W.C. Hazlitt, comp. English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. 1907.
Love and a cough to Memory
Love and a cough cannot be hid.
Amor tussisque non celantur. The French and Italians add to these two the itch. L’amour, la tousse, et la gale ne se peuvent celer. Fr. Amor la rogna, è la tossa, non si possona nascondere. Ital. Others add, stink.—R.
See Hazlitt’s Dodsley, (Field’s Woman is a Weathercock, 1612, v. 1), where this proverb is shown to be cited by Sacchetti, the early Italian novelist, and by Pulci in his Morgante Maggiore:—
Love and business teach eloquence.
Love and lordship like no fellowship.
Amor è signoria non vogliono compagnia. Ital. Amour et seigneurie ne se tinrent jamais compagnie. Fr. The meaning of our English proverb is, Lovers and princes cannot endure rivals or partners. Omnisque potestas impatiens consortia erit. The Italian and French, though the same in words, have, I think, a different sense, viz., Non bene conveniunt nec in una sede morantur majestas et amor.—R.
Love and peas will make a man speak at both ends.
Love and pease-pottage will make their way.
Because one breaks the belly, the other the heart.—R.
Love and pride stock Bedlam.
Love at first sight.
Love cometh in at the window and goeth out at the door.
Love creepeth where it cannot go.
Rowland’s ’Tis Merry when Gossips meete, 1602, repr. of ed. 1609, p. 14.
Love does much, but money does more.
Love hath no lack.
Tell Trothes New Yeares Gift, 1593, repr. 7.
Love is a sweet tyranny, because the lover endureth his torments willingly.
Love is blind.
Love is not found in the market.
Love is the loadstone of love.
Love is the true price of love.
Love it or lump it. Cornw.
Love, knavery, and necessity, make men good orators.
Love laughs at locksmiths.
The title of a well-known farce.
Love lives in cottages as well as in courts.
Love looks for love again.
Love makes a good eye squint.
Love me little, love me long.
This is the title of a ballad licensed to W. Griffith in 1569–70. See Arber, i. 188 b. Herrick has some verses on the saying in his Hesperides, 1648.
Love me, love my dog.
“Love me, and love my dog.”—The Mad Dog Rebellion worm’d and muzzled (1647).
Qui me eyme, eyme mon chen. Old Fr. Qui aime Jean aime son chien. Fr. Quien bien quiere á Beltran Bien quiero á su can. Span. Spesse volte si ha rispetto al cane per il padrone.—R. “I will not request you according to the old proverbe, Loue me, loue my hound; but onely, loue me, and hang my dogge.”—Discovery of a London Monster, called the Blacke Dogg of Newgate (1596), ed. 1638, sign. D 3, verso. I do not quite understand the following passage in Killigrew’s Cicilia and Clorinda (Works, 1664, sign. E e):—“His sister is in the Toil too; the Virago that has so long made Otho a Souldier, for ’tis certain he loves Clorinda; but why, unlesse it be for loving him, I know not; the great reason why most men love their dogs.”
Love of lads and fire of chats is soon in and soon out.
Love of wit makes no man rich.
Love rules his kingdom without a sword.
Love sees no faults.
Love will find out the way.
Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge.
Lovelocks [are] no cupboards.
Lovers ever run before the clock.
Lovers live by love, as larks live by leeks.
This is, I conceive, in derision of such expressions as living by love. Larks and leeks, beginning with the same letter, helped it up to be a proverb.—R.
Lowly sit, richly warm.
A mean condition is both more safe and more comfortable than a high estate.—R.
Lubberland, where the pigs run about ready-roasted, and cry, Come eat me!
See Nares’ Glossary, ed. 1859, art. Lubberland. This proverb is referred to by Ben Jonson in his Bartholemew Fair (1614).
Luck of Muncaster [The].
The name of an ancient enamelled glass vase given by Henry VI. to Sir John Pennington, when he stayed at Muncastor after the Battle of Hexham in 1463. The tradition was that, so long as it remained unbroken, the family would not want a male heir.
Lucky men need no counsel.
Lucus a non lucendo.
Lucy Light, the shortest day and the longest night.
December 13, the day of Lucy, virgin and martyr.
Lusty Lawrence.
The title of a ballad licensed in 1594. A metaphor for a man of vigorous physique.
Lying rides on debt’s back.
Magister Factotum.
“He was Magister factotum: he was as fine as the Crusadoe.”—Gascoigne’s Supposes, 1566 (Works, by Hazlitt, i. 228).
Maids say nay, and take.
Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them they want everything. Somerset.
Maids should be seen and not heard.
The Maids Complaint against the Batchelors, 1675, p. 3, where it is called a musty proverb.
Make a model before thou buildest.
Make a page / of your own age.
i.e., Do it yourself.—R.
Make a pearl on your nail.
Nash’s Pierce Penniless, 1592, repr. Collier, 1868, p. 57. This phrase is connected with a convivial custom known as “drinking supernaculum.” Supernaculum is, according to the most reasonable etymology, derived from Lat. super, and Germ. nagel, the nail, agreeably to a barbarous practice of coupling words taken from two distinct languages; unless it is to be supposed that the word is compounded of super and nagulum, a kind of jargon or loose Latinity, as Nash prints super nagulum. In a marginal note to his text, Nash observes, “Drinking super nagulum, a devise of drinking, new come out of Fraunce; which is, after a man hath turnde up the bottom of the cup, to drop on hys nayle, and made [? make] a pearle with that is left; which if it slide, and he cannot make stand on, by reason ther’s too much, he must drinke againe for his penance.” See also Notes and Queries, 4th S., i. 460, 559, Sussex Arch. Coll., xiv., 15, and my Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 574.
Make a virtue of necessity.
Il savio fa della necessity virtu. Ital. [Greek] and [Greek], Erasmus makes to be much of the same sense, that is, to do or suffer that patiently which cannot well be avoided. Levius fit patientia, quicquid corrigere est nefas. Or to do that ourselves by an act of our own, which we should otherwise shortly be compelled to do. So the abbeys and convents, which resigned their lands into King Henry VIII.’s hands, made a virtue of necessity.—R.
Make ado and have ado.
Make haste when you are purchasing a field; but when you are to marry a wife, be slow.
Make me a diviner, and I will make thee rich.
Make much of me: good men are scarce.
Make no fire, raise no smoke.
Make no orts of good hay.
Make not a gauntlet of a hedging glove.
Make not a toil of pleasure, as the man said when he buried his wife.
Make not balks of good ground.
A balk, Latin scamnam; a piece of earth which the plough slips over without turning up or breaking. It is also used for narrow slips of land left unploughed on purpose in champagne countries, for boundaries between men’s lands, or some other convenience.—R.
Make not even the devil blacker than he is.
Make not thy friend too cheap to thee, nor thyself to thy friend.
Make not thy tail broader than thy wings.
i.e., Keep not too many attendants.—R.
Make not your sail too big for your ballast.
Make not your sauce till you have caught the fish.
Make the best of a bad bargain.
Make the vine poor, and it will make you rich.
Prune off [oft?] its branches.—R.
Make the young one squeak, and you’ll catch the old one.
Malice drinketh its own poison.
Malice hath a sharp sight and a strong memory.
Malice is mindful.
Malice seldom wants a mark to shoot at.
Malt is above wheat with him.
Malvern measure: full and running over.
Man doth what he can, and God what he will.
Man is a wolf to man.
Man is but his mind.
Man proposes, God disposes.
Home proponit, Deus disponit.—Piers Plowman, ed. Wright, p. 204. In Bradshaw’s Life of St. Werburgh, 1521, we have this couplet:
Man, woman, and devil are the three degrees of comparison.
Manners and money make a gentleman.
Manners make a man, / quoth William of Wickham.
William Patten of Wickham was Bishop of Winchester, founded New College in Oxford, and Winchester College in this county [Hants]. This generally was his motto, inscribed frequently on the places of his founding. So that it hath since acquired a proverbial reputation.—R. In his Lyfe of Saynt Werburge, 1521, Bradshaw says:
Manners make the man.
Manners often make fortunes.
Man’s best candle is his understanding.
Man’s life is filed by his foe.
Many a dog is hanged for his skin, and many a man is killed for his purse.
Many a dog’s dead since you were a whelp.
Many a good cow hath an evil calf.
[Greek]. Heroum filii noxii. [Greek].—Homer, Odyss. [Greek]. Ælius Spartianus, in the life of Severus, shows, by many examples, that men famous for learning, virtue, valour, or success, have, for the most part, either left behind them no children, or such as that it had been more for their honour, and the interest of human affairs, that they had died childless. We might add unto those which he produceth, many instances out of our own history. So Edward I., a wise and valiant prince, left us Edward II.: Edward the Black Prince, Richard II.: Henry V., a valiant and successful king, Henry VI., a very unfortunate prince, though otherwise a good man. And yet there want not in history instances to the contrary; as among the French, Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne, in continual succession; so Joseph Scaliger the son was, in point of scholarship, no whit inferior to Julius the father. Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis, &c.—R.
Many a good drop of broth is made in an old pot.
Many a man setteth more by an inch of his will than by an ell of his thrift.
Whitinton’s Vulgaria, 1520, quoted in the Bibliographer for January, 1882.
Many a mickle makes a muckle.
Many a true word is spoken in jest.
Many an honest man stands in need of help that has not the face to beg it.
Many by-walks, many balks: many balks, much stumbling.
Latimer’s Sermons, 1549, repr. Arber, p. 56. Baulks or balks = ridges or narrow causeways; but probably a play on words is intended. Comp. Faiths and Folklore, 1905, v. Whorpell, and supra, Make not, &c.
Many can bear adversity, but few contempt.
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
Loves Labours Lost, 1598.
Many can pack the cards that cannot play.
Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves.
Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ.
Many dogs soon eat up a horse.
Many dressers put the bride’s dress out of order.
Many drops make a shower.
Many drops of water will sink a ship.
Many for folly themselves foredo.
How the Goode Wif, &c., in Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, i.
Many get into a dispute well that cannot get out well.
Many hands make light work.
How the Goode Wif, &c., ut supra; Parlament of Byrdes (circa 1550), ibid. iii. 177. Mr. Furnivall refers me to the romance of Sir Bevis of Hamtoun (about 1320), line 3177. “Multorum manibus grande levatur onus. [Greek]. Homer. Unas vir nullus vir. [Greek]. Euripid.”—R.
Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths.
Many have come to a port after a storm.
Many haws, many sloes: / many cold toes.
Many humble servants, but not one true friend.
Many kinsfolk and few friends.
Many kiss the child for the nurse’s sake.
Osculor hunc ore natum nutricis amore.—Leonine verse in a MS. of the 12th cent., in Trin. Coll. Camb. (Wright’s Essays, i. 150). Pur l’amour le chevaler, bees la dame l’esquier. Old Fr.
Many kiss the hand they wish cut off.
Many lads, many loons.
Colkelbie Sow, 14th c. (Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry of Scotl., 1895, i. 195).
Many littles make a mickle.
The proverbe saith that many a smale makith a grete.—Chaucer, Persones Tale, ed. Wright, roy. 8vo. p. 192. “Petit a petit l’oiseau fait sa nid. Goutte à goutte on remplit la cave. Fr. And, Goutte à goutto la met s’egoute. Drop by drop the sea is drained. [Greek]. Hesiod. Adde parum parvo magnus acervus erit. De petit vient on au grand: and, Les petits ruisseaux font les grandes rivieres. Fr. Piuma à piuma si pela l’ occa. Ital. A quattrino a quattrino se fa il soldo. Ital. De muitos poucos se faz ham muito. Port.”—R.
Many masters, quoth the toad to the harrow, when every tine turned her over.
Many men for land wive to their undoing, quoth Hendyng.
Reliq. Antiq., i. 115.
Many Mountagues, but one Markham.
See Sir James Whitelocke’s Liber Famelicus, edit. Bruce, p. 52, and Mr. Bruce’s note. Muchos Grisones y pocos Bayardos. Span. This had perhaps an eye to the Chevalier Bayard.
Many nits [nuts], many pits.
Notes and Queries, 1st S., ii. 510. i.e., It hazel nuts be plentiful, the season will be unhealthy.—Shelly.
Many old camels carry the skins of the young ones to the market.
Many owe their fortune to their enviers.
Many rains, many rowans: / many rowans, many yawns.
Rowans are the fruit of the mountain ash, and an abundance thereof is held to denote a deficient harvest.—D.
Many sands will sink a ship.
Many slones [sloes], many groans.
N. and Q., 1st S., ii. 510.
Many speak much that cannot speak well.
Many talk like philosophers and live like fools.
See the ballad of The Well-Spoken No Body (circa 1600):
Many that are wits in jest are fools in earnest.
Many there be that buy nothing with their money but repentance.
Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.
Many things lawful are not expedient.
Many ventures make a full freight.
Many wells, many buckets: / many words, many buffets.
Many who wear rapiers are afraid of goose quills.
Many without punishment, none without sin.
Many words hurt more than swords.
Mas hiere mala palabre, que espada afilada. Span.—R.
Many words will not fill a bushel.
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.
Many would have been worse if their estates had been better.
March balkham / comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb.
March birds are best.
March comes in with an adder’s head, and goes out with a peacock’s tail.
March dust and May sun / makes corn white and maids dun.
March in Janiveer, / Janiveer in March I fear.
March many-weathers.
In reference, of course, to the variability of the season.
March wind and April showers bring forth May flowers.
March wind wakens the adder and blooms the thorn.
This saying is referred to by Shakespeare in Julius Cæsar, ii. 1.
Margaret’s flood.
Notes and Queries, 1st S., ii. 512.
Margery good cow, that gave a gallon of milk, and kicked down the pail, and bewrayed the milkmaid.
Part of the title of a very severe tract against Cromwell, 4to, 1659. It seems to have been borrowed from some current saying. The collections sometimes give a corrupt version, perhaps formed out of it: The cow gives good milk, but kicks over the pail.
Mariner’s craft is the grossest, yet of handicrafts the subtlest.
Mark Snelling anon.
Anon was the old waiter’s “Coming, sir, immediately.” Is this Mark Snelling connected with Du. maaken, to make; snell, quick; snellen, to run at speed? But Mark Snelling may have been in his time as classical as the “plump head-waiter at the ‘Cock.’”—Notes and Queries, March 2, 1878.
Marriage comes unawares, like a soot-drop. Irish.
An allusion to the rain finding its way through the thatch, blackened by the smoke of the peat fires.—Mr. Hardman, in Notes and Queries.
Marriage is honourable, but housekeeping’s a shrew.
Marriage with peace is the world’s paradise; with strife, this life’s purgatory.
Marriageable foolish wenches are troublesome troops to keep.
Marriages are made in heaven.
Nozze e magistrato dal cielo e destino. Ital.—R.
Marry a widow before she leave mourning.
Marry come up, my dirty cousin. Cheshire.
See Wilbraham’s Cheshire Glossary in Archæologia, xix., or the separate ed. 1820, p. 57. “Spoken by way of taunt to those who boast themselves of their birth, parentage, or the like.”—R. Marry come up is still employed as a phrase to convey astonishment, or an exclamation of surprise. The only early use I have met with of it is in Duffett’s Empress of Morocco, 4to, 1674, a skit on Settle, p. 4. It seems to be employed there without any precise meaning.
Marry in haste, and repent at leisure.
Marry in Lent, / and you’ll live to repent. East Anglia.
Marry, that would I see, quoth blind Hugh.
Pardoner and Frere, 1533, edit. 1848, p. 122. A more modern version (copied probably from it) is:
Marry your daughters betimes, lest they marry themselves.
Marry your son when you will, your daughter when you can.
Martin-drunk.
Defined by T. Nash to be the seventh class of drunkenness—where a man drinks himself sober before he stirs. See N. and Q., 1st S., v. 587. Nash was one of those who took part in the Mar-Prelate controversy, and his allusion here is undoubtedly to Martin himself or Martin Junior.
Marvel is the daughter of ignorance.
Besides cannon the Sussex foundry supplied the county and the public with other products of a more generally useful character. At Rowfant, Crawley, the former seat of Sir Curtis Sampson, there are fire-backs of this manufactory, one with a portrait of Charles II. They seem to belong to the 17th century. Specimens occasionally occur in the market.
Master Mayor of the Bull-ring.
I have met with this saying only in the subsequent passage from Barnaby Rich, New Description of Ireland, 1610, ch. 3:—“And let mee say something for our Females in Ireland, and leaning to speake of worthy Matrones,… I will speake onelie of the riffe-raffe,… (I meane those Huswives that doe vse selling of drinke in Dubline, or else where) commonly called Tauerne-keepers, but indeed filthy and beastly alehouse-keepers: I will not meddle with their honesties, I will leaue that to be testified by Maister Maior of the Bull-ring….”
M[aster] what-call-you-him.
“Then it comes to the ears of my neighbours kinsmen & friends, that my neighbour Jenkinsons-daughter shall have M. what call you-hims man.”—Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Seruingmen, by J. M., 1598, repr. 166.
Masters are mostly the greatest servants in the house.
Masters should be sometimes blind and sometimes deaf.
Maxfield [Macclesfield] measure, heap and thruch [thrust]. Cheshire.
May-bees don’t fly this month.
This is a Scotish as well as an English proverb; it is analogous to the Scotish saying: “The buke o’ May-bees is very braid.”
May it please God not to make our friends so happy as to forget us!
May makes or mars the wheat.
In that month the ear and grains are commonly formed.
May my girdle break, if I fail.
See Fairholt’s Costume in England, 1860, p. 459. It is there explained that in the girdle the purse was invariably kept.
May never goes out without a wheat-ear. East Anglia.
Forby’s Vocab. of East Anglia, 1830, p. 417.
Meal make before sail take. Cornw.
A proverb certainly applicable with peculiar force to a county, where so many subsist by the profits of the fishery, and where no man, in setting out, can tell with much certainty how long his return may be delayed.
Measure is a treasure.
Measure is measure.
Seager’s School of Vertue, 1577 (Furnivall’s Babees Book, p. 344).
Measure not others’ corn by your own bushel.
Measure thrice what thou buyest, and cut but once.
Meat and drink.
Meat and matins [or prayer and provender] hinder no man’s journey.
Meals and matins minish never, I apprehend to be an alia lectio of this. A third variation is, Mass and meat never marred work.
Meat, drink, and money: a fiddler’s life.
Meat is much; but manners is more.
Meddle with your old shoes.
Meddlers are the devil’s body-lice; they fetch blood from those that feed them.
Medicines are not meant to live on.
Medlars are never good till they are rotten.
Meet him at [the] Land’s End!
Meeterly as maids are in fairness.
Meeterly = tolerably well, moderately. This word and meeter are more frequently used in the Western Borders than in the interior of Craven. Leland, in his Itinerary, has meately in the same sense.—Dialect of Craven, 1828.
Melverly God help me!
Melverly and what do you think?
Melverley, on the Severn, is a desolate place in winter, but agreeable enough in the summer. The river floods lay it nearly under water during the rainy season.
Memory is the treasurer of the mind.