Else the burden of an old Scotch song, "Ye'll never be like mine auld gudeman," will be dinned in your ears day and night.
He that marries a widow will have a dead man's head cast in his dish.
Happy is the wife who is married to a motherless son.
"Uno animo omnes socrus oderunt nurus," says Terence; and this is the common testimony of experience in all ages and countries. "The husband's mother is the wife's devil" (German, Dutch).[108] "As long as I was a daughter-in-law I never had a good mother-in-law, and as long as I was a mother-in-law I never had a good daughter-in-law" (Spanish).[109] "The mother-in-law forgets that she was a daughter-in-law" (Spanish).[110] "She is well married who has neither mother-in-law nor sister-in-law" (Spanish).[111] Men, too, do not always regard their wives' mothers with tender affection, and some of the many bitter sayings against mothers-in-law seem to be common to both sexes. Such is this queer Ulster rhyme:—
"Of all the ould women that ever I saw,
Sweet bad luck to my mother in-law."
Also these Low German:—"There is no good mother-in-law but she that wears a green gown;"[112] i.e., that is covered with the turf of the churchyard;—"The best mother-in-law is she on whose gown the geese feed;"[113] and this Portuguese, "If my mother-in-law dies, I will fetch somebody to flay her."[114]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A gli uomini ogni peccato mortale è veniale, alle donne ogni veniale è mortale.
[2] Se la donna fosse piccola come è buona, la minima foglia la farebbe una veste e una corona.
[3] Jedes Weib will lieber schön als fromm sein.