Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... chapter xvii. Jfroforfrs, Wksthtt agings, ttu "They servo to be interlaced in continued speech. They serre to be recited upon occasion of themselves. They serve, if you take out the kernel of them, and make them your own."--Lord Verulam. 0 nation is without its proverbs; but while in many cases these pithy sayings are the same in all languages, and merely literal translations from one dialect to another, in other instances the idea only is present, and the words in which the proverb is expressed have little or nothing in common, as, for example, the English saying: --"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," appears in French in the far less picturesque form of "un 1 tiens' vaut mieut que deux 1 tu Vauras.'" Sometimes, from the peculiar circumstances of the people using it, a proverb takes a local tinge, and, in so doing, may change considerably from its original wording, while continuing at the same time to convey a similar lesson. Thus the pastoral saying: --"To lose one's sheep for a penn'orth of tar," becomes, very naturally, among a nautical population, "to lose one's ship, etc." Some few proverbs are so thoroughly local as to appear to have originated in the place where they are used. Guernsey is not rich in proverbs properly so called; but, as might be expected among an agricultural and maritime people, weather-sayings are not uncommon. Many of these could no doubt be traced to the mother-country, Normandy, but some few may be indigenous, and the result of local observation. We will give specimens of each class of these proverbial expressions, with such remarks as may be necessary to explain them as far as they can be explained; and, although many of them might be put into modern French, we have preferred retaining the old...
