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Proverbs and How to Collect Them

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Proverbs and How to Collect Them PROVERBS AND HOW TO COLLECT THEM During recent years the American Dialect Society has been sponsoring the collection and organization of proverbial material, a work being carried out by a committee, of which the present writer is chairman. The purpose of this paper is to encourage and assist the efforts of those who would like to collect proverbs, but who may feel that they have too little information about proverbs themselves, as well as about the best ways of collecting them. The paper is divided into two parts, the first of which deals with the theoretical and historical aspects of the study of proverbs, and the second with the practical problems of collection. P a r t I PROVERBS A. THE NATURE OF THE PROVERB The word proverb suggests to the average person a short, pithy, epigrammatic statement setting forth a well-known elementary truth; in other words, a wise saying. The word itself has come to us through the Old French proverbe from the Latin proverbium, pro, “for,” + verbum, “word,” signifying the use of a figurative expression for the plain word. The Greek equivalent is Trapot/xta, Tapct, “alongside” + oi/xos, “way,” “road,” or “alongside the way,” denoting a trite roadside saying, one which comes from the folk. These names bring out two qualities of proverbs: popularity and figurativeness. Only the first of these is essential; every proverb must have been adopted by the people but not every one contains a figure of speech. For example, “Haste makes waste” is a direct assertion. Proverbs, however, differ from ordinary speech in that they usually contain a touch of fancy in the phrasing, a touch that gives them their pungency or “salt” (a term used by James Howell in his definition in 1659). Many persons have endeavored to give a formal definition of a proverb, but no attempt, from Aristotle’s on, has met with uni­ versal approval. Simple though it may seem at first, it is difficult to find a significant distinguishing trait which will not include or eliminate too much. As yet, after centuries of study and endeavor no one has found the magic formula, the phrase, the sentence, or the group of sentences which will classify every proverb. The 3 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/pads/article-pdf/4/1/3/451075/0040003.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 4 AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY chief difficulty is that there are three separate groups: true prov­ erbs, proverbial phrases (which may have many divisions), and sententious sayings. There is, however, general agreement as to the principal characteristics of proverbial sayings, and few people have trouble in recognizing a proverb. Aristotle in writing on proverbs in his Rhetoric pointed out that they were remnants saved from the “wrecks and ruins of ancient philosophy” by reason of their conciseness and cleverness, thereby showing that he felt that brevity, sense, and piquancy, or “salt,” were intrinsic in them. Again, in discussing metaphors, Aristotle speaks of proverbs as “metaphors from species to species,”1 which seems to suggest their figurative application. For example, “A tree is known by its fruit” is based on actual observation of fact in nature, but as a proverb it can be applied to many other things. So with the seaman’s “A drowning man will catch at a straw,” “to be in the same boat with someone,” “to go on the rocks,” “to put in an oar,” and innumerable other metaphors. Although Aristotle recognized that proverbs could be figurative, he was cognizant of the fact that not all proverbs were, for he said, “Some proverbs . are also maxims.”2 He likewise knew that a proverb was of the people if we can assume from the preceding quotation that a maxim can be a proverb as well as the other way round, for he wrote: “Even trite and common maxims should be used, if they can serve; since, just because they are common,they seem right, on the supposition that all the world is agreed upon them.”3 From the observations of Aristotle on proverbs in his Rhetoric, Professor B. J. Whiting in his excellent essay “The Nature of the Proverb” concluded that the Greek philosopher held a proverb to be “a short saying of a philosophic nature, of great antiquity, the product of the masses rather than of the classes, constantly applicable, and appealing because it bears a semblance of universal truth.”4 The first English definition is “an old■< said saw,” the earliest recorded instance of which, according to Professor Whiting’s research,5 was in Sir Thomas More’s The Dialogue Concerning 1 Rhetoric, III, xi, 14; translated by Sir Richard C. Jebb and edited by John E. Sandys (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1909), p. 176. 2 Ibid., II, xxi, 12; Jebb, p. 115. 3 Ibid., II, xxi, 11; Jebb, pp. 114-115. 4 Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, XIV (1932), 278- 6 Ibid., p. 291. Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/pads/article-pdf/4/1/3/451075/0040003.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 PROVERBS AND HOW TO COLLECT THEM 5 Tyndale (1528).6 In the same year William Tyndale, More’s adversary, wrote the first general discussion of the nature of a proverb which is to be found in English.7 No other definition need be noted until 1614, when William Camden, including a collection of proverbs in his Remains Concern­ ing Britaine, defined them as “concise, witty, and wise Speeches grounded vpon long experience, conteining for the most part good caueats, and therefore both profitable and delightfull.”8 James Howell in the preface to his IIAPOIMIOrPA<i>IA, Proverbs, or, Old Sayed Sawes & Adages (1659) stated that the chief ingredi­ ents that go to make a true proverb are “sense, shortnesse and salt,”9 an oft-quoted phrase. Although here he left out the most essential, and generally recognized characteristic of a proverb, that is, popularity, he went on to say: “Proverbs may not im­ properly be called the Philosophy of the Common Peeple, or, according to Aristotle, the truest Reliques of old Philosophy, whereunto he adds another remarkable Saying, That as no man is so rich who might be able to spend equally with the Peeple, so none is so wise as the Peeple in generall.”10 In an introductory poem Howell wrote: “The Peeples voice, the Voice of God we call, And what are Proverbs but the peeples voice? Coin'd first, and current made by common choice, Then sure they must have Weight and Truth withall.”11 He was fully conscious of the necessity of acceptance by the people, for he called proverbs “the truest Franklins or Freeholders of a country.” Howell in this collection, even though he realized that proverbs must be the vox populi, incorporated five hundred witty sayings which he invented. His coinages did not bear the public stamp 6 The English Works of Sir Thomas More, edited by W. E. Campbell with an Introduction and Philological Notes by A. W. Reed (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, Ltd., 1927), II, [1051. This definition, which is incomplete to the extent that it makes only two requirements of the proverb, antiquity and currency, was repeated in Thomas Cooper's Thesaurus Linguae Ro- manae et Britannicae (1565). 7 Whiting, op. cit.y p. 292. 8 P. 301. 9 “To the Knowingest Kind of Philologers,” sig. a4r. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., sig. alv. Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/pads/article-pdf/4/1/3/451075/0040003.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 6 AMERICAN DIALECT SOCIETY and have therefore remained within the covers of his book. His knowledge was greater than he realized, for a proverb is in a sense autochthonous among the people who father it. It grows naturally and without effort, being passed from person to person and from generation to generation and often from nation to nation. Howell was one of the first to stress the fact that proverbs belong to the people and carry with them the evidence of their origin. That they may arise in any walk of life, in various forms, and under varying circumstances, is attested by some verses in the eighteenth, century periodical The British Apollo: “Proverbs deduce their Origine From sev'ral Causes, thus in fine: Some Local are and from the site Of Places, Simile's Invite: From Accidents some, and Mishape, From odd Events, and after-claps; From Thoughts some, stretch'd upon the Tenters; And some from Comical Adventures; And some arise from Circumstances, As Whimsical, as in Romances; But most (and often they the best, As with sound Sense, and Reason drest) From Casual Sayings of the Wise, And none but Fools, their Force despise."18 An important book of the nineteenth century devoted to prov­ erbs is Archbishop Richard C. Trench’s On the Lessons in Proverbs (later entitled Proverbs and Their Lessons), first given as lectures to various young men’s associations. In this book are many keen observations and much valuable material on the nature of the proverb. He writes: “The fact that they please the people, and have pleased them for ages—that they possess so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained their ground, ever new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation’s existence—nay, that many of them have pleased not one nation only, but many; so that they have made themselves a home in the most different lands—and further, that they have, not a few of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity, ... all this . may well make us pause.”13 He continues: “And then ..
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