Penny for your thoughts

Wise, world-weary and occasionally cynical, proverbs mirror the human experience and remain remarkably insightful today, discovers Matthew Dennison

- Matthew Dennison

A PERSON acts what he is when he may do what he will,' wrote a monk in Kent at some point in the first half of the 11th century. This gnomic utterance was not of his own making—the monk in question was busy defacing a manuscript. Within a compendium of hymns, over five blank pages before the Canticles for Matins, he recorded 46 Old English proverbs and translated each of them into Latin. These wise, sometimes world-weary, occasionally cynical aphorisms reflect upon aspects of human experience—from friendship to fear, intemperance to trust—as understood 1,000 years ago.

Despite their age, the sayings preserved in the manuscript today known as the Durham Proverbs remain remarkably insightful. We can all agree that 'a friend, or kinsman, is helpful whether far or near, but is more useful nearer' and most of us, sadly, will be forced in time to concede that one 'never knows the pleasure of sweetness who never tastes bitterness'. A proverb has been defined as a 'traditional saying which offers advice or presents a moral in a short and pithy manner'. In The Garden of Eloquence of 1593, Henry Peacham described proverbs as 'taken from the experience of Nature' and arising 'from generall proofe and experience', where the experience in question is one widely shared or recognised. 'Of all the formes of speech,' noted Peacham, 'there is not one more apt, or more mighty to confirme or confute than this, which is grounded upon the strong foundation of experiences confirmed by all times, allowed of in all places, and subscribed to by all men.'