Missouri/Midwestern
Proverbs
Proverbs are
notoriously difficult to define. Most who have studied the matter agree on
certain features – they’re pithy, memorable (and more importantly, remembered:
there has to be a record of transmission over time and distance). They express
an insight that’s true at least a good deal of the time (but of course may be
opposed by another proverb – “he who hesitates is lost” is good advice. But so
is “look before you leap”). They are frequently metaphorical, expressing a
general principle through a concrete and specific instance; “you can’t have
your cake and eat it too” or “you can’t judge a book by its cover” are not
points of technical advice on gastronomy and codicology.
Proverbs are
nobody’s property (or if they are, they’re better known as aphorisms). Our
culture-heroes may get credit for some (Shakespeare, Mark Twain and the Bible
have accumulated a lot of unearned reputational capital). But Ben Franklin did not
originate “early to bed, early to rise,” and while we actually know who coined
the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” it’s doubtful that anyone
repeating it thinks of ad-man Frederick R. Barnard. Rather, proverbs are “the
wit of one, the wisdom of many.” One of the few points at which I disagree with
the dean of paremiologists, Wolfgang Mieder, is in the title of one of his key works, “Proverbs
Are Never Out of Season.” They are
golden in the right moment, galling in the wrong one, savory when dealt
sparingly, tedious by the sackful (I have always
thought this was the real reason Hamlet stabbed that old windbag Polonius).
It has long been suggested that we start a page on
these. Below you’ll find a sample to prime the pump. I got these by, well,
asking around, which is a time-honored type of fieldwork. These lack the
ethnographic detail we’d like – who’s reporting it, where that person heard it
(state and county) and year. Please include that information,
if at all possible, as you email the editor
proverbs you’ve heard and that you think might be more or less distinctive of
our cultural catchbasin. We know actually that
proverbs have little regard for boundaries; each of the items below has been
verified for Arkansas and Texas as well as Missouri, and in fact there are few
that we can confidently classify as exclusively American (“seeing is believing”
looks like a possibility), let alone Missourian. So these are certainly not
proverbs original to our area, but current here; we’re just
tasting the cultural soup of the day…
·
You plant taters, you get taters.
·
Life is simpler if you plow around the
stump.
·
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes
your time and annoys the pig.
·
When you find yourself in a hole, quit
digging.
·
Don’t sell the mule to buy a plow.
·
You can’t wallow with pigs and expect not
to get dirty.
·
Don’t name a pig you figure on eating.
·
Even a dog knows the difference between
being tripped-over and kicked.
·
Don’t put gas in a car you’ve already
wrecked.
·
You can put a coat and tie on a goat, and
it’s still a goat.
·
You can’t polish a turd.
·
Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and
the pig likes it.