Let me quote another illustration of the same fact. We probably take for granted that Coals to Newcastle is a thoroughly English expression of the absurdity of sending to a place that which already abounds there, water to the sea, faggots to the wood:—and English of course it is in the outward garment which it wears; but in its innermost being it belongs to the whole world and to all times. Thus the Greeks said: Owls to Athens, [74] Attica abounding with these birds; the Rabbis: Enchantments to Egypt, Egypt being of old esteemed the head quarters of all magic; the Orientals: Pepper to Hindostan; and in the middle ages they had this proverb: Indulgences to Rome, Rome being the centre and source of this spiritual traffic; and these by no means exhaust the list.

Various proverbs.

Let me adduce some other variations of the same descriptions, though not running through quite so many languages. Thus compare the German, Who lets one sit on his shoulders, shall have him presently sit on his head, [75] with the Italian, If thou suffer a calf to be laid on thee, within a little they’ll clap on the cow, [76] and, again, with the Spanish, Give me where I may sit down; I will make where I may lie down. [77] They all three plainly contain one and the same hint that undue liberties are best resisted at the outset, being otherwise liable to be followed up by other and greater ones; but this under how rich and humorous a variety of forms. Not very different are these that follow. We say: Daub yourself with honey, and you’ll be covered with flies; the Danes: Make yourself an ass, and you’ll have every man’s sack on your shoulders; while the French: Who makes himself a sheep, the wolf devours him; [78] and the Persians: Be not all sugar, or the world will gulp thee down; [79] to which they add, however, as its necessary complement, nor yet all wormwood, or the world will spit thee out. Or again, we are content to say without a figure: The receiver’s as bad as the thief; but the French: He sins as much who holds the sack, as he who puts into it; [80] and the Germans: He who holds the ladder is as guilty as he who mounts the wall. [81] We say: A stitch in time saves nine; the Spaniards: Who repairs not his gutter, repairs his whole house. [82] We say: Misfortunes never come single; the Italians have no less than three proverbs to express the same popular conviction: Blessed is that misfortune which comes single; and again: One misfortune is the vigil of another; and again: A misfortune and a friar are seldom alone. [83] Or once more, the Russians say: Call a peasant, “Brother,” he’ll demand to be called, “Father;” the Italians: Reach a peasant your finger, he’ll grasp your fist. [84] Many languages have this proverb: God gives the cold according to the cloth; [85] it is very beautiful, but attains not to the tender beauty of our own: God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

And, as in that last example, so not seldom will there be an evident superiority of a proverb in one language over one, which however resembles it closely in another. Moving in the same sphere, it will yet be richer, fuller, deeper. Thus our own, A burnt child fears the fire, is good; but that of many tongues, A scalded dog fears cold water, is better still. Ours does but express that those who have suffered once will henceforward be timid in respect of that same thing from which they have suffered; but that other the tendency to exaggerate such fears, so that now they shall fear even where no fear is. And the fact that so it will be, clothes itself in an almost infinite variety of forms. Thus one Italian proverb says: A dog which has been beaten with a stick, is afraid of its shadow; and another, which could only have had its birth in the sunny South, where the glancing but harmless lizard so often darts across your path: Whom a serpent has bitten a lizard alarms. [86] With a little variation from this, the Jewish Rabbis had said long before: One bitten by a serpent, is afraid of a rope’s end; even that which bears so remote a resemblance to a serpent as this does, shall now inspire him with terror; and the Cingalese, still expressing the same thought, but with imagery borrowed from their own tropic clime: The man who has received a beating from a firebrand, runs away at sight of a firefly.

Rabbinical proverb.

Some of our Lord’s sayings contain the same lessons which the proverbs of the Jewish Rabbis contained already; for He was willing to bring forth even from his treasury things old as well as new; but it is very instructive to observe how they acquire in his mouth a dignity and decorum which, it may be, they wanted before. We are all familiar with that word in the Sermon on the Mount, “Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” The Rabbis had a proverb to match, lively and piquant enough, but certainly lacking the gravity of this, and which never could have fallen from the same lips: If thy neighbour call thee ass, put a packsaddle on thy back; do not, that is, withdraw thyself from the wrong, but rather go forward to meet it. But thus, in least as in greatest, it was His to make all things new.

Sometimes a proverb, without changing its shape altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations be slightly modified; and these modifications, slight as often they are, may not the less be eminently characteristic. Thus in English we say, Progress of ingratitude. The river past, and God forgotten, to express with how mournful a frequency He whose assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by his help the danger has been surmounted. The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is with them: The river past, the saint forgotten, [87] the saints being in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than God. And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude: The peril past, the saint mocked; [88] the vows made to him in peril remaining unperformed in safety; and he treated something as, in Greek story, Juno was treated by Mandrabulus the Samian; who, having under her auspices and through her direction discovered a gold mine, in his instant gratitude vowed to her a golden ram; which he presently exchanged in intention for a silver one; and again this for a very small brass one; and this for nothing at all; the rapidly descending scale of whose gratitude, with the entire disappearance of his thank-offering, might very profitably live in our memories, as so perhaps it would be less likely to repeat itself in our lives.

Footnotes