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:
“The rollyng stone neuer gatherth mosse.”
irony
Children
Are not allowed
Too far from home to roam;
Now a woman grown, I tend to
Stay home.