ARCHER TAYLOR

THE STYLE OF PROVERBS*

ALTHOUGH rigidity of form constitutes an essential characteristic of proverbs, scholarly efforts to describe and study it have been unavailing and profitless. Metrical studies have been uniformly tedious and uninspired. The examination of other important stylistic factors has not yielded important results. We may consider the proverbial vocabulary: a few words are interesting as relics of former days, and a few others as nonce-formations. In the main, however, proverbs are rarely distinguished by peculiarities in diction. They must necessarily restrict their choice of words to the simplest and most obvious materials. Except for Heusler's remarks concerning the stylistic differences between the Viking proverb and the humbler vulgar proverb and the previous mention of Faint heart ne'er won fair lady as an instance of stylistic contrast, the question of proverbial style as a reflection of the speaker's social background has been neglected. Still other matters call for our attention. Although the rhetorical details in proverbs have been often discussed, the subject is not exhausted. The figures of speech, notably contrast and metaphor, and the kinds of sentences used in proverbs are especially interesting bits of rhetoric. Certain proverbial types which are important for their origin, history, or peculiarities may be distinguished on stylistic grounds. And finally, I shall discuss the subject of proverbs in their literary relations, a subject which extends beyond the merely stylistic in its importance.

Metrical studies of proverbs have rarely escaped the temptation to employ the elaborate classical system of metrics, and have consequently failed to discover the essential traits.¹ The chances of winning significant results in this field are good, if hairsplitting classical metrical formulae are avoided. As we might expect, proverbs conform to the general rhythm of the language in which they have been taken down. So far as we can determine and describe the prevailing rhythm of a language we have a standard with which we can compare each individual proverb. It might be possible, in the case of a proverb borrowed from another language, to trace a gradual adaptation to a new rhythm of speech. Conceivably we might find in similar fashion a development in the passage from the mediaeval to the modern vernacular proverb, a development which avoided certain metrical types and preferred others. The importance of such conclusions for the history of metrics and poeticsif they can be establishedis obvious. Of course we must deal with deep currents in linguistic and stylistic habits, and the investigation must be conducted in such a way as to emphasize broad tendencies.

The metrical device of alliteration is an untrustworthy mark of age in a proverb. Alliteration is a familiar characteristic of early Germanic verse, and for a long time scholars regarded alliterative formulae as ancient.² A long list of such formulae will be found in the early pages of Grimm's Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer. We are no longer tempted to regard an alliterative formula or proverb as necessarily reaching back to that early period in Germanic literary history when alliterative verse prevailed. Some alliterative phrases are old, while others have arisen in much more recent times from the love of a jingle. There is no easy way to distinguish between old and new alliterative expressions; we are forced to rely largely on the historical evidence. Alliteration is not sufficient to prove the antiquity of a proverb: Many men, many minds is a classical and not an early Germanic proverb. An investigation of the facts concerning alliteration in proverbs would begin by discussing what signs prove a phrase to be old. With stylistic, chronological, linguistic, and other tests at our disposal, we might learn that there are two groups of alliterative proverbs, one old and one new, with different characteristics. In such an investigation one must bear constantly in mind that apt alliteration's artful aid marks both simple speech, as we see in children's rhymes, and highly elaborated diction.

The typical form of the mediaeval Latin proverb is the leonine hexameter: Arbor per primum quaevis non corruit ictum ('A tree does not fall at the first stroke'); Parvus pendetur fur, magnus abire videtur ('The little thief is hanged, the big one is seen to go off'). These examples, which have been chosen merely because we have already referred to them above, illustrate a conspicuous fault of such proverbs. In order to fill the hexameter, the versifier adds useless words: "quaevis, videtur." Even clumsier expansion is seen in Ius est implere promissa decentia vere ('Promise is debt') or Auri natura non sunt splendentia plura ('All is not gold that glitters'), and occasionally a whole clause is needed to fill the line: Sunt pueri pueri, vivunt pueriliter illi (' Boys will be boys'); Luscus praefertur caeco, sic undique fertur (' Better the eye to be sore than all blind'); Res miranda nova, picae fur abstulit ova ('An egg is stolen even from a witch'); Quod male lucratur, male perditur et nihilatur (' Ill gotten, ill spent '). Even when the composer had a brief and effective model in classical Latin before him, he did not hesitate: Quot homines, tot sententiae ('Many men, many minds') yields Quolibet in capite viget ingenium speciale. Although a stylistic examination of proverbs in leonine hexameters leads into arid and untrodden fields, it is worth undertaking. No one has sought to learn what standards existed, whether proverbs were actually composed in this form in addition to being translated from the vernacular, or what local stylistic variations and habits or developments in the form can be found. It has been pointed out, for example, that leonine hexameters with feminine rhymes are probably later in origin than those with masculine rhymes.³ Altogether useless are the emendations which Suringar⁴ and Seiler⁵ make to correct the versification of these mediaeval Latin proverbs. The versifiers gave little thought to such matters: some wrote carefully and others not.

The linguistic peculiarities of proverbs have never received thorough examination.⁶ As we have seen, old or dialectal words are kept. New words which go beyond the ordinary bounds of word-formation are occasionally found. He is one of the McTak's, not one of the McGie's rests on the pun involved in " McGie " and the family name McGee. The compound McTak is unusual, indeed unnatural, for the component Mcis never used with a verb. German seems to make new compounds more freely than English, and the results in proverbs are more interesting. Ein Kaufmann ist kein Schenkmann illustrates the readiness with which "Mann" is used as second member in compounds; normally "Mann" is compounded with another noun, e. g. "Amtmann," "Fuhrmann," but in this case the speaker has regarded " Kauf- " as derived from the verb " kaufen " and not from the noun "Kauf," and has formed an analogous, but new and unusual, compound "Schenkmann" from the verb "schenken." The punning proverb Vorrat ist besser als Nachrat is comparable to the English Hindsight is better than foresight. In both instances the noun which served as a basis, i. e. "Vorrat," 'foresight,' has yielded a new compound with a first member of opposite meaning. "After wit" in After wit is dear bought is a nonce-form of similar origin; it is of course a compound word and should be so printed, although the collections print it otherwise. New words are made in ways which are no longer used: Many a mickle makes a muckle contains the word "muckle" formed by vowel gradation from "mickle" in the same way that "sing" and "sung" are related. New formations are especially frequent in coining whimsical place-names for proverbial use. With one placename as a model a second one is invented for the sake of contrast: Er stammt nicht aus Schenkendorf, sondern aus Greifswald ('He does not come from Giversville but from Graspers' Grove'). So, too, the historical proverb Nimmweg, Reissweg und Unrecht ('Take away, snatch away, and injustice') twists the names Nimwegen (the final n is silent), Ryswick, and Utrecht to describe the treaties of 1678, 1697) and 1713. Such nonce-proverbs are widely used in Germany, but are not so familiar elsewhere. The English proverbs He is none of the Hastings, i. e. ' he is slow,' and He was born at Little Wittham illustrate a similar punning use of a proper name, but contain no new formations. With them we may compare the German "Drückeberger" ('one who avoids an issue or responsibility ') and " Schlauberger" (' a person who is adroit in attaining his ends'); " Schlaumeier," which has the same meaning as "Schlauberger," is a different kind of formation, since it does not suggest a place-name.

 

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EPIGRAMMATIC PROVERBS

The structure of proverbs is simple or complex. The great majority of proverbs make only a single assertion, although this assertion may be made regarding a combination of things and may not apply to them separately, e. g. To promise and give nothing is comfort for a fool. Such proverbs with compound subjects are not particularly frequent in English and German.²⁴ A more interesting class is that in which the same quality is assigned to two disparate objects, e. g. A groaning horse and a groaning wife never fail their master; Children and fools speak the truth; Time and tide wait for no man. The whimsical union of objects which have no relation at first sight imprints the proverb more deeply on our minds. Some proverbs of this sort have no doubt originated from natural causes. Others, which approach more nearly the epigram, are recognisably foreign in origin and have never become truly popular, e. g. England is the paradise of women, hell of horses, and purgatory of servants. It is probably safe to say that when the proverb begins with an indication of the number of members involved, as in Three things drive a man out of the house: smoke, rain, and a scolding wife, it is foreign in origin or made on a foreign model; this special form I shall discuss at length. Although sporadic examples are found in the Middle Ages, epigrammatic characterisations seem to have become the fashion after the Renaissance and seem to have spread from Italy. A careful examination of the history of this fashion would be interesting and profitable.

Seiler was the first to recognize as a special group those epigrammatic proverbs which are composed of several members with specific indication of their number.²⁵ An old and famous example of the type is Three things drive a man out of his house: smoke, rain, and a scolding wife. Seiler makes it clear that the type began as an imitation of the Biblical "There be three things" (Tria sunt..., Prov. xxx, 15, I8, 21, 29; Eccles. xxv, 9). Although the first indications of the form are found in the Middle Ages, its greatest popularity came in the sixteenth century. At that time proverbs which we know to have existed earlier in other shapes were recast in this mould. In general, the form remained an artificial one which could not establish itself firmly in oral tradition. Two instances from oral tradition are: There be three things that never comes to no good: Christmas pigs, Michaelmas fowls, and parsons' daughters and Three things are thrown away in a bowling green, namely, time, money, and oaths, which Sir Walter Scott mentions in
The Fortunes of Nigel, ch. xii.

A later development, which was also suggested directly by the Biblical model, is the mention of a fourth member, e. g.

A smoke, a storme, and a contentious wife,
Thre ils are found, that tire a husband's life:
To which a fourth is by the proverb sed,
When children cry for hunger, wanting bread.

Although the model lay ready to hand in "There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not" (Tria sunt difficilia mihi et quattuor penitus ignoro, Prov. xxx, 18), it was not widely used. So far as my observation goes, this expanded form seems to have been employed almost exclusively in Germany and the adjoining Germanic countries. The English example which I have quoted seems to go back to a German source. In the Figure of Foure (1636, reprinted in 1654), Nicolas Breton gives many instances of the expanded form, but it is not easy to guess how firmly it had established itself in oral tradition. Much the same may be said of the earlier, anonymous Les quatre choses, which may have been printed at Lyons about 1490, and of Orazio Riminaldo's little-known Libro di quatro cose of uncertain date.²⁶

As I have said, the form is semi-literary and the proverbs cited from the sixteenth century hardly have the ring of oral tradition, e. g. Three things are unsatiable, priests, monckes, and the sea (A.D. 1560); Three thinges a man lendeth rife, His horse, his fighting sword, his wife (A.D. 1577) . The German examples run into the hundreds,²⁷ but sound quite as artificial as the English. In the heyday of its popularity Ulrich von Hutten wrote a bitter satire on Papal Rome entitled Trias Romana (1520) which betokens the currency of the form. Another scrap of evidence which shows how the form struggled to establish itself is seen in the conversion of a fable into a proverb of this type: In their behavior three things are more steadfast than others: suspicion, the wind, and loyalty; the first never leaves a place it has entered; the second never enters when it cannot see a way of escape; the third never returns to a place it has left (Tre cose inanimate sono più ferme che l'altre nel loro uso: il sospetto, il vento e la lealtà; il primo mai non entra in luogo, donde poi si parta, l'altro mai non entra, d'onde non vegga l'uscita, l'altra, d'onde un tratto si parte, mai non vi ritorna).²⁸ It does not seem to be possible to trace this saying beyond a fable of Petrarch's in which fire, wind, water, and suspicion travel together and on taking leave of one another give signs by which they may be recognized.

Probably the most popular of all proverbs in this form is Three things drive a man out of his house: smoke, rain, and a scolding wife. A brief review of its history will be illuminating. The germ from which it sprang is the Biblical "A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike" (Tecta perstillantia in die frigoris et litigiosa mulier comparantur, Prov. xxvii, l5), which Pope Innocent III remoulded into "Tria sunt quae non sinunt hominem in domo permanere: fumus, stillicidium et mala uxor." No doubt he recalled an allegorical interpretation by Petrus Cantor. The actual words of Solomon could not establish themselves in tradition, while Pope Innocent's version was taken up by the Facetus, a handbook of admonitions regarding manners and morals, the Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf, a rude satirical dispute between a wise man and a fool, and the Goliardic De conjuge non ducenda. Although these works belong to the lower levels of literature, they were very widely disseminated in the Middle Ages. Chaucer took our proverb into the Tale of Melibeus from the moralizing of Albertanus of Brescia. So general an acceptance of the proverb and so wide a publication ensured its general adoption: we find it expanded into more than a thousand lines of mediaeval Latin verse, we find it in a Welsh wedding ceremony, in a shrove-tide play of Hans Sachs, and in a diatribe against immorality and corruption based on the legendary life of Judas (Abraham à Sancta Clara, Judas der Ertz-Schelm [1686]), and finally, much altered, in Shakespere's I Henry IV. It also appears that the development of the formula There are three evil things, . . . and the fourth is . . ., which we have already quoted, comes very late in the history of the proverb. Even this proverb, which had an unusually wide distribution early in the Middle Ages, does not seem to have left much mark on oral tradition; other proverbs which were less fortunate are preserved for us only by the collections of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

NATIONAL AND RACIAL TRAITS

Many have sought to identify national or local traits in proverbs and to use them in describing and defining national or racial temperament. Perhaps no side of proverbial study has been prosecuted so long and so vigorously, but the results are insignificant.²⁹ All the endeavors are fruitless and unavailing. Before they are likely to attain useful results we must have exhaustive studies of the history and distribution of individual proverbs. A few proverbs can be recognized as regional, e. g. Day follows even on the winter night (Dag följer även på vinternatten); A life without love, a year without summer (Ett liv utan kärlek, ett år utan sommar); The sun shines even into a little room (Solen skiner også på liten stuga); Midsummer night is not long, but it sets many cradles rocking (Midsommarnatten år icke lång, men den sätter många vaggor i gång)³⁰ are from the far North. Archbishop Trench says that Make hay while the sun shines is truly English. After all, the gain from collecting such proverbs, when they can be recognized, is likely to be slight. We must not put much reliance in such assertions as that Love me little, love me long is a Southern and not a Scandinavian proverb. We can put no reliance in them when they are not based on detailed investigations of history and dissemination. The Deoil is not as black as he is painted, when it is found in Swedish, does not prove that the trait of justice, even to the most undeserving, is typically Swedish.

 

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OBSCENE PROVERBS

Sayings offensive to good manners are comparatively rare, although we must recognize that taste alters with the passage of time. Many proverbs which seem inelegant today once offended no one. Ray puts the situation briefly in the preface to the second edition of A Collection of English Proverbs (1678): "But though I do condemn the mention of anything obscene, yet I cannot think all use of slovenly and dirty words to be such a violation of modesty, as to exact the discarding all Proverbs of which they are ingredients. The useful notions which many ill-worded Proverbs do import, may, I think, compensate for their homely terms; though I could wish the contrivers of them had put their sense into more decent and cleanly language." Alterations in taste in language are difficult to discover; and it is even more difficult to know how significant they are as indications of tendencies in manners. So far as inferences regarding the course of manners are permissible, offensive words tend to disappear from proverbs. The vulgar metaphor does not long maintain itself. Of course, the folk does not display a fastidious taste in choosing materials and metaphors, but there are, I believe, signs that a purificatory process goes on in tradition. Apparently the contraction Peor es meneallo ('It is worse to stir it') is created to avoid a vulgar word and One ill weed marreth a whole pot of pottage has variants of a more offensive form. The pot calls the kettle black and the proverbial phrase To sit (var. fall) between two stools exist in older and well-established versions, which may even be original; they were evidently an offence to good taste.

We really know very little about outspokenly obscene and erotic proverbs. The collections which exist seem to be more concerned with preserving offensive materials than with selecting traditional proverbs. It is hard to estimate the number, distribution, and importance of such proverbs. Two kinds are to be distinguished: superstitions which have in some way acquired a fixed form and proverbs which make some ethical or moral observation regarding appetites or passions, e. g. P. erectus non habet conscientiam or a variant form made on the model of Necessity knows no law. Obscene proverbial superstitions, which have already been discussed under the head of health proverbs, deal chiefly with comparisons of the proportions of different parts of the body. As in all traditional material, we must expect to find a good deal about simple functions in proverbs. Of course proverbs dealing with these matters are likely to escape print, but that is no argument for their nonexistence.³³ Although we cannot examine the subject further here, the old saw Naturalia non sunt turpia (' What is natural is not vile') finds appropriate application.

PROVERBS AND LITERATURE

In works of literature the use of proverbs varies in manner and degree from age to age. At all times proverbs have meant more to the folk than to the learned. Erasmus speaks as a scholar and conscious literary artist when he calls proverbs "condimenta" which must be used intelligently when one writes or speaks. Proverbs are used freely in writings which make an appeal to the folk and in those in which the folk is characterised; in those classes of literature which are far removed from the folk, proverbs rarely occur. We see these distinctions already in classical writers: Aristophanes, Theophrastus, Lucian, and Plautus use proverbs easily and naturally. Writings which make a conspicuous effort at literary style generally avoid them except as details characterising the folk. Our Saviour quotes proverbs readily, and the Church Fathers use them in writings with a popular appeal. Throughout the Middle Ages proverbs were frequently used in literature, and individual preferences manifested themselves then as now. The German court epic, which is a relatively artificial and cultured product, shows a disinclination for them; writings nearer to the folk use them freely. Yet we must not carry these distinctions too far: Chaucer's Troilus, a very sophisticated, anti-popular poem, bristles with proverbs. Didactic writers naturally show a great liking for proverbs. A satirical tone and an appeal to fundamental emotions encourage the use of proverbs. A proverb is often a ready-made epigram, sums up the situation effectively, drives home the point, and appeals to the reader's or hearer's sense of humor. Consequently proverbs are much used in ages of controversy and satirical criticism: the German and Latin literature of the Reformation abound in them.

In later literary history we do not see any significant variations in these fundamental ways of using proverbs. Calderon, on the one hand, eschews them and Lope de Vega, on the other, quotes them freely. This variation reflects the essential difference of the two dramatists. Cervantes characterises Sancho Panza by the ease with which proverbs drop from his lips, and similarly Shakespere puts the proverb in the mouth of the folk. It becomes a mannerism in the figure of Nicholas Proverbs in Henry Porter's Two Angry Women of Abingdon. These differences persist: Dickens uses proverbs more easily and naturally than Thackeray.

 

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Another dramatic use of proverbs is found in the proverbes dramatiques, so widely known in the latter half of the eighteenth century. In these plays, which are something after the manner of a charade, the audience is led by degrees to guess the proverb on which the play depends for its point and purpose. Ordinarily the invention of this sort of play is credited to Carmontelle (1717- 1806)) but Leroux de Lincy (I, p. lxxx) asserts that its beginnings reach back into the seventeenth century, when Mme. de Maintenon wrote no lers than thirty-nine such plays. There seems to be more or less question about the plays of Mme. de Maintenon) and certainly the first author who made a. name in the genre was Carmontelle. Similar plays; began to be written in the latter part of the eighteenth century; and in the nineteenth, Théodore le Clercq) Alfred de Musset, and Octave Feuillet continued the tradition. The German imitations, e. g. M. G. Saphir) Narreteisprichwörter, which I have been unable to see; C. J. Pulvermacher, Taschenbuch Dramatischer Sprichwörter (Berlin, 1835); C. E. von Benzel-Sternau, Das Hoftheater von Barataria (Leipzig, 1828); Luise Hölder, Dramatische Sprichwörter zur Schauspielmässigen Darstellung (Munich, 1838), never attained an equal level of literary importance. After all, we are very ill informed regarding the history and nature of this minor literary genre.⁴⁴

NOTES

*Reprinted from Archer Taylor The Proverb and An Index to "The Proverb", Sprichwörterforschung Band 6, Herausgegeben von Wolfgang Mieder, Peter Lang, Bern-Frankfurt am Main-New York, 1985, pp. 135-183

1. See Seiler, Deutsche Sprichwörterkunde (Munich, 1922), pp. 194 ff.

2. See pp. 89 ff.

3. See Kock and Petersen, Ostnordiska och Latinska Medeltidsordspråk (Copenhagen, 1889-94), 11, 65.

4. Over de "Proverbia Communia" (Leiden, 1863).

5. Deutsche Sprishwörterkunde, passim.

6. See Seiler, as above, p. 179. Tetzner (Die Wortbildung im Deutschen Sprichwort, Gelsenkirchen, 1908) includes many plays on words which can scarcely have been proverbial.

7. See the literature, which is rather discouraging in its achievements, in Seiler, Deutsche Sprichwörterkunde, pp. 153 ff.

8. On the Lessons in Proverbs, p. 17.

9. Attributed to Alcæus. Cf. Erasmus, Chiliades, ed. 1598, p. 563; Burckhardt, Arabic Proverbs (London, 1830), p. 198, No. 680.

10. Altgermanische Dichtung (Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft), p. 68,

11. Archiv für Slavische Philologie, XXX (1909), 19.

12. Wesselski, Poliziano, p. 244, No. 398.

13. Quitard, Dictionnaire des Proverbes (Paris, 1842), p. 290.

14. See the many German examples collected in Seiler, Deutsche Sprichwörterkunde, p. 155. See also the Dutch God wolts is alder bede moeder ('" Would to God " is the mother of all prayers,' Proverbia communia, No. 354) and Voorzigtigheid is de moeder der wijsheid ('Caution is the mother of wisdom'). The first of these is the only example in the 803 proverbs In the late fifteenth-century Proverbia communia. Perhaps the form had not yet established itself.

15. Taylor, "The proverbial formula Man soll. . .," Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, XL (1930), 152-156.

16. Wesselski, Poliziano, p. 214.

17. Stoett, Nederlandsche Spreekwoorden (Zutphen, 1923-25), No. 45.

18. Krohn, Die Folkloristische Arbeitsmethode (Oslo, 1926), p. 139.

19. Altenkirch, Archiv für Slavische Philologie, XXX (1909),13, 321-322.

20. Le Roux de Lincy, I, 139.

21. Krumbacher, "Mittelgriechische Sprichwörter," Sitzungsberichte der Münchner Academie, Phil.- Hist. Klasse, 1893, II, No. 1; Hesseling, "Grieksche en Nederlandsche Spreekwoorden," De Gids, LXVI, pt. 4 (1902), 89-108 (reprinted in Uit Byzantium en Hellas [1911], pp. 169-195)

22. Krumbacher, Sitzungsberichte der Münchner Academie, Phil.- Hist. Klasse, 1893, II, 23.

23. Hesseling errs, I believe, in comparing such proverbs as "Everything in measure," said the tailor, and beat his wife with the yardstick ("Alles met mate," zei de kleermaker, en hij sloeg zijn vrouw met de el); see De Gids, LXVI, pt. 4 (1902), 94. Such proverbs will be discussed later as Wellerisms. I do not see the resemblance to the Eastern form. He explains the Eastern proverbs as condensed narratives, but the process is more or less doubtful since the narratives are not cited.

24. See Seiler, Deutsche Sprichwörterkunde, p. 222.

25. Deutsche Sprichwörterkunde, pp. 222 ff.

26. See Bonser, Proverb Literature(London, 1930), p. 131, No. 1093, and p. 273, No. 2237

27. See Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörter-lexikon, s. v. Drei.

28. Wesselski, Poliziano, p. 232, No. 403.

29. See such essays as Kradolfer, "Das Italienische Sprichwort und seine Beziehungen zum Deutschen," Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, IX (1877), 185-271; Berneker, "Das Russische Volk in seinen Sprichwörtern," Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, XIV (1904), 75-87, 179-191; N. Gerbel, "Nationale Sprüchwörter der Franzosen," Das Ausland, XLIII (1870), 93-95; XLIV (1871), 226-229; V. Granlund "Svenska Folket i sina Ordspråk," Svenska Fornminnesföreningens Tidskrift, I (1871), 27-45.

30. Ström, Svenskarna i sina Ordspråk (Stockholm, 1926), pp. 307, 38, 62, 34

31. Otto "Die Götter und Halbgötter im [Lateinischen] Sprichwort," Archiv für Lateinische Lexikographie, III (1886), 207-229, 384-387.

32. Altgermanische Dichtung (Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft), p. 68.

33. The collections printed in Kryptadia and Anthropophyteia offer little enough of value; I have not troubled to run down the Bibliotheca Scatologica cited in the Bernstein catalogue, No. 294. See Kainis, Die Derbheiten im Reden des Volkes (Leipzig, n.d.).

34. "Proverbs in the Making: Some Scientfic Commonplaces," Journal of American Folk-lore, XVII (1904), 161-170, 268-278.

35. See J. M. Kemble, The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus (Ælfric Society, London, 1848); F. Vogt, Salman und Morolf (Halle, 1880); A. Ritter von Vincenti, Die Altenglischen Dialoge von Salomon und Saturn (Münchener Beiträge, XXXI), 1904; W. Benary, Salomon et Marcolfus (Sammlung Mittellateinischer Texte, VIII [Heidelberg, 1914]).

36. See Euling, "Priamel," Reallexikon der Deutschen Literaturgeschichte, II (1926-28), 723-725.

37. R. M. Meyer, Die Altgermanische Poesie (Berlin, 1889) p. 434 (quoting H. Paul, Kanteletar, p. 143); Heusler, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Volkskunde, XXVI (1916), 43.

38. See Bonser, Proverb Literature (London, 1930), p. 127, Nos.1059, 1060.

39. De Oorsprong en Uitlegging van Dagelyks Gebruikte Nederduitsche Spreekwoorden, Eerste Voorrede, p. [vii].

40. See W. Fraenger, Der Bauern-Bruegel und das deutsche Sprichwort (Erlenbach-Zürich, n.d. [1923]). G. P. C. van Breugel, Gedenkschrift wegens een Schilderij van Spreekwoorden (Haarlem, 1876), seems to have been overlooked by later writers.

41. Conveniently reprinted in Duplessis, Bibliographie Parémiologique (Paris, 1847), p. 125.

42. See Fraenger, as above, pp. 11 ff.

43. See Frankel and Bauer, "Entlehnungen in ältesten Faustbuch. 1. Das Sprichwörterkapitel," Vierteljahrschrift für Litteraturgeschichte, IV, (1891), 361-381

44. See R. Werner, Zur Geschichte der "Proverbes Dramatiques" (Berlin, 1887), and Dejardin, Dictionnaire des Spots ou Proverbs Wallons (Liège, 1863), p. 37. I have not seen P. R. Faiex, La Chasse aux Proverbes (n p., n. d.), which is cited in the Bernstein catalogue, No. 1073.