Bevis Hillier

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Long ago (so I have forgotten the precise details) I read one of those books by a British soldier who escaped from a German prisoner-of-war camp in the second world war. He had managed to pinch a German uniform and was making his way across the Fatherland disguised as an Oberleutnant or something. Suddenly he was confronted by a company of the victorious, advancing British troops. How could he instantly convey to them that he was English, and so avoid being shot? He had a brainwave. He shouted out the filthiest English swear-words he could think of. The soldiers lowered their rifles: few Germans would know those words, and the accent was right.

Supposing our escaper had had a tender Christian conscience, and had not wanted to besmirch his lips with scatology. He could have shouted out some English proverbs — for proverbs are the shibboleths of a nation, distillations of its peculiar character and wisdom. The escaper would have cut a curious figure bellowing, ‘You can’t have your cake and eat it’ or ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’, but I think those troops would have been convinced and held their fire.

David Crystal has compiled a fascinating book. The Greeks had a word for what he is; or rather, the 18th century adapted the Greek paroimia, meaning proverb or byword, into paroemiographer, one who writes or collects proverbs. He has corralled not only nearly all the English proverbs one has ever heard, but examples from Albania, Ghana, Japan, Côte d’Ivoire and just about everywhere else you can think of.

You don’t need to be xenophobic or a racist to find some of the foreign proverbs utterly bizarre and to wonder what possible application they could have. ‘Add legs to the snake after you have finished drawing it’ (China). ‘Slowly but surely the excrement of foreign poets will come to your village’ (Mali).

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