One for Sorrow (11 page)

When the wind is blowing

in the north

No fisherman should set forth,

When the wind is blowing

in the east,

Tis not fit for man nor beast,

When the wind is blowing

in the south

It brings the food over the fish's

mouth,

When the wind is blowing

in the west,

That is when the fishing's best!

Or (in
The
Fisherman's Magazine
):

When the wind is in the north

The skilful angler goes not forth,

When the wind is in the south

It blows the bait in the fish's mouth,

When the wind is in the east

'Tis neither fit for man nor beast,

When the wind is in the west

Then it is the very best.

In western European seas, the first version of this verse illustrates what usually happens to fishing conditions in an area of low pressure. Easterly winds, often gusty and uncomfortably warm, dry, and dusty in summer and bitterly cold in winter, tend to pick up. Northerly winds around a ‘low' are cold and blustery, and demand great expertise and seamanship to navigate. In contrast, southerly winds usually bring warmth, which may increase the availability of food for fish and encourage feeding behaviour useful to fishermen. The best conditions, however, come with the west wind, which tends to persist, the weather remaining fair, clear, and settled. The verse conjures visions of intrepid seaman facing the hazards of Britain's famous offshore grounds: Viking, Dogger, Fisher, Wight. Yet English proverbs are as much beloved by American sportsmen who ply the waters of their continent somehow guided by the wisdom of their island-dwelling ancestors.
    The verse can also apply to less hazardous, more leisurely pursuits. H. Cholmondeley-Pennell writing in
The
Fisherman's Magazine and Review
in 1865 advises, ‘The success of the angler greatly depends on the state of the weather. The best time to go out is after rain; do not go out when the wind is blowing from the north or from the east, as it is the worst time. A good angler will do well to bear in mind the following well-known lines . . .'
    How felicitous that the best conditions for fishing are also best for a gentleman to sit beside an English stream in the peace and quiet of a long Victorian summer.

The essence of this encouraging proverb can be traced back to the fourteenth century, when the idea was expressed by Chaucer in
Troilus and Criseyde
in 1374

As an ook cometh of a litel spyr,

So through this lettre, which that she

him sente,

Encresen gan desyr, of which he

brente …

(‘Just as an oak comes from a little sapling, so Troilus's love [or burning desire] for Criseyde grew from the letter she had sent him
.
'
)

Chaucer's treatment of the phrase suggests that it was used allegorically from the outset to demonstrate the way in which significant things can grow from small, insubstantial ones. Oak trees were the perfect metaphorical tool for conveying this idea because they had special status in the woodlands of Britain; they were associated with the gods of ancient civilizations and were seen as the kings of the forest, and yet every country dweller would have known from childhood that they grew from acorns small enough to fall through a hole in their pockets.
    In the early 1700s Lewis Duncombe (1711-1730) translated – or interpreted – the Latin tag ‘
De minumus maxima
' (‘out of little [comes] great') as ‘The lofty oak from a small acorn grows', and in 1732 the proverb appeared in Thomas Fuller's
Gnomologia
as:

The greatest Oaks have been little

Acorns.

In 1797 the American newspaper proprietor and poet David Everett wrote a rhyming speech to be recited by a child at a school presentation in a version closer to the one we use today:

Large streams from little fountains

flow,

Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

Another old proverb about the oak strikes a cautionary note: ‘A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall'. Such an event would have been observed by many – and it was the subject of one of Æsop's fables, in which a great oak is uprooted by the wind and thrown down among some reeds. It asks them how they, so light and weak, are not broken by the wind, to which they reply, ‘You fight and contend with the wind, and consequently you are destroyed; while we on the contrary bend before the least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken, and escape.'

   

It sounds an unlikely thing for anyone to do in this day and age, but the
medieval marketplace was full of traders touting their livestock, and for subsistence-level farmers transporting goods in a poke (bag or sack in
modern English), was often the only way they could get their wares to town. This phrase is a reference to the less scrupulous among them who would claim that their bag held a fresh suckling pig when in fact what was inside was a long way past its best, or worse still, not a pig at all. Versions of this phrase from other parts of Europe reveal that sometimes the worthless body of a dog or cat would be substituted; in French, Danish, German and Polish, the phrase translates as ‘Don't buy a cat in a sack', while in Spain the warning is even more blunt:
‘Hay gato encerrado'
, meaning simply ‘There is a cat stuck inside.'
    The phrase became a warning not to fall foul of a conman in the marketplace and appeared in John Heywood's
Epigrammes
in 1555 as:

I will neuer bye the pyg in the poke: 
Thers many a foule pyg in a feyre
cloke.

Later the proverb was applied to transactions of all kinds and cautioned people to make sure they knew exactly what they were getting in return for their cash. In other words,
caveat emptor
, to use the Latin maxim – ‘let the buyer beware'. These days we sometimes use the phrase retrospectively, perhaps saying that a business venture that wasn't all it was cracked up to be ‘turned out to be a pig in a poke'.

   

This seventeenth-century adage applies the wisdom of the experienced country cook to the challenges presented by life in general. It suggests that just as a pudding must be tasted before it can be declared good, any course of action can only be judged a success once it has been carried out.
    It first appeared in print as ‘All the proof of a pudding is in the eating,' in William Camden's 
Remaines of a Greater Worke Concerning Britaine
 (third edition, 1623), which was a miscellaneous collection of facts, homilies and historical titbits left over from Camden's
Britannia
, his more scholarly study of the British Isles and Ireland.
    In Camden's day of course, the ‘pudding' in question would have been a more savoury affair than the sweet treats we now associate with the word. Medieval puddings were usually made by stuffing the stomach (or intestine) of a sheep or pig with suet, minced meat, oatmeal and a selection of spices, tying the ends together and boiling it. Traditionally prepared haggis is the only true pudding to have survived from the Middle Ages.
    These days we sometimes use a sort of mis-abbreviated version of the phrase ‘the proof is in the pudding', which misinterprets the meaning of the word proof in the original, where it is synonymous with ‘test' rather than ‘evidence', as version implies. The gist is the same as it ever was though: experience is the only way to judge anything.

A rainbow in the eastern sky, the morrow will be fine and dry. A rainbow in the west that gleams, rain tomorrow falls in streams. 

Most weather lore was based on observation of the plants, animals, clouds and weathervanes that were commonplace in the lives of rural people, so the rare appearance of a rainbow, which many people interpreted as a representation of the divine, was greeted with reverence and respect. In Greek and Norse mythology the rainbow was believed to be a bridge connecting heaven and earth, while, according to the Bible, it was a reminder of God's promise to Noah that he would never send another flood to destroy life on earth.
    Seen in these terms, the sight of a rainbow would have been comforting whatever part of the sky it appeared in, but in their endless struggle to yield a good harvest in the face of the fickle weather, medieval farmers used any sign they could to predict the weather and this method was a good one.
    Rainbows are formed by sunlight refracting through droplets of water in the air and are always seen in the section of sky opposite the sun, so in the morning, as the sun rises in the east, a rainbow might appear if there were water droplets in the western sky, while in the evening, as the sun sets in the west, a rainbow in the eastern sky would signify rain clouds in the east. Since stormy weather systems move from west to east in the northern hemisphere anything we see in the west is usually heading our way, while anything in the east is usually on its way out. These days a shorter rhyme is often recited: ‘Rainbow in the morning, need for a warning.'

   

You might be forgiven for thinking that this sixteenth-century adage (sometimes rendered ‘A slice off a cut loaf isn't missed') was a lesson in charitable giving – encouragement perhaps to spare some of your bread for a needy neighbour, but you'd be wrong. It is in fact at its most savoury, a reference to petty theft, and at its least, to the perceived moral acceptability of sleeping with a woman who is already in a relationship, likening the loss of her virginity to a cut that has already been made in a loaf.
    It can be found in Shakespeare's first and most gruesomely violent tragedy
Titus Andronicus
, which told the story of the fictional Roman General Titus and a terrible cycle of revenge he played out with his rival Tamora. Tamora's sons Demitrius and Chiron plot to rape Titus's daughter Lavinia, who is already promised to another man and Demitrius justifies their plans by saying:

What, man! more water glideth

by the mill

Than wots [knows] the miller of;

and easy it is

Of a cut loaf to steal a shive [slice].

Both John Clarke in his
Parœmiologia
(1639) and Thomas Fuller in
Gnomologia
(1732) cite the adage as it being ‘
safe
taking a' shive/slice ‘of a cut loaf, which smacks strongly of petty criminal intent'. In Ulster the phrase
‘
A slice aff a cut loaf's nivver miss'd' meant that it was OK to steal something that had already been started, and the Scottish phrase
‘
A whang aff a new cut kebbuck [cheese] is ne'er miss'd,' was used in the same way. We also now use the phrase retrospectively when something already sub-standard has been damaged further, like when a car that's unlikely to pass its MOT takes a knock in a traffic accident.