One for Sorrow (4 page)

This saying appeared as ‘When the well's dry, we know the worth of water' in American statesman Benjamin Franklin's annual pamphlet
Poor Richard's Almanack
in 1746, leading many people to mistakenly believe that he coined the phrase. In fact, though Franklin's Almanacs do contain many original observations, they also feature lists of established proverbs with which his readers would already have been familiar. This one had been in use for at least a century by the time Franklin recorded it. A Scottish source is likely since the earliest printed version can be found in James Carmichaell's
Proverbs in Scots
, which was published in 1628:

Manie wats not quhairof the wel sauris quhill it fall drie.
(Many notice nothing of how the
well tastes until it falls dry.)

By 1659 the phrase had made its way south of the border and appeared in James Howell's
Paramoigraphy
(Proverbs). With some English modifications it had become:

Of the Well we see no want, till either dry, or Water skant.

And in 1732 it was included in the physician Thomas Fuller's
Gnomologia
: ‘We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.'
    The different forms of words do nothing to alter the lesson the phrase teaches, which is to be grateful for all that we have, since we often take the sources of our sustenance for granted until they are suddenly removed and their true value becomes evident.

   

This proverb may be most recognizable to today's readers as a song lyric; it appears in Bob Dylan's ‘Meet Me in the Morning', along with a number of American folksongs, and is the title of the Stanley Brothers country ballad made famous by Emmy-Lou Harris.
    It appears to have been printed for the first time in 1650 in
A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine and the Confines Thereof –
a book on biblical history by the English author and churchman Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), which includes the line:

It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.

Fuller was a contemporary of Milton and a theologian, but there is no suggestion that this phrase comes from religious texts. Its origins may in fact be in Gaelic mythology, which often wasn't recorded until long after it had become folklore. In 1858 Irish painter and songwriter Samuel Lover, who wrote two books on rural life in Ireland, noted in his
Songs and Ballads
of 1839:

There is a beautiful saying amongst the Irish peasantry to inspire hope under adverse circumstances: ‘Remember
,
' they say, ‘that the darkest hour of all, is the hour before day.'

Unlike many country proverbs there is no scientific foundation for the phrase when it's taken literally – darkness doesn't intensify in the hour before the sunrise, though in contrast to daybreak it may have seemed as if it did. When taken metaphorically, however, it is little more than a truism – when matters cannot get any worse – any darker – they have to start getting better. We still use the phrase to encourage optimism in times of hardship or to comfort people who are in despair.

Though its exact provenance is unknown, this phrase is believed to have its roots in early Rome since it existed first in Latin.
The original version reads:

Dum felis dormit, mus gaudet et exsilit antro.
(‘When the cat falls asleep, the mouse rejoices and leaps from the hole
.
'
)

In early fourteenth-century France the rat had displaced the mouse: ‘
Ou chat na rat regne
' – ‘Where there is no cat, the rat is king.' This version gives the best clue to the original meaning, which referred to the rebellious behaviour of the people when their king or ruler was absent for too long.
(The mice danced back for the modern French version:
‘
Quand le chat n'est pas là, les souris dansent
'.)
    The saying existed in English round about 1470, collected in the eighteenth-century
Harleian Miscellany or, A Collection of Scarce, Curious, And Entertaining Pamphlets And Tracts …
: ‘The mows lordchypythe [rules] ther a cat ys nawt,' meaning that people will misbehave if rules and leadership are lacking.
    By the time the Jacobean playwright Thomas Heywood's domestic tragedy
A Woman Killed with Kindness
was printed in 1607, it was an established enough phrase for him to write: ‘There's an old prouerbe, when the cats away, the mouse may play.'
    Heywood's play was about adultery and in the context of his story of a husband's betrayal by his guest and his wife, the phrase referred to infidelity behind the back of the master of the house. This is the way the phrase is often used today.

   

A sixteenth-century proverb advocating action while circumstances are favourable, or seizing an opportunity. It appeared in John Heywood's 
Dialogue of Proverbs
in 1546 as part of the following rhyming couplet:

Whan the sunne shynth make hey.
Whiche is to say.
Take time whan time cometh, lest
    time steale away.

The phrase appears as ‘Yt is well therefore to make hay while the sunne shines' in a 1583 novel,
Philotimus: The Warre between Nature and Fortune
, by Brian Melbancke.
    There's no evidence of an earlier version of this phrase existing in other languages so it is thought to be a home-grown homily originating from medieval farming lore. Hay is made from cut grasses which had to be dried in the fields before they could be baled and stored as animal feed. Dry weather was crucial for a good yield since wet weather could cause the grasses to rot before they were dry enough to store. Using medieval tools, harvesting the hay took several days and predicting the weather several days ahead was almost impossible so farmers had to take the first opportunity available to them.
    The phrase is likely to have been used metaphorically from the outset and this was certainly the case by 1673, when Richard Head published his glossary of the language of thieves and rogues Th
e Canting Academy
, and included the line
:

She . . . was resolv'd . . . to make Hay whilest the Sun shin'd.

We still use the phrase as a call to act while you can (
‘while the iron's hot'
) , though it can also now refer more explicitly to having fun while you have the chance. There is a reminder of mortality too in its echo of Horace's
carpe diem
(‘seize the day').

   

This sixteenth-century caution against hypocrisy has its origins in the kitchens of the late Middle Ages. Food was cooked over an open fire and in order that they could withstand the intense heat, pots, kettles and other cooking utensils were all made from the same durable metal – cast iron, which turns black with use. A pot that called a kettle black would therefore be making a criticism that applied equally to itself.
    Exactly when this phrase first came into use is difficult to pinpoint but by 1620, when Thomas Shelton translated Cervantes's masterpiece
Don Quixote
, a slightly different version was well known enough to allow him this reference:

You are like what is said that the frying-pan said to the kettle,

‘Avant, black-browes'.

By the end of the seventeenth century the frying pan had been replaced by the pot and in 1693 William Penn, the founder of the state of Pennsylvania, included the saying in the form we still use today in his collection of maxims,
Some Fruits of Solitude
.

For a Covetous Man to inveigh against Prodigality, is for the Pot to call the Kettle black.

An early dictionary of English slang,
A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew
, compiled by ‘B. E.' and published in London around 1698, has a more trenchant version:

‘The Pot calls the kettle black A–', when one accuses another of what he is as Deep in himself.

These days the phrase, or sometimes the snappier ‘Pot, kettle, black', is still in regular use as a chastisement when people pick on someone for a character trait that they share or a mistake that they have been guilty of themselves.

   

This is a Middle English homily that has been around since the mid-thirteenth century when it appeared in a collection of wise words called
The Proverbs of Hendyng
as: ‘Brend child fuir fordredeth.'
    The sixteenth-century English writer John Lyly used the phrase in his 1580 work
Euphues and His England
:

A burnt childe dreadeth the fire . . . Thou mayst happely forsweare thy selfe, but thou shalt neuer delude me. 

The message is clear: a person becomes distrustful of something that – or someone who – has harmed them. In the Middle Ages people lived in close proximity to fire as it was the only source of heat and light available. A well-managed fire used for cooking and warmth was certainly something to take care around but not usually something to dread. A young child, however, might be attracted to the flames and, unaware that fire burns, reach out for them.
    Around the same time, a similar French proverb, ‘
chat
éc
haudé
cr
aint l
'
ea
u f
r
oide'
(the scalded cat fears cold water) was translated into English, appearing in 1732 in Thomas Fuller's
Gnomologia
as ‘Scalded Cats fear even cold Water', reminding us that the dread might be excessive, perhaps to the point of being wholly irrational.
    An early adage carrying the same message is to be found in Æsop's fable about the Cat and the Mice, translated by William Caxton in 1484: ‘He that hath ben ones begyled by somme other ought to kepe hym wel fro(m) the same.'
    ‘Once bitten, twice shy' is a rather more succinct way of putting it. It first appeared in this form in
Folk Phrases of Four Counties
by G. G. Northall, published in 1894, and remains in frequent use.
    This maxim has a similar domestic tone as the cautions about burnt children and scalded cats: keep away from fire, hot water and fierce animals . . . there is much to be wary of in life.