ALAN DUNDES on Whether Weather 'Proverbs' Are Proverbs

7/30/2019 ALAN DUNDES on Whether Weather 'Proverbs' Are Proverbs

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ALAN DUNDES

On Whether Weather 'Proverbs' are Proverbs

Traditional sayings about the weather, wise or otherwise, have commonly but wrongly been

considered proverbs by folklorists for more than a century. A host of titles attests to thepurported existence of weather proverbs. Reinsberg-Dringsfeld published Das Wetter im

Sprichwort in 1864; Richard Inwards, Weather Lore: A Collection of Proverbs, Sayings and

Rules Concerning the Weather appeared in 1869; and Rev. Charles Swaison, A Handbook of

Weather Folk-Lore: Being A Collection of Proverbial Sayings in Various Languages Relating

to the Weather in 1873. Other sources include C. W. Empson, "Weather Proverbs and

Sayings Not Contained in Inwards' or Swainson's Books," Folklore Record 4 (1881), 126-

132; Alexis Yermoloff's comprehensive Die landwirtschaftliche Volksweisheit in

Sprichwrtern, Redensarten und Wetterregeln (1905); and William J. Humphreys, Weather

Proverbs and Paradoxes (1923).

Standard surveys of the proverb genre include mention of so-called weather proverbs. F.Edward Hulme concluded his Proverb Lore (1902) with a discussion of weather proverbs (pp.

264-269); Archer Taylor devotes a substantial section of The Proverb (1931) to weather

proverbs (pp. 109-121); Rhrich and Mieder in Sprichwort (1977) list "Wettersprichwort

(Bauern-regel)" as their first example of special forms of proverbs (pp. 7-10). Articles on

weather proverbs have even appeared in Proverbium, e.g., Nai-tung Ting, "Chinese Weather

Proverbs," Proverbium 18 (1972), 649-655 which would suggest at least tacit acceptance of

this subgeneric category. Wolfgang Mieder's superb International Proverb Scholarship (1982)

contains more than forty references to collections or discussions of weather proverbs.

From this admittedly cursory bibliographical survey, one can safely surmise that 'weather

proverbs' constitute a legitimate subtype of the proverb genre and further that the study of

them falls appropriately under the rubric of paremiology. I believe this is a generic error and

that what are commonly called weather proverbs are nothing more than superstitions. What

has tended to confuse folklorists is that whereas superstitions are more often than not free

phrase, weather superstitions frequently occur in rhymed fixed-phrase form. In other words,

they are superstitions with the textural features of proverbs (and riddles). It is likely that these

textural features are present for mnemonic purposes. It is easier to remember a fact if it is

couched in rhyme. The point, however, is that a rhymed superstition is still a superstition, not

a proverb.

Let us take a representative instance. There is a venerable folk belief that a red sky in theevening signals fair weather to follow while a red sky in the morning predicts bad weather.

Two distinct 'proverbs' based on this belief are to be found in The Oxford Dictionary of

English Proverbs, Third Edition (1970). They are: Sky red in the morning is a sailor's

(shepherd's) warning; sky red at night is the sailor's (shepherd's) delight. Evening red and

morning grey help the traveller on his way; evening grey and morning red bring down rain

upon his head.

This is an old tradition going back as many have observed to a New Testament version

(Matthew 16:2-3): "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And

in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering." The Biblical

text provides a useful terminus ante quem for this belief which is one of the numerousweather sayings which has been tested by meteorologists and found to be relatively accurate.1
http://www.deproverbio.com/display.php?a=4&f=DPjournal&r=DP,6,2,00/WEATHER.html#note1http://www.deproverbio.com/display.php?a=4&f=DPjournal&r=DP,6,2,00/WEATHER.html#note1http://www.deproverbio.com/display.php?a=4&f=DPjournal&r=DP,6,2,00/WEATHER.html#note1http://www.deproverbio.com/display.php?a=4&f=DPjournal&r=DP,6,2,00/WEATHER.html#note1


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The full text of this article is published in De Proverbio - Issue 11:2000 & Issue 12:2000, an

electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.

What this means is that there are numerous texts included in the Dictionary of EnglishProverbs, and no doubt other standard collections of proverbs as well, which do not belong to

the proverb genre at all. For example, in England, in the spring of 1983, I collected a number

of versions of "One for sorrow, two for joy; three for a girl, four for a boy" which is allegedly

recited upon sighting one or more magpies. A longer form is found in the Dictionary of

English Proverbs which begins "One (magpie) for sorrow; two for mirth; three for a wedding:

four for a birth..." A female informant explained to me that inasmuch as magpies tended to

cluster in pairs, the rhyme had sexist overtones -- boys likely than girsl (three magpies). The

very structure of the rhyme would tend to support such an assertion to the extent that sorrow

and girls are aligned in contrast to joys and boys. Whatever the chauvinist implications of the

text may be, it is clearly a form of divination. Hence it belongs to the genre of superstition

(where there are many signs of whether a future baby will be a boy or a girl). The fact that itis in rhyme does not make it any the less a sign superstition. It is not a proverb.

With similar reasoning, I would argue that most of what proverb scholars have referred to as

'medical proverbs', e.g., An apple a day keeps the doctor away,6are simply rhymed folk

medical superstitions. If A, then B. If one eats an apple daily, one will be healthy. Finally, I

do not really believe that the folk consider weather and medical rules as proverbs. It is rather

the folklorists who have wrongly constructed such erroneous classificatory categories. To the

original question raised: Are weather proverbs proverbs? I would say emphatically "No!"

NOTES

Previously published in Proverbium 1 (1984), pp. 39-46.

Permission to publish this article granted by Proverbium (Editor: Prof. Wolfgang Mieder,

University of Vermont, USA).

1 See, for example, Spencer Russell, "A Red Sky at Night..." Meteorological Magazine, 61

(1926), 15-17, and Paul J. Marriott, Red Sky at Night, Shepherd's Delight? Weather Lore of

the English Countryside (Oxford: Sheba Books, 1981), pp. 309-311. For representative

discussions of the scientific merit of such weather signs, see Georges Tibau, "Zestig Vlaamse

weerspreuken onder de loep van de statistiek," Volkskunde 78 (1977), 33-59; and M. G.

Wurtele, "Some Thoughts on Weather Lore," Folklore 82 (1971), 292-303.

2 See R.-O Frick, "Le peuple et la prvision du temps," Schweizerisches Archiv fr

Volkskunde, 26 (1926), 1-21, 89-100, 171-188, 254-279. For the structural formula, see pp.

5-6. See also Eleanor Anne Forster, The Proverb and Superstition Defined. Diss. University

of Pennsylvania, 1968.

3 For a discussion of the definition of sign superstitions, see Alan Dundes, "Brown County

Superstitions," Midwest Folklore, 11 (1961), 25-56 (see esp. pp. 28-31). The theoretical

portion of this essay was reprinted in Alan Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague:

Mouton, 1975), pp. 88-94.
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4 Ronald Baker makes a similar case in "'Hogs Are Playing with Sticks -- Bound to Be Bad

Weather': Folk Belief or Proverb?" Midwestern Journal of Language and Folklore, 1 (1975):

65-67; reprinted in Readings in American Folklore, ed. Jan Harold Brunvand (New York: W.

W. Norton, 1979), pp. 199-202.

5 Marriott, op. cit., p. 111, 159, claims the saying is true "because at the end of March andduring April they arrive in ones and twos, only coming in force from mid to late April."

6 This and other examples of medical 'proverbs' may be found in Archer Taylor, The Proverb

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), pp. 121-129.

Alan Dundes

Department of Anthropology

University of California at Berkeley

Berkeley, California 94720

USA

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ALAN DUNDES on Whether Weather 'Proverbs' Are Proverbs