XLIX. MALHEURS PAS CHAGER COMME LA PIEL.1 Accidents do not threaten like rain. This is a degeneration of a sublimely poetical version of the same thought which has come down to us as a part of the wisdom of antiquity. Di laneos habent pedes. The feet of the avenging deities are shod with wool: L. OU FAIT SEMBLANT MOURIR, MOI FAIT SEMBLANT ENTERRER VOUS. You make believe die, I make believe bury you. This is a shot at all sham and false pretenses. The pretender is taken at his word. It recalls the story of the Quaker whose guest declined some delicacy at his table in the expectation of being asked a second time. Being disappointed in this, be held 'I never heard this proverb, of which you have given the Trinidad version, in Hayti.— Hunt. out his plate, with the remark that he had changed his mind. "Nay," replied the Quaker, "thee'll not lie in my house." In other words, you make believe to be modest, or indifferent to my offerings and I'll take you at your word. "You make believe die, I make believe bury you." The poet Martial has put the spirit of this proverb in an epigram on Coelius who, to escape the distractions and exactions of society, feigned so long and so faithfully to have the gout that at last he was spared the necessity of feigning.1 Franklin stimulated the colonists of Pennsylvania to resist the encroachments of the imperial government by using the Italian proverb. Make yourself sheep, and the wolves will eat you. The French say, He who makes a sheep of himself, the wolf eats; and the Spaniards say, Make honey of yourself, and the flies will eat you. Mart., Lib. VII, 39. LI. CHIEN CONNAIT COMMENT LI FAIT POUR MAN GER ZOS. The dog knows how to eat bones. A modification of the vulgar, You can't teach your grandmother to suck eggs. LII. GUIDI GUIDI PAS FAIT VITE. Making a fuss is not making haste. LIII. MOI VINI POU BOIR LAIT, MOI PAS VINI POU I came to drink milk, not to count calves. It is said of the pontifical court that it does not seek sheep without wool - Curia Romana non quærit ovem sine lana a sentiment which, with many others, appears to have been inherited from pagan Rome where it was proverbial that — Absque aere mutum est Apollonis oraculumWithout his fee Apollo is mute. The Germans say, Umsonst wird kein altar gedéckt. Of the same trempe is Martial's epigram to Sextus: Vis te Sexte, coli: volebam amare.1 You wish me, Sextus, to honor you; I wished to love you. The Haytians have another proverb which is the logical correlative of the foregoing. LIV. MOIN PAS PREND DI THÉ POU LA FIÈVE LI. I don't take tea for his fever. ᏞᏙ . CA QUI DIT OU, ACHETÉ CHOUAL GROS VENTE LI PAS AIDÉ VOUS NOURRIR LI. He who advises you to buy a horse with a big belly will not help you feed him. The world is full of people more ready with advice than money when we would buy; with criticism than credit when we become embarrassed; with indifference than sympathy when we become poor. LVI. BABIEZ MOUCHE, BABIEZ VIAnde. Scold the fly, scold the meat. In other words, if we find fault with the fly, we awaken a suspicion that the meat is spoiled by it. So the husband compromises his wife or daughter by accusing their cavaliers. It is the argument for silence used by the elders to Susannah. LVII. CA QUI GAGNÉ PETIT MIS DEHORS, VEILLEZ LA PLIE. Who would harvest his millet, let him watch the weather. This proverb, or at least the policy which it inculcates, seems to have been so universal at Rome some two thousand years ago that in the struggle for the repeal of the law which had banished Cicero, B.c. 57, the senate resolved that thenceforth whoever attempted de cœlo servare - to watch the heavens, or by their interpretation to obstruct public business, was to be regarded as an enemy of the republic.1 1 Forsyth's Life of Cicero, p. 200 and 213. |