—Blomfield.
"Hunger will break through stone walls, or anything but Suffolk cheese," was one depreciating proverb, and Mowbray says that "It is only fit to be cut up for gate-latches, a use to which it is often applied." Other suggestions for its use are the making of millstones or grindstones or the wheels of barrows. The mention of a wheelbarrow reminds us of the saying, "A Coggleshall job." The residents in Coggleshall were the butts of the country round, and one of the tales against them is that a mad dog running through the place snapped at a barrow, and the people, fearing it might go mad as well, chained it up in a stable till they saw how things would go with it. "The wise men of Gotham," in Nottinghamshire, were similarly made the victims of many stories reflecting on their sagacity. A Gothamite, Andrew Boyde, wrote the "Menye Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham," wherein many of the follies that have been fathered on them are duly set forth. Men in all ages have made themselves merry with singling out some place as the special seat of stupidity; thus the Phrygians were accounted the fools of all Asia, and the anvil for other men's wits to work upon. The men of Gotham were so enamoured of the singing of a cuckoo, we are told, that a number of them joined hands round the hawthorn bush in which it was perched to prevent its escape; while, on another occasion, they endeavoured to divert the course of their river by putting a line of hurdles across.
Local products sometimes figure in these proverbs: thus "a Yarmouth capon" is a bloater,[157:A] and "Colchester beef" is a dish of the sprats that are caught abundantly in that neighbourhood, while the language of "Billingsgate" is a local growth that has attained to proverbial fame. Dryden refers to it in the line, "Parnassus spoke the cant of Billingsgate."
When a man of Newcastle-on-Tyne suspected his companion of anything doubtful he would say, "Let's have no Gateshead," marking the popular local opinion of the folks in the sister town—a case of "the pot calling the kettle black," and no doubt duly resented by a Gateshead sarcasm of equal strength.
The "fair maids of Suffolk" and the "Lancashire beauties"[157:B] were recognised, by their respective counties at least, as worthy of proverbial recognition for their special charm; while the men of Essex, doubtless unfairly, were dubbed "As valiant as an Essex lion," these lions being the calves for which this county is famous. "As wise as a Waltham calf" was another ironical reference to the Essex folk. In a book written in 1566 we find a man called in to mediate between man and wife declaring—
"Ye will me to a thanklesse office heere,
And a busy officer I may appeare,
And Jack out of office she may bid me walke,
And thinke me as wise as Waltam's calf to talke."[158:A]
In "Dyet's Dry Dinner," 1599, after dispraise of veal as an article of food, the author says that "Essex calves the proverb praiseth, and some are of the mind that Waltome calfe was also that countrey man."
A common proverb in Yorkshire is, "A Scarborough warning," equivalent to "a word and a blow and a blow first." Several explanations have been given of this adage. One explanation was that if ships passed the castle without saluting it a shot was fired into them, but in an old ballad another theory is started—
"This term, Scarborow warning, grew, some say,
By hasting hanging for rank robbery theare,
Who that was met, but suspect in that way,
Strait he was trust up, whatever he were."
We need scarcely point out that when several reasons are given for anything it is an indication that nothing very satisfactory is forthcoming.