=Never marry a widow unless her first husband was hanged.=
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]