Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

W.C. Hazlitt, comp. English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. 1907.

Noble housekeepers to Once warned

Noble housekeepers need no doors. H.

Noble plants suit not a stubborn soil.

Nobody calls himself a rogue.

Nobody can live longer in peace than his neighbour pleases.

Nobody hath too much prudence or virtue.

Nobody is fond of fading flowers.

Nobody so like an honest man as an arrant knave.

Nolens volens.
Part of the title of a book printed in 1675 (Bibl. Coll. and Notes, 1876, art. Coles). English willy nilly. Whether one will or not. A correspondent of N. and Q., 1st S., xi. 143, seems to concur in the supposition that the Cumberland oilins boilins may be a corruption of this.

Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum.
See Becker’s Charicles, by Metcalfe, p. 24. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, 1807, seems to ascribe the saying to the costliness of living there. But compare Aulus Gellius, c. 8. I incline to the view that the saying arose from the splendour and extravagance of the Corinthians when at the height of their prosperity.

Non ex quolibet ligno fit Mercurius.

None but a wise man can employ leisure well.

None but cats and dogs are allowed to quarrel in my house.

None but fools and fiddlers sing at their meat.

None can be good too soon.

None can think so well of others as most do of themselves.

None ever gives the lie to him that praiseth him.

None goes to the gallows for giving ill counsel.

None is a fool always, every one sometimes.

None is so deaf as who will not hear.
Ingelend’s Interlude of the Disobedient Child, about 1563, edit. 1848, p. 20.

None is so wise but the fool overtakes him.

None knows the weight of another’s burden.

None live in quiet that are insatiate:

content is the cure which healeth all sores:

gentleness makes the heart from vice to keep separate:

a learned man a liar all wisdom abhors:

honesty with dishonesty always hath debate:

envy hath hate and its malice colours:

poverty with pride doth as well agree

as a heart in sorrow to sing pleasantly.

Current Notes for December, 1853 (from an early MS.)

None play the fool well without wit. DS.

None says his garner is full. H.

None so blind as those who won’t see.

None so old that he hopes not for a year of life.

None so wise as you! CL.

Nonsuch Nottingham.
Franck (Northern Memoirs, 1694, p. 239) seems to quote this as if it had been proverbial in his day (1658).

Norfolk dumplings.
This refers not to the stature of their bodies, but to the fare they commonly feed on, and much delight in.—R.

Northamptonshire for spires and squires.

Northdown ale.
Northdown, in the Isle of Thanet. Skeat’s ed. of Pegge’s Kenticisms, 93.

North-west wind is far the best:

north-east is bad for man and beast.

Northerly wind and blubber

brings home the Greenland lubber. D.

Northern sweet music / and Didsbury pans:

Cheadle old kettles / and Stockport old cans.

Higson’s MSS. Coll., No. 43.

Not a long day, but a good heart, rids work. H.

Not a miller’s thumb.
A mere trifle. The miller’s thumb is a diminutive fish so called. “This man I see makes not a miller’s thumbe of his Oration.”—Acc. of the Quarr. betw. Hall and Mallerie (1575–6).

Not a word of Penzance. Cornw.
The cowardice of the inhabitants of this town during the invasion of Cornwall by the Spanish, in 1595, was so glaring, “that they added,” as old Heath, in his work on Scilly, quaintly says, “one proverb more to this county!”—Notes and Queries, 3rd S., v. 275.

Not God above / gets all men’s love. CL.
[Greek]. Theogn.—R.

Not Jack out of doors, nor yet gentleman. CL.

Not only but also (or, he hath won the spurs). CL.

Not so good to borrow as to be able to lend. HE.

Not to care a straw or a button.
In early French “la croix d’un bouton” is used in the sense of a mere trifle. See Montaiglon, Fabliaux, i. 225: “Seignor, ne vous vaut bouton.”

Not to-day.
This is said satirically where a person declines a bargain proposed to him, or anything of the kind.

Not to have hope is the poorest of all conditions.

Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your house [or purse] open.

Not to pass a pin. SHAKESPEARE.
Or, as we say, Not to care a pin.

Not to repent of a fault is to justify it.

Not too fast for falling.
Porter’s Two Angrie Women of Abington, 1599, edit. Dyce, p. 41.

Not what is she, but what hath she.

Not worth a brass farthing.
Walker’s Parœm., 1672, pp. 9, 26. Farthings were first coined in 1672, not of brass, but of Swedish copper. There had, however, been in circulation previously various pieces of this denomination struck by tradesmen and provincial towns. I have in my collection one having on the obverse A Norwich Farthing, 1667. When worn, these small coins present the appearance of brass. When the regular copper coinage of 1672 was instituted, the private and local mintages were suppressed by proclamation. The earliest instance in which I remember to have seen this sort of proverbial valuation, is in the epigrammatic squib on Martin V., which is said to have been composed about 1420 at Florence, and to have been repeated about the streets. It referred to the antagonism between this pope and Braccio di Mentone, Lord of Perugia:

The quattrino here mentioned was something like our half-farthing. It was the fourth part of the danaro.
See my Venetian Republic, 1900, i. 788.

Not worth a button.

Not worth a crown.
Lupton’s All for Money, 1578, repr. 151.

Not worth a dump.
A dump was the name given to the small thick halfpennies struck under George I. They are not bigger than the George III. farthings of 1770 and 1798.

Not worth a Flanders pin.
Wever’s Lusty Juventus (circa 1550), apud Hawkins, i. 134. Letter from Charles I. to Sir Edward Nicholas, 1645.

Not worth a halfpenny knife.
Maryage of the Bosse of Byllynggate, in Hazlitt’s Popular Poetry of England, iii. 161.

Not worth a Harington.
Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, 1672, p. 558 (letter of Aug. 12, 1628). The farthings struck under the auspices of Lord Harington of Exton were so called.

Not worth a haw.
Piers of Fulham (Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, ii. 10).

Not worth a plack (or bawbee).
The plack appears to be the same as the Brabançon plaque; it corresponds in character with the French blanque. All were of billon or of a low standard of silver.
I suppose this to be rather a Scotish saying, as the plack is a small coin of base metal, current in Scotland formerly, and worth very little. Montgomery uses the phrase in the Cherrie and the Slae, 1597, st. 83. Bawbee is said to be a corruption of Bas billon. The local pronunciation of the word may be indicated by the old Scotish song of “Jenny’s Bawbee.” The earliest issues of this piece were in billon; but the coin was subsequently made of copper, and is like our old English halfpenny. I see, however, that Robertson, in his Handbook of Scotish Coins, gives bawbee as another term for the billon plack of James V. (1514–42).

Not worth a prene.
i.e., a plum or prune. Halliwell says that the word prene in Somersetshire means an iron pan. See Hazlitt’s Popular Scot. Poetry, i. 163.

Not worth a rap.
A rap is a copper coin of infinitesimal value, which is described by Snelling as current at Basle in the 18th century (View of the Coins Current in Europe, 1766, p. 15). But it seems that about 1722 such pieces circulated in Ireland. Ellis’s Orig. Letters, 2nd S., iv. 330.

Not worth an egg.
Three Tails of the Three Priests of Peblis (Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry of Scotland, i. 160). This piece was written about 1492.

Not worth an oyster-shell.
Jack Juggler, an interlude (circa 1550, edit. 1848), p. 7.

Not worth three half-pence.
The Spaniards have the expression, He’s not worth his ears full of water. The following forms also occur:—Not worth a bean.—Old English Jest-Books, iii. 74. Not worth a bodkin.—The Faithful Friends, 1660. Not worth a fly. Not worth a fly’s wing.—Towneley Mysteries, 102. Not worth a haddock.—Walker’s Parœm., 12. Not worth a leek’s blade.—Chyld of Bristowe, in Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, i. 111. “Not worth a leek,” occurs in Gascoigne (Works, i. 67). Not worth a pin. Not worth a rush. Not worth a shittle-cock.—Skelton. Not worth shoe buckles.

Not worthy to be named the same day.

Not worthy to carry guts to a bear.

Not worthy to carry his books after him.

Not worthy to wipe his shoes.
Or, to tie his shoe-strings. Dekker, in his Knights Coniuring, 1607, speaks of the intended publication of the second part of Erra Paters Almanack, whose shooes Platoes cap was not worthie to wipe. A tract entitled Platoes Cap appeared in 1604, and may have been from Dekker’s pen. George II. said of his wife after her death in 1737 that he never saw the woman worthy “to buckle her shoe.”

Nothing agreeth worse

than a lady’s heart and a beggar’s purse. HE.

The later and weaker form is “a proud heart,” &c.

Nothing but up and ride.

Nothing down, nothing up.

Nothing dries sooner than a tear. H.
Niente piu tosto se secca che lagrime. Ital.—R.

Nothing for nothing, and little for a halfpenny.

Nothing hath no savour. HE.
This occurs in a conversation between Wolsey and Cromwell, reported by Cavendish in his Life, That would be prior to Heywood perhaps.

Nothing have, nothing crave.

Nothing is a man’s truly / but what he came by duly.

Nothing is easy to the unwilling.

Nothing is good or bad but by comparison.

Nothing is impossible to a willing heart. HE.
Nihil difficile amanti puto. Cic.—R.

Nothing is more easily blotted out than a good turn.

Nothing like leather.

Nothing more smooth than glass, yet nothing more brittle;

nothing more fine than wit, yet nothing more fickle.

Nothing sharpens sight like envy.

Nothing so bad as not to be good for something.

Nothing succeeds so well as success.
This is also in French.

Nothing to be got without pains, but poverty.

Nothing turns sourer than milk. E. Anglia.
“A mild, good-humoured man is most determined when he is thoroughly provoked.”—Forby.

Nought lay down, nought take up. HE.*

Nought venture, nought have. HE.
Chi non s’ arrischia non guadagna. Ital. Qui ne s’aventure n’a cheval ny mule. Fr. Quid enim tentare nocebit? And, Conando Græci Trojâ potiti sunt. Quien no se aventura, no ha ventura. Span.—R.

Novelty always appears handsome.

November take flail, / let ships no more sail.

Novus homo.
Equivalent to the Anglo-French phrase, as one may perhaps call it, Nouveau riche, one of our Plutocrats.

Now I have got an ewe and a lamb, every one cries, Welcome, Peter.

Now’s now, but Yule’s in winter. D.

O Master Vier, we cannot pay you.
Vier seems to be connected with the wager or stakes at a game of chance.

O rare Norgem! thou dost far exceed

Beckley, Peasmarsh, Udimore, and Brede.

Lower’s Compendious History of Sussex, 1862, ii. 63. Norgem is Northiam, and we ought perhaps rather to read Nor’jam.

Oaks may fall when reeds brave the storm.

Of a good beginning cometh a good end. HE.

Of a little take a little and leave a little.

Of a little thing a little displeaseth. H.

Of a ragged colt cometh a good horse. C.

Of all birds give me mutton.

Of all crafts, an honest man is the master-craft.

Of all crafts, the thieving craft is the worst for hanging, quoth Hendyng.
Reliq. Antiq., i. 115.

Of all meat in the world, drink goes down the best.

Of all smells, bread: of all tastes, salt. H.

Of all tame beasts, I hate sluts.

Of as great knowledge as the Bishop of Dunkeld.
George Webbe’s God’s Controversie with England, 1609, p. 78.

Of fair things, the autumn is fair. H.

Of idleness comes no goodness.

Of little waxeth mickle.
Aucren Riwle, ed. Morton, p. 54. See ibid. p. 297.

Of many people it hath been said,

that Tenterden steeple Sandwich haven hath decayed.

Compare Tottenden Steeple, &c.

Of money, wit, and virtue, believe one-fourth of what you hear.

Of nothing comes nothing.
Merely a translation of Ex nihilo nihil fit.

Of ossing comes bossing. WALKER (1672).

Of saving cometh having.

Of soup and love, the first is the best.

Of sufferance cometh ease. HE.

Of two ills choose the least. HE.*
Del mal el menos. Span.—R.

Of unbought hide a man carveth a broad thong, quoth Hendyng.
Reliq. Antiq., i. 114. “Of un-boht hude [hide] men kerveth brod thong.” “A large thonge of another man’s hide.”—MS. of the 16th cent., ibid. 207. But it occurs as far back as the twelfth century in the MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. already cited: De cute non propriâ maxima corrigia; de alieno corio liberalis. D’autrui cuir large corroie.”—Meon, Fabliaux et Contes, 1808, iv. 195. Il coupe large courroye de cuir d’autrui. Fr. De piel agena larga la coréa. Span. The Dutch have the same proverb, according to Erasmus: Ex alieno tergore lata secari lora.
1st Boy.These be nimbleshavers, Nick, as well as sharers, They know how to cut large thongs out of other folks’ leather.”—Lady Alimony, 1659, ii. 1.

Of wine the middle, of oil the top, and of honey the bottom is best.
Macrob. Saturn. lib. 7 c. 12. Quæro igitur, Cur oleum quod in summo est, vinum quod in medio, mel quod in fundo optimum esse credantur. Nec cunctatus Disarius ait, mel quod optimum est reliquo ponderosius est. In vase igitur mellis pars quæ in imo est reliquis præstat pondere, et ideo supernatante pretiosior est. Contra in vase vini pars inferior admixtione fæcis non modo turbulenta, sed et sapore deterior est, pars verò summa aëris viciniâ corrumpitur, &c. Vino di mezzo, oglio di sopra, e mele di sotto. Ital.—R. Compare Eggs of an hour, &c.

Of young men die many; / of old escape not any.
De giovane morirono molti, de’ vecchi ne scampa nessuno. Ital.—R.

Off the hooks.
In bad spirits. See Pepys, 26 May, 1665.

Offenders never pardon.

Offices may well be given, but not discretion.
B. of M. R., 1629, No. 116. Probably a translation from the French.

Oft craving makes soon forgetting.
Written about 1616 by John Rokeby in the Thornton MS. now at Lincoln.

Oft rap rueth, quoth Hendyng.
Reliq. Antiq., i. 115.

Often and little eating makes a man fat.

Often drunk and seldom sober, / falls like the leaves in October.

Oftentimes, to please fools, wise men err.

Oil and truth will get uppermost at last.

Old.
In the sense of something which has been long usual or familiar, as we now say of a time or a person. In Arden of Faversham, 1592, ed. 1887, p. 34, the apprentice speaks of shutting up his stall in view of the “old filching” when the crowd comes out of St. Paul’s. See Nares and Halliwell in v. This is still an expression in constant use in the sense of intimacy and endearment without reference to age.

Old be, or young die.

Old bees yield no honey.

Old birds are not caught with chaff. HE.*
Annosa vulpes non capitur laqueo.—R.

Old cattle breed not.
This, I believe, is a true observation; for probable it is, that all terrestrial animals, both birds and beasts, have in them, from the beginning, the seeds of all those young they afterwards bring forth, which seeds (eggs, if you so please to call them), when they are all spent, the female becomes effete, or ceases to breed. In birds, these seeds or eggs are visible; and Van Horn hath discovered them also in beasts.—R.

Old Cole.
In The Defence of Coney-catching, 1592, the author speaks of an usurer as “the Old Cole;” and in the comedy of Look about you, 1600 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, vii. 476), one of the speakers is greeted under this name, but altogether vaguely. The history of Old Cole of Reading is promised, with one or two other items, in an entry at Stationers’ Hall of the 25th January, 1636–7. See my Bibl. Collections and Notes, 2nd Series, p. 56. The book itself is not known. Some inquiry took place in Notes and Queries many years ago on this subject; but it left the mattes very much as it had found it. It does not appear to me, on the whole, that the solution proposed by Allies (Antiquities of Worcestershire, 1856, p. 402) is of any practical value, as the phrase is clearly of earlier date.

Old custom without truth is but an old error.

Old dogs bark not for nothing.

Old enough to lie without doors.

Old fish and young flesh do feed men best. HE.
See a long note of examples in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xiii. 432. Chaucer recommends “old fish at table;” and see “Biography and Criticism,” 1860, p. 276, where it appears from the Liber Albus, 1419, that our ancestors preferred their fish “stale.”

Old fish, old oil, and an old friend are the best.

Old foxes want no tutors.

Old Harry and his wife.
Handfast Point, in Dorsetshire, and its pinnacles.

Old head and young hands. Somerset.

Old Lawrence has got holt on you. Northamptonshire.
Miss Baker’s North Gl., art. Lazy Lawrence. “Lawrence has got upon him.”—Wise’s New Forest, 1867, p. 174. The phrase appears to mean that a person has got into lazy, idle habits, from St. Lawrence being the patron of idlenesss. There is a chapbook entitled The History of Sir Lawrence Lazy, as old as the Restoration.

Old maids lead apes in hell.

Old man, when thou diest, give me thy doublet.

Old mares lust after new cruppers. R. 1670.

Old men and travellers may lie by authority.
Walker’s Parœm., 35. Il a beau mentir qui vient de loin. Fr. The Spaniards say, El viejo en su tierra, y el moço en la agena, mienten de una manera. Longas vias, longas mentiras. Port.—R.

Old men are twice children.
Awd men are twice bairns. Scot. Senex bis puer.
Walker’s Parœm., 19. [Greek]. And that not in respect of the mind only, but also of the body.—R.

Old men go to death, but death comes to young men.
Rather, as Mr. Howell hath it, “When they sport with young women.”—R.

Old men, when they scorn young, make much of death. H.

Old men will die, and children will soon forget.
This is, however, a Scotish proverb, or at least it occurs in an old ballad called Ane Complaint upon Fortoun, by Robert Sempill, printed about 1567 at Edinburgh.

Old muck-hills will bloom.

Old pottage is sooner heated than new-made.
Old lovers fallen out are sooner reconciled than new loves begun. Nay, the comedian saith, Amantium iræ amoris redintegratio est.—R.

Old praise dies unless you feed it. H.

Old reckonings breed new disputes.

Old Sarbut says so. Warwickshire.
A similar method or custom of ascribing a story, or referring for farther intelligence, was current in Yorkshire, where the authority behind the names was Brookes of Sheffield.

Old sin, new repentance. B. OF M. R.
“Olde sinne makes new shame.”—Havelok the Dane, l. 2461.

Old sores are hardly cured.

Old thanks pay not for a new debt.

Old wife’s fair [the second day of the fair]. Craven.

Old wine and an old friend are good provisions. H.

Old women’s gold is not ugly.

Old young and old long.
Diviene tosto vecchio, se vuole vivere lungamente vecchio. Ital. Maturè fias senex si diu senex esse velis. This is alleged as a proverb by Cicero in his book de Senectute. For as the body is preserved in health by moderate labour or exercise, so by violent and immoderate exertion it is impaired and worn out. And as a great excess of any quality, or external violence, doth suddenly destroy the body, so a lesser excess doth weaken and partially destroy it, by rendering it less lasting.—R.

Older and wiser.
Discipulus est prioris posterior dies. Senec. Nunquam ita quisquam benè subduetâ ratione ad vitam fuit, quin res, ࢶtas, usus semper aliquid apportet novi, &c.—Terent. [Greek].—R.

Oldham rough-heads, Boughton trotters, Smo’field cossacks, Heywood monkey-town. Lanc.

Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
’Tis distance lends enchantment to the view.

Omne malum ab aquilone.
This is called an old English adage in a letter from James Rither of Harewood to Lord Burleigh in 1588, quoted in Wright’s Elizabeth and her Times, ii. 377. It refers to the mischief which was always to be apprehended from the Scots before the Union. But see a French tract printed in 1628, and given by Fournier in the sixth volume of his Variétés Historiques et Literaires.

On a good bargain think twice. H.
New Help to Discourse, 1721, p. 134.

On Candlemas Day, if the sun shines clear,

the shepherd had rather see his wife on the bier.

Forby’s Vocabulary, 1830, p. 416.

On Candlemas Day throw candle and candlestick away.
Current in Somersetshire, according to Ray. “It is to be noted that from Candlemass the use of tapers at vespers and litanies, which prevailed throughout the winter, ceased until the ensuing All Hallowmass, and hence the origin of this time-worn English proverb. Candlemass candle-carrying remained in England till its abolition by an Order in Council in the second year of K. Edw. VI.”

On Candlemas Day

you must have half your straw and half your hay.

On Holy-rood Day the devil goes a-nutting. East Anglia.

On Lady Day the later / the cold comes over the water.

On Michaelmas Day the devil puts his foot upon the blackberries. N. AND Q.

On painting and fighting look aloof. H.

On Saturday new, on Sunday full,

was never good, and never wooll. East Anglia.

i.e., The new moon on Saturday, and full moon on Sunday, are unlucky. Forby’s Vocab., 417. Compare A Saturday moon, &c.

On Shrove Tuesday night, though thy supper be fat,

before Easter Day thou mayst fast for all that. Isle of Man.

On St. Distaff’s Day / neither work nor play. D.

On St. Luke’s Day the oxen have leave to play.

On St. Valentine,

all the birds of the air in couples do join.

On the first of April

you may send a gowk whither you will.

On the first of March / the crows begin to search. North.

On the first of November, if the weather holds clear,

an end of wheat-sowing do make for this year. D.

On the house-top in anger soon is a fool. DS.

On the third of April

comes in the cuckoo and the nightingale. D.

In Sussex, the 14th of April is supposed to be “first cuckoo day,” but, in fact, this bird is heard long before—as early as February in the present year (1905).

On the wrong side of the blanket.
Said of the birth of an illegitimate child.

On the wrong side of the ledger.
In debt.

On this hill a church shall be built,

and the name of it shall be called Winwick.

Higson’s MSS. Coll. for Droylsden, &c. There are several quasi-prophetic couplets of this description, applying to other localities. Mr. Higson gives the following traditionary verses in connection with this church; they embody what was at one time, at least, a local superstition:

On Thursday at three,

look out, and you’ll see

what Friday will be. S. Devon.

On Valentine’s Day

will a good goose lay;

if she be a good goose, her dame well to pay,

she will lay two eggs before Valentine’s Day. F.

Once a knave, always a knave.
Qui semel scurra nunquam paterfamilias. Cic. Orat. Aliquando qui lusit iterum ludet. The Spaniards say, La Vergüença, y la honra, la muger que la pierde nunca la cobra.—R.

Once a wood, then a sea, / now a moss, and e’er will be.
Higson’s MSS. Coll., No. 81. This refers to Pilling Moss, in Lancashire. See Manners and Customs of Westmoreland, p. 564. There is another saying: God’s grace and Pilling Moss are boundless. Chat Moss, near Warrington, used to be regarded as equally so, and as unlikely ever to be reclaimed; but some of it is now enclosed, and cultivated; and the railway passes over a portion. Compare Figuier, World before the Deluge, 1869, p. 232–3.

Once an use, and ever a custom. CL.

Once, and use it not.

Once at a coronation.

Once in a blue moon.
Mr. W. D. Sweeting, of Peterborough, observes in Notes and Queries:—“I have twice heard this expression used by educated persons in the sense referred to. ‘Once in a blue moon’ was used to mean ‘extremely seldom.’ The fathers of both these persons were born in Suffolk, and I think it must be an East Anglian phrase.”

Once in ten years one man hath need of another.

Once out and always out.

Once paid never craved.

Once warned, half-armed.
Lottery of 1567; Letters of Eminent Literary Men, Camd. Soc., p. 68.