in current use in every nation. The greater number are striking and concise. Their tone is often ironical, their accent always that of bonhomie and resignation. The wisdom we glean from them is sometimes profound and beneficent. They never preach resistance. “Les grans poissons mangent les plus petis.” “Les mal vestus assiet ondos ou vent.” “Nul n’est chaste si ne besongne.” “Au besoing on s’aide du diable.” “Il n’est si ferré qui ne glice.” [1] To the laments of moralists about the depravation of man the proverbs oppose a smiling detachment. The proverb always glozes over iniquity. Now it is naïvely pagan and now almost evangelical. A people which has many proverbs in current use will be less given to talking nonsense, and so will avoid many confused arguments and empty phrases. Leaving arguments to cultured people, it is content with judging each case by referring to the authority of some.proverb. The crystallization of thought in proverbs is therefore not without advantage to society.
Proverbs in their crude simplicity were thoroughly in accordance with the general spirit of the literature of the epoch. The level reached by authors was but little higher than that of the proverbs. The dicta of Froissart often read like proverbs gone wrong. “It is thus with feats of arms: sometimes one loses, another time one wins.” “There is nothing of which one does not tire.” It is therefore safer, instead of hazarding moral sentences of one’s own, to use well-established proverbs like Geffroi de Paris, who lards his rhyming chronicle with them. The literature of the time is full of ballads of which each stanza ends with a proverb, as, for instance, the Ballade de Fougères of Alain Chartier, the Complaincte de Eco of Coquillart, and several poems by Jean Molinet, not to mention Villon’s well-known ballad which was entirely composed of them. The 171 stanzas of the Passe Temps d’Oysiveté, by Robert Gaguin, nearly all end in some phrase looking like a proverb, although the greater number are not found in the best-known collections. Did Gaguin invent them, then? In that case we should have a still more curious indication of the vital function of the proverb at this
- ↑ The big fishes eat the smaller. The badly dressed are placed with their back to the wind. None is chaste if he has no business. At need we let the devil help us. No horse is so well shod that it never slips.
