That a proverb should be plain in language and teaching is, we take it, by no means an essential. It rather owes often somewhat of its value to the fact that there is something in it that compels analysis, possibly awakens doubt or resistance, startles us by an apparent contradiction, and compels us to delve at some trouble to ourselves before we grasp its significance. Ray, one of the best known students of proverb-lore, realises this when he stipulates for "an instructive sentence in which more is generally designed than expressed" as his ideal.
Quaint exaggeration of statement, the use of hyperbole, is often employed, and very happily, to compel attention. Some men seem to be so specially the children of fortune that they from the most untoward events gain increased advantage, and after a submergence that would drown most men emerge buoyantly from this sea of trouble and go cheerily on their way. Such are very happily described in the Arab proverb, "If you throw him into the sea he will come up with a fish in his mouth." To those who would attempt great tasks with inadequate means how truly may we say, "It is hard to sail across the sea in an eggshell." Of those who labour hard for results that bear no proportion to the effort made we may equally truly say, "He dives deep and brings up a potsherd." In France, if a man attempts a prodigious, or possibly impossible, task, it is said of him, "Il a la mer à boire," while the thoughtless or reckless man, who to avoid a slight and passing inconvenience will run imminent risk of grave misfortune, is said to jump into the river that he may escape the rain, "Il se jette à l'eau, peur de la pluie." The hyperbole employed startles and arouses the attention and drives the lesson home. It is especially characteristic of the Eastern mind, and the Bible, a book of the East, is full of examples of its use.
Proverbial wisdom, it must be borne in mind, deals sometimes with only one aspect of a truth. The necessary brevity often makes the teaching one-sided, as the various limitations and exceptions that may be necessary to a complete statement of a truth are perforce left unsaid. One proverb therefore is often in direct contradiction to another, and yet each may be equally true. Solomon, for example, tells us to "answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit," and he also tells us to "answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him."[10:A] These two directions are placed one immediately after the other of deliberate forethought that the sharp contrast may force itself on the attention. The two modes of action are in direct contradiction, yet each is equally valuable in its place, and according to circumstances one or other of them would be the right course to pursue. To the restless, unstable man we may well quote the well-known adage, "A rolling stone gathers no moss";[10:B] but, on the other hand, it is equally true that "A tethered sheep soon starves." While one villager is content to remain in the little hamlet where he was born, living hardly throughout his life, the recipient of a scanty wage, of soup and blankets from the vicarage or the hall, and, finally, of a pauper grave, his schoolmate, the rolling stone, goes out into the big world and fights his way into a position of independence.
The fourth stipulation of Ward—figurativeness of expression—while it may appear to somewhat clash with his second, the demand for plainness of utterance, is undoubtedly of great value; but it is not an essential. Such proverbs as "Plough, or not plough, you must pay your rent," "The receiver is as bad as the thief," "The child says what father says," "Misfortunes never come singly," "Extremes meet," "Ill doers are ill deemers," are direct statements to be literally accepted, and to these scores more could be added. The figurative treatment is, nevertheless, still more in evidence, and very justly so. By its employment the attention is at once arrested and the memory helped. This love of picture language is specially characteristic of early days and of primitive peoples, and those who would turn away from an abstract discourse in praise of virtue, temperance, or strenuous endeavour will gladly accept the teaching if presented in more concrete form—the fairy tale, the fable, or the parable.
This figurativeness of language was a marked characteristic of the teaching of our Lord, and the common people, who would have been repulsed by dogma or exhortation, thronged gladly to the Teacher who reached their hearts through the beautiful and simple stories that fascinated them and awoke their interest. The sharp experiences of the wayward son in the far-off land, the story of the anxious housewife seeking at midnight for the lost piece of silver, the lonely traveller sore beset by thieves, the withering grain that fell amidst the roadside stones, the goodman of the house so stoutly guarding his belongings, the sheep that had strayed afar into the perils of the wilderness, the useless tares amidst the fruitful grain, the house upon the shifting sand, the widely-gathering net, the pearl of great price, have been a delight to countless generations, and will ever continue to be so.[11:A]
A proverb that is figurative in its construction may be considered as really a condensed parable. Hence Chaucer, in the prologue of "The Wife of Bathe," refers to "eke the paraboles of Salomon."
Numerous examples of these word-pictures will at once occur to us. How expressive of the reproductive power of evil is the well-known proverb, "Ill weeds grow apace." In one of the Harleian MSS. of about the year 1490 we find it given as "Ewyl weed ys sone y-growe"; or, as another writer hath it,—
"Ill weede groweth fast, ales, whereby the corne is lorne,
For surely the weed overgroweth the corn."
In France it is "Mauvaise herbe croit toujours," and in Italy "Erba mala preste cresce," and in some kindred form it appears in the proverb lore of almost all people. How telling, again, the picture and the lesson in "Still waters run deep."
"Small griefs find tongues: full casks are ever found
To give, if any, yet but little sound;
Deep waters noiseless are, and this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depth below."—Herrick.