Tit for tat,
If you kill my dog,
I'll kill your cat.
[LAZY LAWRENCE.]
Lazy Lawrence, let me go,
Don't me hold summer and winter too.
This distich is said by a boy who feels very lazy, yet wishes to exert himself. Lazy Lawrence is a proverbial expression for an idle person, and I possess an old chapbook, entitled "the History of Lawrence Lazy, containing his birth and slothful breeding; how he served the schoolmaster, his wife, the squire's cook, and the farmer, which, by the laws of Lubberland, was accounted high treason." A West country proverb, relating to a disciple of this hero, runs thus:
Sluggardy guise,
Loth to go to bed,
And loth to rise.
March will search, April will try,
May will tell ye if ye'll live or die.
Sow in the sop,
'Twill be heavy a-top.
That is, land in a soppy or wet state is in a favorable condition for receiving seed; a statement, however, somewhat questionable.
A cat may look at a king,
And surely I may look at an ugly thing.
Said in derision by one child to another, who complains of being stared at.
He that hath it and will not keep it,
He that wanteth it and will not seek it;
He that drinketh and is not dry,
Shall want money as well as I.
From Howell's English Proverbs, 1659, p. 21.