[28] The pages of the excellent _Notes and Queries_ would no doubt be open to receive such, and in them they might be safely garnered up. That there are such proverbs to reward him who should carefully watch for them, is abundantly proved by the immense addition, which, as I shall have occasion hereafter to mention, a Spanish scholar was able to make to the collected proverbs, so numerous before, of Spain. Nor do there want other indications of the like kind. Thus, the editor of very far the best modern collection of German proverbs, records this one, found, as he affirms, in no preceding collection, and by himself never heard but once, and then from the lips of an aged lay servitor of a monastery in the Black Forest: _Offend one monk, and the lappets of all cowls will flutter as far as Rome_; (Beleidigestu einen Münch, so knappen alle Kuttenzipfel bis nach Rom;) and yet who can doubt that we have a genuine proverb here, and one excellently expressive of the common cause which the whole of the monastic orders, despite their inner dissensions, made ever, when assailed from without, with one another? It is very easy to be deceived in such a matter, and one must be content often to be so; but the following, which is current in Ireland, I have never seen in print: “_The man on the dyke always hurls well_;” the looker-on at a game of hurling, seated indolently on the wall, always imagines that he could improve on the strokes of the actual players, and, if you will listen to him, would have played the game much better than they; a proverb of sufficiently wide application. [29] Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί. [30] Αἱ Ἰβύκου γέρανοι. [31] Aurum Tolosanum; see C. Merivale, _Fall of the Roman Republic_, p. 63. [32] Πολλὰ μεταξύ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρου. The Latin form of the proverb, Inter os et offam, will not adapt itself to this story. [33] Livy’s account of “Cantherium in fossâ,” and of the manner in which it became a rustic proverb in Italy, (23, 47,) is a case in point, where it is very hard to give credit to the parentage which has been assigned to the saying. See Döderlein’s _Lat. Synonyme_, v. 4. p. 289. [34] Σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν. [35] Æschylus, _Prom. Vinct._ 322; Euripides, _Bacch._ 795; Pindar, _Pyth._ 2. 94-96. The image is of course that of the stubborn ox, which when urged to go forward, recalcitrates against the sharp-pointed iron goad, and, already wounded, thus only wounds itself the more. [36] Le vin est versé; il faut le boire. LECTURE III. THE PROVERBS OF DIFFERENT NATIONS COMPARED. [Sidenote: Proverbs characteristic.]