One for Sorrow (2 page)

One for sorrow

Two for joy

Three for a girl

Four for a boy

Five for silver

Six for gold

Seven for a secret never to be told.

This well-known rhyme has been around since the mid-nineteenth century when the number of magpies seen foraging together was regarded as forecaster of future events. Interestingly, everybody knows what bird is meant (usually the magpie, but in some parts of the world where magpies are rarely if ever seen, crows or other corvids) – though no kind of bird at all is mentioned in the rhyme.
    As with many proverbs passed down in the oral tradition there are numerous regional variations; in Ireland and the US the most commonly recited version goes:

One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a funeral
Four for a birth
Five for heaven
Six for hell
Seven's the Devil his own self.

In Manchester the rhyme has additional lines: ‘Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss, Ten for a surprise you should be careful not to miss, Eleven for health, Twelve for wealth, Thirteen beware it's the devil himself.'
    Common to all the versions is the notion that a lone magpie is a harbinger of sorrow and therefore unlucky. The bird's bad reputation may stem from its behaviour; it is known for stealing shiny objects and for killing other birds' chicks to feed its own, but it seems more likely that the superstitions that surround it have their roots in folklore. British legend has it that the magpie was the only bird not to sing to comfort Jesus as he suffered on the cross, while in Scotland the bird was believed to hold a drop of the devil's blood under its tongue. If you do see a solitary magpie though you can ward off bad luck by saluting, spitting over your shoulder three times, doffing your hat or saying, ‘Morning, Mr Magpie, how are you this fine day?' Alternatively, you could say ‘Good morning, Mr Magpie, how's your wife?' (in the hope that the bird's mate is hiding somewhere near by to turn your sorrow into joy).
    Somewhat sounder is the proverb ‘A single magpie in spring foul weather will bring', from the birds' habit of feeding together only in fine weather.

This sixteenth-century proverb first appeared in a 1599 dictionary compiled by the English lexicographer and linguist John Minsheu. It is thought to have been in use since for at least fifty years by the time it made it into print and a slightly different version of the phrase can be found in the naturalist, physician and nonconformist churchman William Turner's
The Rescuynge of the Romishe Fox
, published in 1545:

Byrdes of on kynde and
color flok and flye
allwayes together.

Like many sayings from folklore it comes from observation of the natural world. Birds of the same species will often form a flock, flying in the same direction instinctively to avoid being singled out by a bird of prey. The phrase is used to imply that people will gravitate towards others who share their tastes or beliefs. By the seventeenth century it was being used in reference to the influence of bad behaviour; in William Secker's handbook for Christian living
The Consistent Christian
, published in 1660, he quotes the proverb and explains: ‘To be too 
intimate 
with sinners – is to 
intimate 
that you are a sinner.' These days it's sometimes used with a knowing wink to suggest that someone who associates with criminals is likely to be one themselves, though it applies equally to friends or couples who are well matched because they have views or characteristics in common.

   

Red sky at night, shepherd's delight

Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning.

This ancient proverb is one of our best-known weather-lore rhymes and dates back to at least the fourteenth century. The earliest known printed example of the saying appears in Middle English in John Wycliffe's Bible published in 1395 and by the time the Authorized King James version was produced in 1611 it contained what was recognizably an early incarnation of today's version:

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring.

(Matthew 16:2-3)

Shepherds, along with sailors (who appear in an alternative version of the rhyme) had to find ways of predicting the weather in order to plan the best course of action for the day ahead. Sheep might need to be brought down from the hills if heavy rain threatened and, in the days before meteorological technology, those whose livelihoods depended on the weather developed their own forecasting methods. This one happens to be fairly accurate; redness is seen in the sky opposite the sun when light rays hit water droplets in the atmosphere. In the northern hemisphere where the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and weather systems move from west to east, red sky at night means that clouds are moving away from us, while red sky in the morning means that water-laden air is heading our way.

This is a translation of one of the many ancient Greek proverbs gathered and recorded by the Dutch humanist Erasmus in the early sixteenth century. It first appears in English in Richard Taverner's transcription of the Latin proverbs of Erasmus,
Prouerbes or adagies with newe addicions, gathered out of the Chiliades of Erasmus
, in 1539:

It is not one swalowe that bryngeth in somer. It is not one good qualitie that maketh a man good.

This early version refers to the fact that in Europe and America the swallow is a summer visitor, arriving to breed in May and staying until September. The original Greek proverb suggests that nothing should be judged on the basis of just one facet of the whole, though the saying was popularized and its meaning subtly altered by its appearance in
Æ
sop's
Fables
, the first English version of which was published by William Caxton in 1484. The fable ‘The Spendthrift and the Swallow' tells the story of a young man who has frittered away all his money and has only the clothes he stands up in. Then he sees a swallow on a bright spring day and thinking summer has come, sells his coat as well. But a hard frost comes, the swallow dies and the young man almost perishes with cold.
Æ
sop's moral tale has found its way into modern parlance as a warning that we shouldn't assume success is on the way on the strength of one achievement.

   

This is an example of the kind of country saying that brought comfort by applying the laws of the natural world to the trials of human life. It is first recorded in William Langland's allegorical poem
Piers Plowman
, written during the years 1360–1387: ‘After sharpest shoures . . . moste shene is the sonne.' Its literal meaning, that stormy weather is usually followed by bright, clear skies, came from observations of weather patterns and formed an important part of fourteenth-century weather lore. Though the farmers and sailors who used the saying can have understood little of the science behind it, what they witnessed was rising air during a storm, which causes high winds and rain, followed by a period of clearer skies and stillness caused by descending air after the storm.
    A similar pattern can be observed in human emotion and by the sixteenth century the saying had also become a way of consoling someone in their grief or reassuring people suffering hardship that more serene times would soon come.
    In modern usage there is often an implication that tranquillity can only be achieved after a period of intense activity and stress, or that people who have had turbulent times in their personal lives are more likely to appreciate the calmness brought by a more sedate existence afterwards.
    We also use the phrase ‘the calm before the storm', which comes from the eerie stillness that can precede a hurricane or cyclone, to describe the strange peace that comes before upheaval.

This early seventeenth-century saying refers to the fact that in northern Europe and North America, March usually begins with storms and ends with calm weather. There are some who assert that the saying has its roots in astrology and relates to the relative positions of constellations at the beginning and end of the month: Leo, the Lion rising on the eastern horizon and Aries, the Ram (sometimes lamb) sinking on the western horizon. This seems more likely just happy coincidence – the ferocious storms that often herald the arrival of March and the calm, mild days that accompany its end are more regularly cited as its source.
    The earliest known appearance of the phrase in print is a playful one. English playwright John Fletcher wrote in his 1625 tragicomedy
A Wife for a Month
: ‘“I would chuse March, for I would come in like a Lion.” “But you'd go out like a Lamb when you went to hanging.”' And in the writer and historian James Howell's historical allegory
Dodona's Grove
(1640): ‘Like the moneth of March, which entreth like a Lion, but goeth out like a Lamb.'    
    In colonial America the phrase appeared in both Ames'
Almanack
of 1740, and plantation owner and author William Byrd's 
Another Secret Diary
for the same year. By 1788, when America's second president John Adams recorded it in his own diary, it was a well established enough piece of folklore for him to refer to it as a ‘farmer's proverb'.

This ancient phrase might sound strange to modern ears but our preference for mild winters would have been anathema to our farming forebears whose livelihoods were threatened by too much warmth early in the year. Fine weather in February can cause plants and crops to begin their spring time growth prematurely, which puts them at risk of being damaged if more seasonal cold weather returns and brings a hard frost. (See also
‘If February gives much snow'
)
    For early farmers, the protection of their livestock and crops was crucial to their survival and this phrase compares the two biggest disasters that might befall them. A wolf in the flock would mean the loss of several sheep but too mild a winter would ruin a farmer's entire harvest. It has its roots in Virgil's pastoral poems, the
Eclogues
, thought to have been written between 42 and 38
bc
, in which wolves appear regularly as a cunning and ruthless enemy of man. The poems tell the stories of the lives and loves of rural herdsmen and feature a shepherdess named Amaryllis. In Eclogue III: ‘Menalcas, Damoetas, Palaemon', Virgil writes:

Fell as the wolf is to the folded flock,
Rain to ripe corn, Sirocco to the trees,
T
he wrath of Amaryllis is to me.

‘A wolf in the fold' is also now widely used as a standalone phrase when someone fears there is an enemy in their midst.