A Dictionary of American Proverbs*. Ed. by
Wolfgang Mieder, editor in chief;Stewart A. Kingsbury, and
Kelsie B. Harder.New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Pp. 710.
This volume represents the long-awaited culmination of
the proverb collection project carried out under the
auspices of the American Dialect Society, beginning in the
1940s and continuing--in its fieldwork phase--until the end
of the 1970s. The result of these four decades of collecting
was a mammoth assemblage of approximately 150,000 items of
proverbial speech, out of which the editors have isolated
some 15,000 "true proverbs" and their variants--leaving
aside, perhaps for future publication, the vast numbers of
proverbial phrases, proverbial comparisons, wellerisms, and
other categories of folk speech noted down by diligent field
workers throughout the United States and Canada. The
dedication of the volume to Margaret M. Bryant, the "impetus
and driving force"behind the proverb project
(Dictionary, p. ix), is an appropriate recognition of
her outstanding role in every phase of the operation, from
the initial call for the collaboration of anyone willing to
jot down and send in familiar sayings, phrases, idioms, and
other elements of proverbial speech, through the years of
active collection, and on into the final stages of
organization and annotation of the collectanea. (Her
monograph on Proverbs and How to Collect Them [Greensboro, NC: American Dialect Society,
1945], written to inform, inspire, and instruct
prospective collaborators in the proverb project, is a
valuable source of background information on the guidelines
and procedures adopted in the collection of the materials
that make up this Dictionary.) Bryant continued to chair the
Committee on Proverbial Sayings until 1985, after which it
remained for the editor-in-chief and his two colleagues to
see the Dictionary through to its final form.
"True proverbs" are, for purposes of this collection,
"concise statements of apparent truths that have common
currency" (p. xii). Anyone who has worked with proverbs will
recognize immediately the difficulties inherent in
establishing a workable definition and consequently in
delineating the contents of the volume. Of the three
criteria contained in the above definition, the first
two--concision and truth--work fairly well (although some of
the texts, far from being genuinely concise, are
surprisingly wordy); the third criterion is more
problematical. Each entry was of course submitted by someone
who considered it a "current" saying, but of what does
"currency" really consist, and how is the degree of
"currency" to be ascertained? In her instructions to
prospective field workers, Bryant urged them to "send in
anything you hear or find," leaving it to the members of the
Committee on Proverbial Sayings to decide, on the basis of
their recorded data, how widely used the sayings were. (Her
advice, "If in doubt, collect" [Proverbs and How to
Collect Them, p. 21], offers an amusing
contradiction to the proverbial injunction "When in doubt,
leave it out" [Dictionary, p. 166].) The
editors of the dictionary have likewise been inclined toward
"inclusion rather than exclusion" (p. xii), and there are
indeed a substantial number of entries whose
proverbiality--in the sense of "common currency"--seems
doubtful. Their presence serves as a reminder of the
elasticity of the "folk" concept of the proverb, which can
range from the terseness of Money talks (p. 417) or Like father, like son (p. 201) to the expansiveness
of A politician is a fellow who gives you the key to the
city after he's taken everything worth having (p. 472)
or It's not improbable that a man may receive more solid
satisfaction from pudding while he is alive than from praise
after he is dead (p. 524). If, in a good many instances,
the entries seem to lack that "incommunicable quality" that,
according to Archer Taylor, tells us whether a given text is
proverbial or not (The Proverb [Hatboro, PA,
1962], p. 3), they have at least at some point been
deemed by one or more contributors to fulfill the criteria
set forth in Bryant's call for the collection of "proverbs,"
and that in itself is a matter of some significance.
As the introduction points out (p. xiii), the uniqueness
of the Dictionary.of American Proverbs lies in its
exclusive reliance on field-recorded collectanea rather than
on previously published materials. There is, nevertheless,
an ambiguity that the introduction does not clarify:
although it is stated on the page just cited that "all the
proverbs in this dictionary were collected from oral
sources," the instructions given to collectors by Bryant
herself (p. 23 of her monograph) made it clear that items
from written sources--books, magazine articles, newspapers,
etc.--were equally welcome. Contributors were exhorted to
identify their sources--whether oral or printed--in precise
detail; and it is conceivable, although the introduction
does not say so, that in compiling their dictionary "from
oral sources," the editors simply eliminated those items for
which a printed source was specified. Such a procedure would
be understandable, in the interests of homogeneity; but it
would be helpful to know whether that was indeed the
case.
The description of the dictionary contents as "American"
refers, of course, to usage or presumed "currency," not
origin; and "American" is to be understood as "North
American," i.e., including Canada as well as the United
States; although it appears that the Canadian materials are
in effect limited to contributions from Ontario and Prince
Edward Island. Almost all of the contiguous American states
are represented (Connecticut and Idaho being the apparent
exceptions), but there is no indication of the amount of
collecting activity that took place in individual regions.
Indeed, if there is one additional type of information that
one wishes might have been included, as part of the
"recorded distribution," it would be frequency data, of
particular importance in the case of the innumerable entries
for which only one region is indicated. Clearly, it would be
helpful, in terms of assessing "currency," to know, for
instance, whether "The mountains are never so far apart
but the animals find one another" (to use one random
example, p. 420), was contributed by a single individual
from Colorado, or by several, or by an even larger number;
and frequency data would be of value to readers interested
in identifying the "most commonly used" proverbs as well.
One presumes that such data were obtainable, given the
instructions to contributors to submit each saying on a
separate 3 x 5 card or slip of paper (Bryant, p. 23), and
that the decision against including them in the dictionary
was an editorial one, perhaps the result of pressures to
limit the size of the volume. Similar concerns may have
precluded the inclusion of regional information for the
variants that accompany many entries, some of which differ
substantially from the main entry.
Published annotations have, quite reasonably, been
limited to a "basic six" that provide, in turn, a range of
references to other collections or to works of literature
from which to trace the history and evolution of a
particular saying. Wherever possible, the earliest English
occurrence and the earliest occurrence in the United States,
as cited in one or another of the six sources, are noted
individually for each entry, but other
annotations--international, biblical, classical--are not
included. Some of the early occurrences are but distantly
related to the dictionary entry for which they are cited,
the resemblance being one of idea rather than wording, so
that the term "first citation" is somewhat misleading, e.g.
Lyly's "You talke of your birth, when I knowe there is no
difference of blouds in a basen" [1580] as the
"first citation" of Men's skins have many colors, but
human blood is always red (p. 402); but this drawback,
if it can be considered that, is not a serious one, once the
reader becomes aware that the term "first citation" should
not be taken too literally. For those inclined to pursue
further investigations, an excellent bibliography at the end
of the volume includes not only a wide variety of
collections--both general and regional--but also articles on
specific aspects of American proverbial speech.
Although Margaret Bryant appears to have envisaged a
proverb project that would embrace non-English as well as
English language proverbs (cf. her instructions to
contributors to note down "the language from which [the
saying] originally came" [Bryant, p. 24]), the
dictionary is, as one would expect, preponderantly if not
exclusively representative of Anglo-American tradition.
There are, to be sure, many proverbs that are international
in distribution, and the six sources used in the annotations
provide some information as to their history if not their
worldwide currency. One wonders, however, to what extent the
project participants heeded Bryant's implicit suggestion
that proverbs from other languages be included. To do so
would, of course, enhance the "American" nature of the
collection, but it would also raise questions as to whether
a given proverb is current only in the original language or
whether its English translation has become established as a
proverb in its own right. For example, a random perusal of
the volume reveals a number of entries that lack annotations
from any of the "basic six" sources but are clearly
recognizable as English equivalents of well-known Spanish
proverbs. Are these instances of "international" proverbs
that simply do not happen to appear in the sources of
annotation, or are they proverbs that have crossed over from
Spanish into English, or are they merely translations
supplied by contributors to the proverb project? In at least
one instance the last possibility seems to be the case: "In
want of bread it is well to have seniitas [sic]" has the appearance of an ad hoc translation of the Spanish "A falta de pan buenas son
semitas," with the informant providing the useful
information that the term semitas refers to "a
biscuit-like bran preparation, eaten like crackers or bread"
(p. 68). (The misspelling seniitas, repeated twice in
the entry, is probably a misreading of a hand-written entry
in which "mi" was mistaken for "nii"; the term in Spanish
may also be spelled cemitas or acemitas.) The
slight awkwardness of the English version argues against,
but does not rule out, its actual currency in everyday
speech. As Wolfgang Mieder has pointed out in his chapter on
"Proverbs of the Immigrants" in American Proverbs: A
Study of Texts and Contexts (New York: Peter Lang,
1989), pages 47-53, much remains to be investigated with
regard to proverb use among the various ethnic communities
in the United States and on the incorporation of non-English
proverbs into English-language speech in this country.
In any undertaking of the scope of the Dictionary of
American Proverbs there are problems of organization and
editorial choices to be made, some governed by the need to
make the collection as useful and as easy to consult as
possible, others, as noted earlier, by more pragmatic
concerns such as space considerations and the economics of
publishing. The arrangement by keyword is certainly the
preferred one for scholarly reference, and even the more
casual reader, in search perhaps of a kernel of proverbial
wisdom on a certain topic, e.g., "happiness," will find in
all likelihood appropriate items assembled under that term,
although many other equally appropriate entries are to be
found scattered throughout the work under other
keywords--not only those that are synonyms or near-synonyms
(e.g., "content," "contentment," "joy") but also under such
disparate terms as "angry," "labor," "money," or "sin." The
cross-references provided at the end of many entries, while
not exhaustive, are helpful in guiding the reader to sayings
in which the term under which they are grouped appears but
is not the keyword (e.g., "Kindness brings happiness,"
listed under "kindness," p. 347).
Selection of a keyword is often a judgment call, and what
appears to be the appropriate choice to one collector or
reader will not necessarily appear so to another.
Contributors to the proverb project were asked to supply a
keyword--" usually the most important noun, sometimes a verb
or adjective" (Bryant, p. 23)--and inevitably there were
differences of opinion, resulting in a substantial number of
double entries: "Half a loaf is better than none," listed
under both "half" (p. 294) and "loaf" (p. 382); "It's the
little things in life that count," under "little" (p. 380)
as well as "things" (p. 589); "The shortest distance between
two points is a straight line," under "distance" (p. 153)
and also under "line" (p. 378); and so on. In at least one
instance (the last example cited) an editorial awareness of
the duplication is indicated by the notation "Cf. distance,"
inserted--as are all editorial comments--after the
abbreviation "Infm." (for "Informant," since it is also
used--somewhat confusingly--to introduce the rare comments
or explanations provided by the informants themselves). In
some cases the duplicate entries are precisely
that--word-for-word repetitions--but in a good many
instances they differ with regard to the recorded
distribution, or the variants noted, or the annotations
provided. For example, "Don't shut the barn door after the
horse is stolen," listed under "barn" (p. 38), is arguably a
variant of "There's no use in closing the barn door after
the horse is stolen," which is listed (with 13 variants)
under "door" (p. 164); both entries have "U.S., Can." as
their recorded distribution and a first English citation
from "ca. 1350," but the former gives a first American
citation from 1886 whereas the latter provides a reference
from 1745. "A man can't be hanged for his thoughts," listed
under "man" (p. 396), has a distribution record limited to
California and an annotation attributing it to Benjamin
Franklin; the same proverb, with exactly the same wording,
appears under "thought" (p. 593) as having been recorded
from Michigan, New York, and Ontario--but without any
published annotation whatsoever. "It's a long lane that has
no turning," listed under both "lane" (p. 359) and "long"
(p. 383), has four variants in the first instance and three
in the second, with only one duplication between them; but
the annotations for the two entries are identical. Such
occurrences are, to be sure, comparatively minor "glitches"
in relation to the scope and overall quality of the
dictionary; and indeed, for some purposes of consultation
they are quite insignificant. From the standpoint of the use
of the volume as a scholarly reference, however, they do
point up the importance of checking for listings under all
potential keywords, even after one listing has been located,
if one wishes to be certain that all the available
information has been found.
There are some things that this dictionary does not
attempt to do, and indeed probably could not, by its very
nature, achieve. It does not, for the most part, provide
definitions or explanations, even though Bryant's
instructions to prospective contributors specifically called
for them. There is a provision for "informants' comments"
(marked "Infm."), but such comments, though valuable when
they occur, are exceedingly rare, whether because the
contributors did not supply them or because space
considerations dictated their omission except when deemed
absolutely necessary. (Bryant advised the addition of
explanatory information "if the meaning is not perfectly
obvious" [p. 23], but of course what is obvious to
one reader is not so to another, especially one who might
not be thoroughly familiar with the English language.) What
the dictionary provides, then, is in a sense the bare bones
of American proverb usage: the texts and their variant
wordings, a sense of their geographical distribution, and
some indication of their history, plus the means to explore
such aspects further. For many readers this much will
suffice; and fortunately, for those wishing to flesh out
their knowledge of American proverbial lore, there are two
excellent supplementary sources available: Mieder's American Proverbs:A Study of Texts and Contexts,
mentioned earlier (and reviewed in Proverbium 8
[1991]: 249-253), and his more recent Proverbs
Are Never Out of Season (NewYork: Oxford University
Press, 1993), both of which can serve as ideal companion
volumes to the Dictionary. As for the Dictionary itself, it stands as an exemplary and
indispensable reference work, an enjoyable and revealing
cross-section of American "folk wisdom," and an impressive
testimony both to the vitality of traditional speech
patterns and to the inventiveness that continues to
characterize present-day proverbial speech. Proverb scholars
throughout the world owe a debt of gratitude to its three
editors, who have succeeded in bringing this mammoth
undertaking to fruition, as well as to Margaret Bryant, her
fellow members of the American Dialect Society, and all the
anonymous field workers and informants who, over nearly half
a century, worked to make this volume a reality.
*Previously published in Proverbium, 11 (1994),
307-313
Shirley L. Arora
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of California Los Angeles
CA 90024-1532
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