Category: Happenings

I kind of like the agrarian proverbs – ones that tell you when to make hay, or what to think when it’s a red sky in the morning. Those are… kind of easy, you know no one will ever figure out who wrote them, so provenance isn’t at issue, and you can make them mean whatever you want, since you’re not a farmer. This proverb is a bit more direct – though the provenance is equally murky.

Myriad names have been tied to this proverb, though surprisingly, the first printing in English is in an English Bible translations in Ecclesiastes, which states, “The way of sinners is made plain with stones, but at the end thereof is the pit of hell.” (Although why I’m surprised at the Bible in a proverb about hell, I don’t know…) Being “made plain with stones” is an accurate description of trail-marking, or cobblestones. A reference in 1791 leaves out the road altogether, until A Hand-book of Proverbs, published it in 1855, puts it all together with:

Is moss a good thing, or a bad thing? I’ve never figured that out. We do know it grows slowest of most plantlife, thus the meaning of today’s proverb is that a person who is never still never gathers the detritus of stillness — the things we have to pack up when we move.

I have a friend who is on her seventeenth move in her adult life this month — seventeen states, I believe — and she has a little less “moss” than the average person, perhaps, but she has stuff. Books, bed, couch. At one point in my life, I was able to pack everything I owned into a 4’x 2′ steamer trunk. Is my life better now that I cannot?

Are bald rocks that bad? Surely a question for the ages.

The first appearance of this proverb in print was in 1508, in Adagia, the annotated collection of Greek and Latin proverbs, compiled during the Renaissance by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. Its first appearance in English was some years later in 1546, in A Dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, by John Heywood:

Today’s proverb is actually fairly recent, as proverbs go, with a straightforward provenance. According to Phrases, it was printed anonymously in a news sheet called the Hampshire Advertiser, in Southampton, England in August, 1857. It appears in the first stanza of a rather bad poem — and a rather long poem. Eleven stanzas of …erm, instruction. I haven’t read it myself, but apparently the ultimate line of every stanza is the same:

Ye votaries of sofas and beds
Ye sloths who exertion detest,
This maxim I wish to drive into your heads
A change is as good as a rest.

Ye children of Fashion and Wealth,
With countless indulgences blest,
Remember that indolence preyeth on health
A change is as good as a rest…

Ah, the Victorian Era, ever ready with the didactic bit of poetry to drive into your heads. Sheesh.

Is a change as good as a rest? Not… really. But, if nothing else, it helps you rest, a little.

Growing up Southern-adjacent (with Southern-born relatives but not having spent much time there yourself) means hearing a lot of weird phrases and stories of which you’re not quite sure you know the meaning… One of the odder phrases was, “You’d better feed ’em with a long spoon.”

I always heard this proverb outside of home in reference to some animal or other which couldn’t eat properly. There’s an Aesop fable about a stork and a fox having a meal, and one needed a shallow dish and one needed a vase…? Or something. Another variation is an allegory of people in heaven (or hell?) wearing casts and having to feed each other from across the table with long spoons, in order to live…? But, at home this saying meant to stay WELL away, on the other side of the table, in order to feed with a long spoon this ravening beast you’d somehow led to your table … so that it would not bite off your hand.

Obviously, I had to look this one up.

Once again this is a very old proverb, from 14th c. England, where having a meal with the Trickster was seen as a distinct possibility. Human beings were taught that they were often tricked and messed about by the devil, and so they were more than a little wary.

We first find this proverb in Chaucer’s Canterbury collection, in the Squire’s Tale, 1390. Therfore bihoueth hire a ful long spoon That shal ete with a feend. Therefore, whoever would eat with a fiend must have a very long spoon. (Note to self: avoid meals with fiends.)

Happy weekend, dear ones. Keep your friends close, and your fiends… somewhere outside arm’s reach.

One memorable summer I shared a room with my two older sisters. For some reason or another as I recall, my older sister was in trouble for being untidy, and my eldest sister was in trouble for something else, thus all the three of us sibs were shoved into one space. As you might expect, things got… intense. The usual sibling squabbles were turned up to eleven. We had the usual parental cleanliness pressure, but with the shared space there was increased stress and I — cracked. That summer I became mildly obsessed with keeping things straight – from my possessions and the masking tape lines my eldest sister had put on the floor of our room to the sections of food on my plate. I lined up my shoes and organized my hair clips.

I hear people in jail can also become obsessively neat…

Let me tell you, that sibling experiment ended with a great sigh of relief for all involved.

Though the Oxford Book of Quotations notes this proverb from the 17th century, there’s no follow-up reference. The closest discovered before 1799 is included in a collection called A Century of Sermons, by one John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield, in 1675 which simply states that “the Lord hath set everything in its place and order. The phrase exactly as we know it didn’t appear in print until 1842, and was in keeping with myriad other cheerfully didactic Victorian phrases that were taken as conventional wisdom and not authored by anyone in particular.

Somewhere, college-aged me is face-palming in dismay.

My junior year we were required to read Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism. To say that it was a slog is an understatement; I could not STAND his know-it-all tone and his insistence that all the great minds had to make their way through the Greeks and other classical writers, and that good poets must write in a prescribed way – prescribed by him, of course. Add to that, it was written in verse so there was this overarching sense of self-superiority AND rhymed couplets. Gah! Imagine my disgust to learn that he was, at the time of his publication, all of twenty-three — nearly the same age as I was — and yet he pontificated as if he knew EVERYTHING.

Granted, he knew more than I did, but STILL.

Despite how annoying Pope was, we get tons of witty sayings from him — “To err is human, to forgive, divine,” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread” among the most notable. His declaiming today’s proverb wasn’t really original, writing, as he did, during the Age of Enlightenment where the publication of works became more commonly accessible. Suddenly anyone – gasp! – who could read had access to learned discourse, not just those who had been classically educated at the best schools. On that more level playing field, English politician/philosopher Sir Francis Bacon published a 1601 essay on atheism. In it he argued, “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” That train of thought is a cousin of our proverb:

Is a little learning is a dangerous thing? Perhaps, although maybe knowing even a little can alert you to the vast seas of ignorance in which you’ve previously been content to swim. At least one can hope so.

Since yesterday’s proverb was so old, I thought I’d find one that’s newer. This one is very much considered an American proverb, as it came into common usage in 1963, in a presidential speech by former President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy claimed that it was a saying from Cape Cod, and indeed it had been a slogan of The New England Council for thirteen years at that point. However, it had an earlier provenance in a New Jersey newspaper, referring to a fundraising scheme for missionary work in 1910.

…and before that Wikipedia claims it was a common phrase in China, and was first published around 1894-ish in a novel called The Gallant Maid. How I wish I had a solid reference for that phrase in the novel, but… it’s from the Qing Dynasty and it’s in Chinese, so no luck. Regardless, so much for this proverb being a “new” one!

This proverb has been used to support theories of rising economies trickling down from the deepest to the shallowest cups. While that may or may not be a political taradiddle, I have always loved the imagery of a sudden swell making all the little boats bob and sway.

“A rising tide raises all boats.”

incoming
the pull of the moon
gathers with chill clarity
dancers from the deep

Did you know that the best fishing is on an incoming or rising tide? Yet another Random Thing I Learned looking at this proverb. Happy Tuesday.