W.C. Hazlitt, comp. English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases. 1907.
Rebuke with to She will stay
Rebuke with soft words and hard arguments.
Rebukes ought not to have a grain more of salt than of sugar.
Recipe, scribe; scribe, solve.
A good rule for stewards.—R.
Reckon right, and February hath one-and-thirty days.
Reckoners without their host must reckon twice.
Red as a roost-cock. S. Devon.
Red lane.
The throat. In Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister we get “the lane” in the same sense.
Red veal and white bacon.
See Skeat’s ed. of Pegge’s Kenticisms, p. 73. White bacon is pickled pork.
Refuse a wife with one fault and take one with two.
Regal honours have regal cares.
Rejoice, Shrovetide, to-day, for to-morrow you’ll be Ashes.
Religion is the best armour, but the worst cloak.
Remove an old tree, and it will wither to death.
This is one of those dicta which modern horticultural experience and appliances have rendered comparatively obsolete.
Reputation is commonly measured by the acre.
Reputation serves to virtue as light does to a picture.
Reserve the master-blow.
Respect a man, he will do the more.
Rest and success are fellows.
Lith and selthe felawes are—Havelok the Dane, ed. Skeat, line 1338.
Revenge in cold blood is the devil’s own act and deed.
Revenge is sweet.
Reynard is still Reynard, though he put on a cowl.
The French call the fox M. L’Escobar = Slyboots.
Rich men have no faults.
Rich men may have what they will.
Rich men may do all point [de]vice.
Rich men’s spots are covered with money.
Riches abuse them / who know not how to use them.
Riches are but the baggage of fortune.
Riches are like muck, which stink in a heap, but, spread abroad, make the earth fruitful.
Riches bring oft harm and ever fear.
Riches follow the Staple.
“The Merchants of the Staple,” by the Rev. W. H. Jones, about 1825, p. 19. The saying arose from the wealth acquired in the wool trade.
Riches have made more men covetous than covetousness hath made men rich.
Riches have wings.
Riches rule the roost.
Riches serve a wise man but command a fool.
Ride a horse and a mare on the shoulders, an ass and a mule on the buttocks.
Ride softly, that we may come sooner home.
Ride who will, the mare is shod.
Schole-house of Women, 1541 (in Hazlitt’s Popular Poetry, iv. 127):—
Right coral calls for no colouring.
Right, master, right; four nobles a year is a crown a quarter.
Right mixture makes good mortar.
Right, Roger; your sow’s good mutton.
A remark addressed to some one who insists on an absurd proposition.
Right wrongs no man.
Ringwood.
“—for fear they should walk (like Sir Actæon the Cuckold) with Ringwood at their heels.”—Ten Poetical Love Stories, 1684, Preface.
Rivers need a spring.
Robbing the barn.
The good wife sometimes does this to pay for extra finery.
Robin Goodfellow has been with you to-night.
Or him, or them, as the case may be. Harman’s Caveat, 1567. The expression is used to a person who has had an unpleasant visit of any kind.
Robin Goodfellow was a strange man.
Robin Hood could bear any wind but a thaw wind. Lanc.
Robin Hood’s choice: this or nothing.
Vox Graculi, 1623. Mr. Collier (Bibl. Cat., ii. 482) considers it likely that this is older than Hobson’s choice, and the original saying; but the point is doubtful. We do not find Robin Hood’s choice in any very early work, I think. Hobson the carrier was a noted person long before 1623.
Robin Hood’s hatband.
The common club-moss.
Robin Hood’s pennyworths.
This may be used in a double sense; either he sells things for half their worth.—Robin Hood afforded rich pennyworths of his plundered goods: or he buys things at what price he pleases: the owners were glad to get anything of Robin Hood, who otherwise would have taken their goods for nothing.—R. A lady once informed me, that a friend of hers had a receipt given by Rob Roy; but I expressed a doubt of its authenticity.
Robin’s cushion.
An abnormal outgrowth from a rosebud.
Roma semel quantum / bis dat Menevia tantum.
See my Faiths and Folklore, 1905, p. 169.
Rome was not built in one day.
Tarlton’s Newes out of Purgatorie (1590). No se ganó Zamora en una hora. Span. Rome n’a esté basti tout en un jour. Fr. And, Grand bien ne vient pas en peu d’heures. A great state is not gotten in a few hours. De un solo golpe no se derrueca un roble. Span.—R. Rom er ikke bygget paa een Dag.—Dan.
Room for cuckolds.
Rough, as it runs, as the boy said when his ass kicked him.
Row the boat, Norman, row.
Skelton’s Bowge of Courte (circa 1500), and see Mr. Dyce’s note, and Stow’s Survey, ed. 1633, p. 567. It seems that Sir John Norman, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1453, was the first who went in a barge to Westminster. See Arundel’s City Companies, 1869, and Herbert’s Twelve Great Livery Companies, 1836, i. 100.
Rub a scald horse on the gall, and he’ll wince.
Schole-house of Women, 1541 (in Hazlitt, P. Poetr., iv. 145).
Rub and a great cast.
Freeman’s Epigrams, 1614. Be not too lusty, and you’ll spend the better.—R.
Rule lust, temper the tongue, and bridle the belly.
Rumbald whiting. Kent.
Skeat’s ed. of Pegge’s Kenticisms, 89.
Rumour sticks long by the ribs.
Run, tap; run, tapster.
This is said of a tapster that drinks so much himself, and is so free of his drink to others, that he is fain to run away.—R.
Rutland Raddleman.
That is, perchance, Reddleman, a trade, and that a poor one only, in this county, whence men bring on their backs a pack of red stones or ochre, which they sell to the neighbouring counties for the marking of sheep.—R.
Rutlandshire.
I record this as I find it, evidently introduced in a proverbial sense, in Wit at Several Weapons (Dyce’s Beaum. and Fl., iv. 45), in the same way as Bedfordshire, Berkshire (Bark-shire), &c. But the drift is not particularly clear to me, so far as the passage referred to is concerned. Sir Gregory is supposed to be interrogating a musician:
Rynt [aroint] you, witch! quoth Bessie Lockit to her mother.
The phrase in Shakespeare, “Aroint thee, witch!” is said to have been derived from an entry in the borough records of Stratford. See Hazlitt’s Shakespear: Himself and his Work, 1903, p. 128.
Sadness and gladness succeed each other.
Saffron Walden, God help me!
It appears from a statement in N. and Q., 1st S., iii. 167, that the beggars who move into Suffolk to try their luck, after having been at Saffron Walden, are accustomed to use this expression, the town in question not generally yielding profitable returns, probably.
Said the chevin to the trout, / my head’s worth all thy bouk.
The chevin is the chub; bouk = bulk, body.
Sail, quoth the king; hold, saith the wind.
Saith Solomon the wise, / a good wife’s a good prize.
Salisbury plain / is seldom without a thief or twain.
Salt cooks bear blame, / but fresh bear shame.
Salt eel.
An expression used aboard ship for a flogging, and also formerly understood in the same sense on land. It is also the name of a game similar to hide and seek.
Samson was a strong man, yet could not pay money before he had it.
Sat cito, si sat bene.
Save a man from his friends, and leave him to struggle with his enemies.
Save a thief from the gallows, and he’ll be the first to shew thee the way to St. Giles’s.
Nash’s Christs Teares over Jerusalem, 1593. See also Heywood’s second part of Q. Eliz. Tr., 1606, repr. 140. The earliest work in which I recollect to have seen this saying referred to is The Book of the Knight de la Tour-Laundry, written in 1371–2, and edited by Wright from Harl. MS. for the E. E. Text Society: “Wherfore in token and signe of a grete merueyll, they blossyd them with theyr handes, sayeng, ‘He is wel a foole that saueth and respyteth ony theef fro the galhows.’”—Cap. 141.
Save at the spiggot and let out at the bunghole.
Save me from my friends!
Save something for the man that rides on the white horse.
For old age, wherein the head grows white. It is a somewhat harsh metaphor to compare age to a horse.—R.
Saving is getting.
Saving your presence.
Saving your reverence.
An apologetic expression when anything is said, supposed to hurt the sensibility of the person addressed or of some one present.
Sawtrey by the way, / now a grange, that was an abbey. Kent.
Kempe’s Loseley MSS., 212. Lottery of 1567.
Say nay, and take it.
No qulero, no quiero, mas echad melo en la capillo.—Span.
Say no ill of the year till it be past.
Say nothing, but think the more, like the Frenchman’s jackdaw.
Comp. Though he says nothing infra.
Say nothing of my debts unless you mean to pay them.
Say nothing when you are dead.
Be silent.—R.
Say still no, an’ ye’ll ne’er be married.
Say well or be still.
Skelton’s Works, ed. Dyce, i. 17. He calls it A proverbe of old.
Say you saw it not.
Saying and doing are two things.
Du dire au fait il y a grand trait. Fr. Presonar vino y vender vinagre. Span.—R.
Scalded cats fear even cold water.
Scandal will rub out like dirt when it is dry.
Scanderbeg’s sword must have Scanderbeg’s arm.
Scatter with one hand, gather with two.
Sceptres and suitors hate competitors.
Schoolboys are the most reasonable people in the world; they care not how little they have for their money.
School-butter.
i.e., A flogging. Pasquils Jests, 1604, repr. 1864, p. 24.
Scorn at first makes after-love the more.
Scorning is catching.
He that scorns any condition, action, or employment, may come to be, nay, often is, driven upon it himself. Some word it thus: Hanging’s stretching; / mocking’s catching.—R.
Scot-free.
Scotsmen reckon ay frae an ill hour.
Search not a wound too deep, lest thou make a new one.
Second thoughts are best.
See for your love, buy for your money.
See me and see me not.
Seeing is believing.
Seek love and it will shun you: haste away, and ’twill outrun you.
Seek not to reform every one’s dial by your own watch.
Seek till you find, and you’ll not lose your labour.
Seek your salve where you got your sore.
Seldom cometh the better.
Title of a ballad in Roxburghe Collection. B. M. Cat., p. 19. But in Douce’s Illustrations of Shakespeare a passage is quoted from a MS. collection of stories said to be about the time of Henry III., in which it occurs. Douce introduces this to illustrate a place in Richard III., act ii. scene 3.
“Vincent.This chaunge (wherof I meane), is like to the rest of worldly chaunges, that is, from the better to the worse: For as the Prouerbe sayth: Seldome coms the better.”—English Courtier and Countrey Gentleman, 1586, sign. B. It occurs also in the Two Angrie Women of Abington, 1599, edit. Dyce, p. 43. “The olde Prouerbe is verefied, Seldome comes the better: and they [rich landlords] are possest: the poore, of that comfort dispossest.”—Chettle’s Kind-Harts Dream (1592), p. 68 of New Shakesp. Soc. repr.
Seldom lies the devil dead by the gate.
Towneley Mysteries, 104. The Scots say, by the dyke-side. The more modern form, quoted by Ray and his followers is, Seldome lies the devil dead in a ditch. “We are not to trust the devil or his children, though they seem never so gentle or harmless, without all power or will to hurt. The ancients, in a proverbial hyperbole, said of a woman, Mulieri ne credas ne mortuæ quidem; because you might have good reason to suspect that she feigned: we may with more reason say the like of the devil, and diabolical persons, when they seem most mortified. Perchance this proverb may allude to the fable of the fox, which escaped by feigning himself dead. I know no phrase more frequent in the mouths of the French and Italians than this, The devil is dead; to signify that a difficulty is almost conquered, a journey almost finished, or, as we say, The neck of the business is broken.”—R.
Seldom mosseth the marble stone / that men oft tread [upon].
Piers Ploughman, text A, Passus x. l. 101 (ed. Skeat). Compare A rolling stone, &c.
Seldom rides tyne the spurs.
Seldom seen, soon forgotten.
Zelde y-sey[char.]e, sone for[char.]ete.—MS. of 15th century, cited in Retrosp. Rev., 3rd S., ii. 309
Self do, self have.
Gothamite Tales, circa 1540. ed. 1630, No. 12. Gosson’s Schoole of Abuse, 1579. Tell Trothes New Yeares Gift, 1593, repr. 7.
Self-love is a mote in every man’s eye.
Self-praise is no recommendation.
Sell not the bear’s skin before you have caught him.
New Help to Discourse, 1721, p. 134. This is not an English proverb, however. “Non vender la pelle del orso inanzi che sia preso. Ital.”—R.
Send a fool to the market, and a fool he will return again.
The Italians say, Chi bestia va à Roma bestia ritorna. He that goes a beast to Rome, returns thence a beast. Change of places changes not men’s minds or manners. Cœlum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt.—R.
Send a wise man of an errand, and say nothing to him.
Accenna al savio e lascia far a lui. Ital.—R.
Send not a cat for lard.
Send not for a hatchet to break open an egg with.
Send not to market for trouble.
Send verdingales to Broad-gates in Oxford.
For they were so great, that the wearers could not enter (except going sidelong) at any ordinary door. Though they have been long disused in England, yet the fashion of them is well enough known. They are used still by the Spanish women, and the Italians living under the Spanish dominion.—R. See Oxoniana, iii. 244. Farthingale is a corrupt form of verdingale, itself corrupted from verdugale or verdugade, from verdugo, Span. for a twig or shoot. The older French form was verdugade, the modern, vertugadin, which is as far from the source as our farthingale. I owe the substance of this note to my learned acquaintance, the late Mr. Michael Kerney. See in Anciennes Poesies Françoises, 1855, ii. 150, “La Complainte de Monsieur le Cul contre les inventeurs des vertugales.”
Send your noble blood to market and see what it will buy.
September, blow soft / till the fruit’s in the loft.
Serpents engender in still waters.
See N. and Q., 1st S., viii. 586–7.
Servants should put on patience when they put on a livery.
Service is no hermitage.
History of George a Green, ed. 1706, repr. Thoms, p. 9.
Service is no inheritance.
This saying probably arose at the period when the old race of servingmen began to decline in this country, and to lose its ancient social status, transmissible from father to son; this subject may be found treated at length in Inedited Tracts (Roxb. Lib. 1868).
Serving one’s own passions is the greatest slavery.
Set a beggar on horseback, and he will gallop.
Greene’s Orpharion, 1599. We now more usually say,—will ride to the devil. “Asperius nihil est humili, cùm surgit in altum. Claudian. Il n’est orgueil que de pauvre enrichi. Fr. Il villano nobilitato non conocsce parentato. Ital.”—R.
Set a cow to catch a hare.
Set a fool to roast eggs, and a wise man to eat them.
Set a herring to catch a whale, or a sprat to catch a herring.
Said of a gift or service offered in the hope of getting something better.
Set a thief to take a thief.
Some say, Set a fool to catch a fool.—R.
Set hard heart against hard hap.
Tu ne cede malis, sed contrà audentior ito. In re malà, animo si bono utare, adjuvat.—R.
Set not your house on fire to be revenged of the moon.
Set not your loaf in till the oven’s hot.
Set that down on the back side o’ your count book.
Set the hare’s head against the goose giblet.
i.e., Balance things, set one against another.—R. Field’s Amends for Ladies, 1618 (Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xi. 104).
Set the saddle on the right horse.
Set trees at Alhallo’n-tide, and command them to prosper; set them after Candlemas, and entreat them to grow.
This Dr. Beal allegeth as an old English and Welsh proverb concerning apple and pear trees, oak and hawthorn quicks; though he is of Mr. Reed’s opinion, that it is best to remove fruit trees in the spring, rather than the winter. Philosoph. Transac., N. 71.—R.
Set trees poor and they will grow rich; set them rich and they will grow poor.
Remove them always out of a more barren into a fatter soil.—R. This much depends on the sort of tree.
Setcha has but thirteen houses and fourteen cuckolds.
Setcha is near Wisbeach. Thoresby’s Diary, under 1680.
Seven hours’ sleep will make the husbandman forget his design.
Seven may be company, but nine are confusion.
Shake a bridle over a Yorkshireman’s grave, and he’ll rise and steal a horse.
A saying directed against the propensity of the Yorkshire folks for stealing horses. The two Ridings were formerly celebrated for horse-breeding and horse-stealing; the horses from the Cleveland country always made a prominent figure at the C’Leger (St. Leger) at Doncaster. A man once related that he had put a horse into a meadow over-night, where the grass was quite short, and in the morning, nothing was to be seen of him but his head. Ah! said some one else, if that had been in Yorkshire, you would have seen nothing at all of him. In 1735 Henry Carey’s ballad-opera of The Wonder: An Honest Yorkshireman, was produced; it doubtless owed its existence and success to this popular persuasion respecting the Spartan proclivities of the natives of the Ridings.
Shake the kettle and it’ll sing.
Shall the goslings teach the goose to swim?
Shallow streams make most din.
This saying is quoted in Eugenias Teares for Great Brittaynes Distractions, by E[dward] R[eynolds], 1642, p. 22. As a matter of course, rivers or rivulets which have no great depth, or as they approach a fall, are more noisy than where the volume of water is considerable. The figure is old enough; we have all heard of the brawling brook.
Shame in a kindred cannot be avoided.
Shame take him that shame thinketh.
Merely the French Honi soit, &c.
Shameful craving must have shameful nay.
A bon demandeur bon refuseur. Fr.—R.
Share and share alike; some all, some never a whit.
Share not pears with your master either in jest or in earnest.
Sharp stomachs make short devotion.
Sharp’s the word.
Vade mecum for Malt-Worms, 1720, p. 28.
She can cackle like a cadowe.
Marriage of Wit and Wisdom (circa 1570). A cadowe is a jackdaw.
She can laugh and cry both in a wind.
She cannot leap an inch from a slut.
She chops logic.
She-devils are hard to turn.
Booke of Robin Conscience (circa 1550), in Hazlitt’s Pop. Poetry, iii.
She gars me a look that would, spen (wean) a foal. Irish.
She had rather kiss than spin.
She has been stung by a serpent.
i.e., She is with child. E stata beccata da una serpe. Ital.—R.
She has broken her pipkin.
She has given him turnips. Devonshire.
i.e., Jilted him.
She has less beauty than her picture, and truly not much more wit.
She hath a mark after her mother.
That is, she is her mother’s own daughter.
She hath been at London to call a strea a straw, and a waw a wall. Cheshire.
This the common people use in scorn of those who, having been at London, are ashamed to speak their own country dialect.—R.
She hath broken her elbow at the church-door. Cheshire.
Spoken of a housewifely maid that grows idle after marriage.—R.
She hath broken her leg above the knee.
This phrase is still applied to a woman who has gone astray, and who is said to have “broken her knees.”
She hath eaten a snake.
“And therefore hath it growen to a prouerb in Italy, when one seeth a woman striken in age to looke amiable, he saith she hath eaten a snake.” Lyly’s Euph. and his Engl., 1580, repr. Arber, 368. Snakes, in fact, in common with reptiles which lie dormant during certain periods, and are usually sluggish in their habits, attain a great age. As regards ophiophagy, there are several varieties which devour their own species, besides the Ophiophagus proper. A Latin axiom says, Serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco—where the dragon of antiquity, not that of our modern naturalists, is intended.
She hath given Lawton gate a clap. Cheshire.
Spoken of one got with child, and going to London to conceal it. Lawton is in the way to London from several parts of Cheshire.—R.
She hath one point of a good hawk: she is hardy.
She hath other tow on her distaff.
She holds up her head like a hen drinking water.
She is as crusty as that is hard-baked. Somerset.
One that is surly, and loth to do anything.—R.
She is as quiet as a wasp in one’s nose.
She is at her last prayers.
She is like a Waterford heifer, beef to the heels.
“Beef to the heels, like a Mullingar heifer” is the way I have always heard Irishmen describe a thick ankled woman, and it is perhaps better metre than the version you give.—R. H. Vose.
She is neither wife, widow, nor maid.
She is past dying of her first child.
i.e., She hath had a bastard.—R.
She is quite an Amy Florence. Northamptonshire.
Miss Baker’s North. Gloss., art. A. F. It used to be a current expression.
She lies backward, and lets out her fore rooms.
“One asked a gentlewoman in which part of the house she did use to lye. It was answer’d, that she lay backwards, and did let out her fore-roomes.”—Chamberlaine’s Conceits, Clinches, Flashes, and Whimzies, 1639, No. 278.
She lives by love, and lumps in corners.
She looked on me as a cow on a bastard calf. Somerset.
She looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth.
She loves the poor well, but cannot abide beggars. Somerset.
She plays the whore for apples, and then bestows them upon the sick.
She sees none till far in the day, and then she sees none at all. Irish.
She simpers as a mare when she eats thistles.
She simpers like a furmity-kettle [or a riven dish].
She spins well that breeds her children.
She stamps like an ewe upon yeaning. Somerset.
She that gazes much spins not much.
She that hath an ill husband shows it in her dress.
She that hath spice enough may season as she likes.
She that is a widow is a lady. Kent.
Skeat’s ed. of Pegge’s Kenticisms, 98–9, from the Queenborough Statute Book,
She that is ashamed to eat at table eats in private.
She that marries ill never wants something to say for it.
She was a neat dame that washed the ass’s face.
This is the occupation of one of Queen Whin’s officers in Rabelais, v. 22.
She was so hungry she could not stay for the parson to say grace.
She wears the breeches.
She who is born handsome is born married.
Or, she who is born a beauty is half married. Che nasce bella nasce maritata. Ital.—R.
She will as soon part with the cook as with the porridge.
She will scold the devil out of a haunted house.
She will stay at home, perhaps, if her leg be broke.