=What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.=
This is an Englishwoman's proverb. The Italian sisterhood complain
that "In men every mortal sin is venial; in women every venial sin is
mortal."[1] These are almost the only proverbs relating to women in
which justice is done to them, all the rest being manifestly the work
of the unfair sex.
=If a woman were as little as she is good,
A peascod would make her a gown and a hood.=
This is Ray's version of an Italian slander.[2] The Germans say,
"Every woman would rather be handsome than good;"[3] and that,
indeed, "There are only two good women in the world: one of them is
dead, and the other is not to be found."[4] The French, in spite of
their pretended gallantry, have the coarseness to declare that "A man
of straw is worth a woman of gold;"[5] and even the Spaniard, who
sometimes speaks words of stately courtesy towards the female sex,
advises you to "Beware of a bad woman, and put no trust in a good
one."[6]
"The crab of the wood is sauce very good
For the crab of the sea;
But the wood of the crab is sauce for a drab,
That will not her husband obey."
=A spaniel, a woman, and a walnut tree,=
=The more they're beaten the better they be.=
There is Latin authority for this barbarous distich.[7] The Italians
say, "Women, asses, and nuts require rough hands."[8] Much wiser is the
Scotch adage,--
=Ye may ding the deil into a wife, but ye'll ne'er ding him out
o' her.=
The French make the rule more general--"Take a woman's first advice,
&c."[9] There is good reason for this if the Italian proverb is
true, "Women are wise offhand, and fools on reflection."[10] They
have less logical minds than men, but surpass them in quickness of
intuition, having, says Dean Trench, "what Montaigne ascribes to
them in a remarkable word, _l'esprit prime-sautier_--the leopard's
spring, which takes its prey, if it be to take it at all, at the first
bound." "Summer-sown corn and women's advice turn out well once in
seven years,"[11] say the Germans; and the Spaniards hold that "A
woman's counsel is no great thing, but he who does not take it is a
fool."[12] In Servia they say, "It is sometimes right even to obey a
sensible wife;" and they tell this story in elucidation of the proverb.
A Herzegovinian once asked a Kadi whether a man ought to obey his
wife, whereupon the Kadi answered that he needed not to do so. The
Herzegovinian then continued, "My wife pressed me this morning to bring
thee a pot of beef suet, so I have done well in not obeying her." Then
said the Kadi, "Verily, it is sometimes right even to obey a sensible
wife."
=It's nae mair ferlie to see a woman greet than to see a guse gang
barefit.=--_Scotch._
That is, it is no more wonder to see a woman cry than to see a goose
go barefoot. "Women laugh when they can, and weep when they will."[13]
This is a French proverb, translated by Ray. Its want of rhyme makes it
probable that it was never naturalised in England. The Italians say, "A
woman complains, a woman's in woe, a woman is sick, when she likes to
be so,"[14] and that "A woman's tears are a fountain of craft."[15]
=A woman's mind and winter wind change oft.=
"Women are variable as April weather" (German).[16] "Women, wind, and
fortune soon change" (Spanish).[17] Francis I. of France wrote one day
with a diamond on a window of the château of Chambord,--
"Souvent femme varie:
Bien fou qui s'y fie."
"A woman changes oft:
Who trusts her is right soft."
His sister, Queen Margaret of Navarre, entered the room as he was
writing the ungallant couplet, and, protesting against such a slander
on her sex, she declared that she could quote twenty instances of man's
fickleness. Francis retorted that her reply was not to the point, and
that he would rather hear one instance of woman's constancy. "Can
you mention a single instance of her inconstancy?" asked the Queen
of Navarre. It happened that a few weeks before this conversation a
gentleman of the court had been thrown into prison upon a serious
charge; and his wife, who was one of the queen's ladies in waiting, was
reported to have eloped with his page. Certain it was that the page
and the lady had fled, no one could tell whither. Francis triumphantly
cited this case; but Margaret warmly defended the lady, and said that
time would prove her innocence. The king shook his head, but promised
that if, within a month, her character should be re-established, he
would break the pane on which the couplet was written, and grant his
sister whatever boon she might ask. Many days had not elapsed after
this, when it was discovered that it was not the lady who had fled with
the page, but her husband. During one of her visits to him in prison
they had exchanged clothes, and he was thus enabled to deceive the
jailer, and effect his escape, while the devoted wife remained in his
place. Margaret claimed his pardon at the king's hand, who not only
granted it, but gave a grand fête and tournament to celebrate this
instance of conjugal affection. He also destroyed the pane of glass,
but the calumnious saying inscribed on it has unfortunately survived.
=A woman's tongue wags like a lamb's tail.=
=A woman's strength is in her tongue.=--_Welsh._
=Arthur could not tame a woman's tongue.=--_Welsh._
"Three women and three geese make a market,"[18] according to the
Italians. "Foxes are all tail, and women are all tongue;" at least, it
is so in Auvergne.[19] "All women are good Lutherans," say the Danes;
"they would rather preach than hear mass."[20] "A woman's tongue is her
sword, and she does not let it rust," is a saying of the Chinese.
=Swine, women, and bees are not to be turned.=
="Because" is a woman's answer.=
And not so unmeaning an answer as flippant critics imagine. It is
an example of that much-admired figure of speech, aposiopesis, and
means--because I will have it so. "What a woman wills, God wills"
(French).[21] "Whatever a woman will she can" (Italian).[22]
"The man's a fool who thinks by force or skill
To stem the torrent of a woman's will;
For if she will, she will, you may depend on't,
And if she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't."
The cunning of the sex is equal to their obstinacy. "Women know a
point more than the devil" (Italian).[23] What wonder, then, if "A bag
of fleas is easier to keep guard over than a woman?" (German).[24] The
wilfulness of woman is pleasantly hinted at in the Scotch proverb,
"'Gie her her will, or she'll burst,' quoth the gudeman when his wife
was dinging him."
=A woman conceals what she does not know.=
=Women and bairns lein [conceal] what they kenna.=--_Scotch._
"To a woman and a magpie tell what you would speak in the market-place"
(Spanish).[25] Hotspur says to his wife,--
"Constant you are,
But yet a woman, and for secrecy
No lady closer; for I well believe
Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know,
And so far I will trust thee, gentle Kate."
But, if there is truth in proverbs, men have no right to reproach women
for blabbing. A woman can at least keep her own secret. Try her on the
subject of her age.
=Beauty draws more than oxen.=
"One hair of a woman draws more than a bell-rope" (German).[26]
"And beauty draws us with a single hair."
=Beauty buys no beef.=
=Beauty is no inheritance.=
In spite of these curmudgeon maxims, let no fair maid despair whose
face is her fortune, for "She that is born a beauty is born married"
(Italian).[27]
=Beauty is but skin deep.=
The saying itself is no deeper. It is physically untrue, for beauty
is not an accident of surface, but a natural result and attribute
of a fine organisation. A man may sneer, like Ralph Nickleby, at a
lovely face, because he chooses rather to see "the grinning death's
head beneath it;" but Ralph was a heartless villain, and that is
only another name for a fool. "Beauty is one of God's' gifts," says
Mr. Lewes, "and every one really submits to its influence, whatever
platitudes he may think needful to issue.... How, think you, should
we ever have relished the immortal fragments of Greek literature, if
our conception of Greek men and Greek women had been formed by the
contemplation of figures such as those of Chinese art? Would any pulse
have throbbed at the Labdacidan tale had the descendants of Labdacus
risen before the imagination with obese rotundity, large ears, gashes
of mouths, eyes lurching upwards towards the temples, and no nose to
speak of? Could we with any sublime emotions picture to ourselves Fo-Ti
on the Promethean rock, or a Congou Antigone wailing her unwedded
death?"
=Fine feathers make fine fowls.=
Therefore, "If you want a wife choose her on Saturday, not on Sunday"
(Spanish);[28] _i.e._, choose her in undress. "No woman is ugly
when she is dressed" (Spanish);[29] at least, she is not so in her
own opinion. "The swarthy dame, dressed fine, decries the fair one"
(Spanish).[30]
=The fairer the hostess the fouler the reckoning.=
"A handsome landlady is bad for the purse" (French);[31] for this among
other reasons--that "If the landlady is fair, the wine too is fair"
(German).[32]
=A bonny bride is sune buskit.=--_Scotch._
Buskit--dressed. She needs little adornment to enhance her charms.
=Joan is as good as my lady in the dark.=
=When candles are out all cats are grey.=
"Blemishes are unseen by night,"[33] says an ancient Latin proverb;
and the Greeks held that "When the lamp is removed all women are
alike."[34] Opinions may differ on that point, but all agree that
"The night
Shows stars and women in a better light."
Hence the Italian warning to choose "Neither jewel, nor woman, nor
linen by candlelight;"[35] and the French hyperbole, "By candlelight a
goat looks a lady."[36]
=If Jack is in love he is no judge of Jill's beauty.=
"Nobody's sweetheart is ugly" (Dutch).[37] "Never seemed a prison fair
or a mistress foul" (French).[38] "Handsome is not what is handsome,
but what pleases" (Italian).[39] "He whose fair one squints says she
ogles" (German).[40] "'Red is Love's colour,' said the wooer to his
foxy charmer" (German).[41]
=Love is blind.=
Blind to all imperfections in the beloved object; blind also to
everything around it--to facts, consequences, and prudential
considerations. "People in love think that other people's eyes are out"
(Spanish).[42]
=It is hard to keep flax from the lowe [fire].=-_Scotch._
"Man is fire, woman tow, and the devil comes and blows" (Spanish).[43]
=Glasses and lasses are bruckle [brittle] wares.=--_Scotch._
=A pretty girl and a tattered gown are sure to find some hook in the
way.=
Italy appears to be the original country of this proverb, though it is
popularly current in Ulster. "A handsome woman and a pinked or slashed
garment" are the things mentioned in the Italian proverb.[44] The
French form[45] corresponds with the Irish.
=Where love fails we espy all faults.=
=Faults are thick where love is thin.=--_Welsh._
=Hot love is soon cold.=
=Love me little, love me long.=
=Love of lads and fire of chats are soon in and soon
out.=--_Derbyshire._
Chats, _i.e._, chips.
=Lads' love's a busk of broom, hot a while and soon
done.=--_Cheshire._
=Love is never without jealousy.=
"He that is not jealous is not in love," says St. Augustin;[46] but
that depends not only upon the disposition of the lover, but upon the
point arrived at in the history of his love. Doubts and fears are
excusable in one who has not yet had assurance that his passion is
returned, but afterwards "Love expels jealousy" (French),[47] or, at
least, it ought to do so. "Love demands faith, and faith steadfastness"
(Italian);[48] but too often "Love gives for guerdon jealousy and
broken faith" (Italian).[49] It is an Italian woman's belief that "It
is better to have a husband without love than with jealousy."[50]
=No folly to being in love.=--_Welsh._
"To love and to be wise is impossible" (Spanish);[51] or, as an
antique French proverb says, the two things have not the same
abode.[52] This is the creed of those who have not themselves been
lovers. As Calderon sings, in lines admirably rendered by Mr.
Fitzgerald,--
"He who far off beholds another dancing,
Even one who dances best, and all the time
Hears not the music that he dances to,
Thinks him a madman, apprehending not
The law which moves his else eccentric action;
So he that's in himself insensible
Of love's sweet influence, misjudges him
Who moves according to love's melody;
And knowing not that all these sighs and tears,
Ejaculations and impatiences,
Are necessary changes of a measure
Which the divine musician plays, may call
The lover crazy, which he would not do,
Did he within his own heart hear the tune
Play'd by the great musician of the world."
=They that lie down [i.e., fall sick] for love should rise for
hunger=.--_Scotch._
The presumption being that, if they had not been too well fed, they
would not have been troubled with that disease. "Without Ceres and
Bacchus, Venus freezes" (Latin).[53] "No love without bread and wine"
(French).[54]
=Old pottage is sooner heated than new made.=
An old flame is sooner revived than a new one kindled. "One always
returns to one's first love" (French).[55] "True love never grows
hoary" (Italian).[56]
=Love and light cannot be hid.=
=Love and a cough cannot be hid.=
The French add smoke to these irrepressible things.[57] _La gale_ is
sometimes enumerated with them; and the Danes say, "Poverty and love
are hard to hide."[58]
=Love and lordship like not fellowship.=
=Kindness comes awill.=--_Scotch._
That is, love cannot be forced. The Germans couple it in that respect
with singing.[59] "Who would be loved must love,"[60] say the Italians;
and "Love is the very price at which love is to be bought."[61]
Our English proverbs on love are for the most part sarcastic or
jocular, and few of them can be compared, for grace and elevation of
feeling, with those of Italy. We have no parallels in our language
for the following:--"Love knows no measure"[62]--there are no
bounds to its trustfulness and devotion;--"Love warms more than a
thousand fires;"[63]--"He who has love in his heart has spurs in his
sides;"[64]--"Love rules without law;"[65]--"Love rules his kingdom
without a sword;"[66]--"Love knows not labour;"[67]--"Love is master
of all arts."[68] The French have one proverb on the sovereign might
of love,[69] which they borrowed from the sublime phrase in the Song
of Solomon, "Love is stronger than death;" and another expressed in
the language of their chivalric forefathers, "Love subdues all but the
ruffian's heart."[70]
=Marry in haste and repent at leisure.=
This proverb probably came to us from Italy;[71] but, alas! it happens
too often in all countries that "Wedlock rides in the saddle, and
repentance on the croup" (French).[72] There is a joke in the Menagiana
not unlike this:--A person meeting another riding on horseback with his
wife behind him, applied to him the words of Horace--"Post equitem
sedet atra cura."[73] "Marriage is a desperate thing," quoth Selden.
"The frogs in Æsop were extremely wise; they had a great mind to some
water, but they would not leap into the well because they could not
get out again." Consider well, then, what you are about before you put
yourself in a condition to hear it said,--
=You have tied a knot with your tongue you cannot undo with
your teeth.=
Some go so far as to say that "No one marries but repents"
(French).[74] The Spaniards exclaim, in language which reminds us of
the custom of Dunmow, "The bacon of paradise for the married man that
has not repented!"[75]
=Better wed over the mixon than over the moor.=
The mixon is the heap of manure in the farmyard. The proverb means that
it is better not to go far from home in search of a wife--advice as
old as the Greek poet Hesiod, who has a line to this effect: "Marry,
in preference to all other women, one who dwells near thee." But a
more specific meaning has been assigned to the English proverb by
Fuller, and after him by Ray and Disraeli. They explain it as being a
maxim peculiar to Cheshire, and intended to dissuade candidates for
matrimony from taking the road to London, which lies over the moorland
of Staffordshire. "This local proverb," says Disraeli, "is a curious
instance of provincial pride, perhaps of wisdom, to induce the gentry
of that county to form intermarriages, to prolong their own ancient
families and perpetuate ancient friendships between them." This is a
mistake, for the proverb is not peculiar to Cheshire, or to any part of
England. Scotland has it in this shape:--
=Better woo o'er midden nor o'er moss.=
And in Germany they give the same advice, and also assign a reason
for it, saying, "Marry over the mixon, and you will know who and what
she is."[76] The same principle is expressed in different forms in
other languages, _e.g._, "Your wife and your nag get from a neighbour"
(Italian).[77] "He that goes far to marry goes to be deceived or
to deceive" (Spanish).[78] The politic Lord Burleigh seems to have
regarded this "going far to deceive" as a very proper thing to be done
for the advancement of a man's fortune. In his "Advice to his Son" he
says, "If thy estate be good, match near home and at leisure; if weak,
far off and quickly." There is an ugly cunning in that word _quickly_.
Burleigh's advice is quite in the spirit of the French fortune
hunter's adage, "In marriage cheat who can."[79]
=He that loseth his wife and sixpence hath lost a tester.=
"He that loseth his wife and a farthing hath a great loss of his
farthing" (Italian).[80] In Italy also, and in Portugal, it is said
that "Grief for a dead wife lasts to the door;"[81] and even in
Provence, the land of the troubadours, they have a rhyme to this
effect:--
"Two good days for a man in this life:
When he weds and when he buries his wife."[82]
Nor do the wives of Provence appear to be delighted with their conjugal
lot. Having lost their youthful plumpness through the cares and toils
of wedlock, they oddly declare that "If a stockfish became a widow
it would fatten."[83] A Spanish woman's opinion of matrimony is thus
expressed: "'Mother, what sort of a thing is marriage?' 'Daughter, it
is spinning, bearing children, and weeping.'"[84]
=Better a tocher [dower] in her than wi' her.=--_Scotch._
=A man's best fortune or his worst is his wife.=
"The day you marry you kill or cure yourself" (Spanish).[85] "Use
great prudence and circumspection," says Lord Burleigh to his son, "in
choosing thy wife, for from thence will spring all thy future good or
evil; and it is an action of life like unto a stratagem of war, wherein
a man can err but once."
=The gude or ill hap o' a gude or ill life
Is the gude or ill choice o' a gude or ill wife.=--_Scotch._