defining the difference between the proverb and simple idiomatic expressions, there were also nagging problems posed in attempting to attribute proverbs to their respective languages or rightful countries of origin. For instance, one discovers English proverbs in India, China, and America, French and Dutch proverbs in Asia and Africa, Spanish and Portuguese proverbs in the Philippines and the New World, and, of course, Greek and Roman proverbs throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. What is more, many Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean proverbs appear to be derived from older Chinese proverbs. Added to this problem is the difficulty of determining in which direction these cultural influences flowed. Chinese merchants and European explorers were xiv PREFACE doubtlessly influenced by the cultures they sought to trade with or dominate. And no doubt, emigrants traveling to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought with them their peculiar customs as well as their folk wisdom. For instance, the proverb ‘Every man hath a fool in his sleeve,’ is found in Italian as well as American collections. Additionally, in Anand Prahlad’s Reggae Wisdom, one finds in reggae lyrics such well-known proverbs as ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,’ and ‘Jah [i.e., God] helps those who help themselves,’ among scores of others. Related to the issue of the proper attribution of proverbs was the problem of multiple versions of the same proverb. As an example, the Italian proverb ‘Good wine needs no bush’ is also found in Spanish as ‘Good wine needs no crier,’ in French as ‘Good wine needs no sign,’ in Dutch as ‘Good wine praises itself,’ and in German as ‘Good wine sells itself.’ The same types of variations occur in ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ ‘Every cock is proud on its own dung hill,’ and other such proverbs. With so many versions of one proverb, not only is it difficult to decide which version is the original one, but it makes for far too much repetition in a book of proverbs, as is the case with Wolfgang Mieder’s text. The repetition of the same basic proverb in all its variations evokes the witty Yiddish saying: ‘Once gets a cheer, twice a deaf ear, thrice a kick in the rear.’ Last of all, during the years that I have been working on this project, and even beginning with my first Latin book, I have encountered within nearly all cultures many – too many – racist and sexist proverbs, proverbs that would no doubt offend modern readers. Some of the more mild examples include ‘Lilies are whitest in a black Moor’s hand’ (Italian), ‘He that would cheat a Jew, must be a Jew’ (German), ‘Biting and scratching is Scots folk’s wooing’ (English), and ‘Beat your wife on the wedding day, and your married life will be happy’ (Japanese). While, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons, some editors might wish to include these types of proverbs, I have chosen otherwise and have tried my very best to keep offensive and belittling proverbs out of this collection. Notwithstanding these and other minor imperfections, it is hoped that readers will be charmed and edified by the selection of proverbs in this collection, and will delight in sharing them with their families and friends. Perchance a seed or two of the world’s wisdom will blow into a neighboring sparrow’s nest. Humani Nihil Alienum. Jon R. Stone California State University, Long Beach August 2005 xv