A proverb long current in Shropshire and the adjoining counties is, "Ahem! as Dick Smith said when he swallowed the dishcloth." The moral here clearly is that troubles should be borne bravely and with as little fuss as possible. Another old saw is, "My name is Twyford; I know nothing of the matter"—a statement that would mean, "I object to enquiry; I decline to be bothered." A sarcastic saying on pretentiousness is seen in, "Great doings at Gregory's; heated the oven twice for a custard." The futility of attempting to stop proceedings after they had got to a certain point was illustrated in the adage, "Nay, stay, quoth Stringer, when his neck was in the halter." One can imagine the depth of scorn that might be thrown into "Don't hurry, Hopkins," when fired off at some notorious laggard; but the legend goes that a certain, or uncertain, Hopkins gave a creditor a promissory-note, having previously written on it, "The said John Hopkins is not to be hurried in paying this amount." Of course, in all these explanations we have to wonder whether some incident led to the adage, or whether the process has been reversed—the popular saying, its real origin forgotten, having a fictitious explanation tacked on to it. "Credit is dead; bad pay killed him," is a popular adage with those who believe in ready-money transactions[153:A]—a sentiment that the creditors of the late John Hopkins would readily appreciate.
Locality proverbs, like personal proverbs, are naturally more in vogue in the places named than of general usage, though some of them travel far outside their place of origin. Others of them, and those generally of a derisive cast, do not originate in the place itself, but are conferred on it by outsiders. "Go to Bath," for instance, was a reference to the fact that lunatics used to be sent there for the benefit of its waters, and the inference was that the person addressed was a fit subject for a stay there. Had the proverb originated in the city, it would have been "Come to Bath." "Cheshire bred, strong in the arm, weak in the head," is a saying that scarcely originated in that county. Another county saying is, "You were born at Hog's-Norton." This was a reproof to a boorish person, but there is no such place; the village referred to is that of Hock-Norton, in Oxfordshire, rustic humour readily making the change of spelling to fit it for its purpose. Such saws as, "Grantham gruel, nine grits and a bucket of water," or "Like Banbury tinkers, that mend one hole and make three," we may be sure did not originate in the places designated. If the adage be complimentary, it probably arose in the place, as, for instance, "True as Coventry blue," an allusion to an excellent dye for which the town was noted; or "Diamond cut diamond, I am Yorkshire too," a testimony to the Yorkshireman's brilliancy and keenness.
The allusion is sometimes topographical. Thus, "Crooked as Crawley brook" is suggested by a little stream in Bedfordshire that has a course of twenty miles between two points that are actually five miles apart. "When Dudman and Ramhead meet"—in a word, never. These are two conspicuous headlands in Cornwall, miles apart. In Norfolk is a saying, "Arrested by the bailiff of Marshland," when the unacclimatised stranger succumbs to the ague, the product of the local aqueous surroundings.
Rustic humour is responsible for the somewhat blunt point of many of these local sayings. A play upon words is very popular. Thus Beggar's Bush, near Huntingdon, suggests that a man "Goes home by Beggar's Bush" when his means are dwindling away. "On the high road to Needham," a place in Suffolk, is of similar import, the idea of need being the point of the adage. Tusser, for instance, writes:
"Toiling much and spoiling more, great charge smal gains or none,
Soon sets thine host at Needham's shore, to craue the begger's bone."
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 noble 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 Sussex, 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 assure you, is a masterpiece of the vulgar wits in this county, wherewith they endeavour to amuse travellers. The fallacy lieth in the homonymy 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 butt of many a flinty joke;
Its name derision and reproach pursue,
And strangers tell of three times skimm'd sky-blue."