One for Sorrow (7 page)

The most popular proverbs are often those that sound so simple you could have made them up yourself if only you'd been able to find the right turn of phrase. This one was among the 4,658 adages compiled by the great medieval scholar Erasmus by the time of his death from dysentery in 1536. His version read Multae manus onus levius reddunt, which was translated as:

Many hands make a burden lighter.

It's obvious but also somehow so much wiser than anything we could come up with to convey the same meaning today. The homily was previously translated into Middle English in the early fourteenth century in a poem called
Sir Bevis of Hampton
, a metrical romance based on a French original about the eponymous legendary hero which featured a formidable giant called Ascopard. The tale included the line:

Ascopard be strong and sterk, Mani hondes maketh light werk!

The phrase was further popularized when various printed editions of the romance were printed in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, delivering this very ancient piece of wisdom to a mass ‘modern' audience.
    It was particularly well tailored to the needs of British agricultural workers and early American settlers, who spent most of their working lives engaged in manual labour that couldn't have been completed without a team effort. Today we use the phrase most frequently when asking for help with some onerous task which would seem insurmountable without someone to share the load.
    Though, of course, there is a counter-argument: as the  
Observer
of 11 February 1923 complained:

What is the use of saying that ‘Many hands make light work' when the same copy-book tells you that ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth'?
   

   

From the Middle Ages, the word ‘jack' was interchangeable with ‘man'. Medieval townsfolk would have used the term in the same way that we might when forced by a DIY crisis to ‘get a man in to do the job'. More precisely, a ‘jack' was a menial labourer who touted himself from door to door looking for manual work, so a jack of all trades was a labourer who could be employed in any of the basic trades required by the households of the Middle Ages.
    The phrase ‘Jack of all trades' was used in its Latin form to begin with – as in a little rant by Robert Greene in 1592 against a rival writer, an ‘upstart crow . . . an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit'; the rival writer was William Shakespeare. In 1612, the phrase appeared in English in
Essays
and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners
, a social commentary on the appalling conditions in British prisons, by Geffray Mynshul, thought to have been detained at Gray's Inn prison as a debtor. He mentions ‘Some broken Cittizen, who hath plaid Jack-of-all-trades'. At the time, however, the term was generally not derogatory , implying as it did a wide range of skills and abilities of which any working man would be proud. But a second, more disparaging part of the saying was beginning to circulate. In 1677, a Martin Clifford said of some of John Dryden's poetry that they were like a ‘Jack of all Trades Shop, they have Variety, but nothing of value'.
    And in 1785 Charles Lucas – apothecary, physician and politician (so a bit of a jack of all trades himself), wrote of the ‘Druggist' in Britain as being ‘a Jack of all trades, and in truth, master of none'.
    The phrase that to maintain a wide range of abilities meant that the quality of each must be compromised and it is this version that has stood the test of time. On occasion people might still be heard describing themselves as ‘a bit of a jack of all trades' when asked their occupation, but we would usually assume that they were either unemployed or dodging the question to avoid prosecution.

   

This teaching is a modern version of the words, ‘Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap (Galatians, 6:7). The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians (ninth book of the New Testament) was written to a number of Early Christian communities in the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia, exhorting the Galatian believers to stand fast in the Christian faith. The teaching means that the personal consequences of your actions are in proportion to your good or bad intentions towards others, and those consequences will come back to you as payment for your deeds (see also
‘Curses, like chickens, come home to roost'
). This moral view is very similar to the concept of karma in Hinduism and Buddhism.
    Karma in Sanskrit, means ‘action' or ‘doing'. Whatever one does, says, or thinks is a karma, and according to the Vedas (the sacred Hindu texts), if one sows goodness, one will reap goodness; if one sows evil, one will reap evil. Like many ancient teachings the powerful biblical allegory is rooted in our agrarian past where the sowing of seed inexorably determined the nature of the harvest to follow. In Christian terms, these words are usually understood to constitute a moral precept, teaching the importance of goodness and the inevitable personal consequences of doing evil. However, in the Eastern religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, karma is a natural law believed to be inherent in the nature of being rather than a moral adage.
    In Randle Cotgrave's 1611 English–French dictionary, he includes ‘He that sows thistles shall reap prickles'. A rather more sombre version is ‘They that sow the wind, shall reap the whirlwind', an allusion to Hosea 8:7: ‘They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.'

We still use the phrase today, often in the more modern form ‘reap what you sow'.

This sage piece of advice for coping with the dramatic seasonal differences in British weather is likely to have been in regular use since well before it first appeared in print in 1732. In old English the word ‘clout' meant patch of cloth, such as might be used to cover a hole in a worn out piece of clothing. By the fifteenth century it had broadened to mean garment or clothing in general, so this was a warning against discarding your winter layer until the end of the month of May.
    Some sources offer an alternative interpretation of the words ‘till May be out', suggesting that ‘May' refers to the flowers of the hawthorn tree, which are traditionally known by that name. During a century of agricultural enclosures beginning in 1750, pre-eminent British botanist Oliver Rackham estimates that 200,000 miles of hawthorn hedge were planted, making the May blossom a well known feature of the countryside.
    May blossom comes out in late April, early May, coinciding with the start of warmer weather, which lends credence to the idea that this was the sign country folk should wait for before removing their winter layers, but most academic interpretations side with the idea that the reference is to the end of the month of May.
    They are supported by a similar French proverb from the same period which also mentions April, perhaps in order to accommodate the slightly warmer climate of mainland Europe:

En avril, ne te découvre pas d'un fil; en mai, fais ce qui te plaît.

(In April, do not shed a single thread;
in May, do as you please.)

   

One for the rook, one for the crow,
One to rot and one to grow.

An old smallholders' saying that was recited since at least the late eighteenth century as they sowed their seeds, and which exists in several forms, including:

One for the mouse, one for the crow,

One to rot and one to grow.

And:

One for wind and one for crow,

One to die and one to grow.

All refer to the fact that in small vegetable gardens it was usual to sow seeds broadcast, which means scattering them widely on the surface of the soil and then gently raking the ground to draw a thin layer of earth over them. The seeds stayed near the surface leaving them vulnerable to birds and animals and to the wind, which could cause such severe damage to seedlings that many kitchen gardeners recommend growing fragile plants between wooden stakes to protect them from damaging gusts.
    These days birds can be kept off newly sown seeds by breathable protective covers but in the mid-1800s, when the phrase first appeared in print, farmers had to accept that a share of what they put in the ground would be donated to the wildlife. Mice are particularly fond of eating young bean pods and germinating seeds, and two versions of the rhyme express the risk that a percentage of crops will die or rot. This was especially true of vegetables, which are water – and nutrient-hungry and need constant care and attention throughout their growing period. Too much water in the soil could be equally damaging and cause a seed to rot, while low temperatures could mean that some plants die in the ground.

   

Much of the myth and legend that finds its way into folklore was concerned with finding ways to use the natural world to help people plan their lives. The moon features in many old sayings because without understanding why, medieval man recognized that it had some influence on what was happening on earth.
    According to folklore the waxing and waning of the moon causes a monthly increase and lessening of the Earth's water content, with the time of greatest moisture occurring when the moon is full. The different phases of the moon were thought to be influential in whether crops would thrive or fail; a full moon was favoured for harvesting moisture-rich plants while root vegetables were planted when farmers could see the dark side of the moon.
    The presence of a halo, or ring around the moon was seen as a sign that bad weather would follow, and as early storm warnings go, it was fairly accurate. The halo occurs when moonlight (reflected light from the invisible sun) is refracted through clouds of six-sided crystals of ice high in the upper atmosphere. The crystals act as prisms and as the light hits them, they reflect the light at such an angle that it appears to form a ring.
    The clouds of frozen water droplets, known as cirro-stratus cloud, often precede an approaching warm front and the area of low pressure that accompanies it, conditions which often result in rain or, if the temperature is cool enough, snow.