These questions form the basis of research by Professor Aidan Moran and Dr Michael O'Connell at the UCD School of Psychology. In their book, ‘Timeless Wisdom: What Irish Proverbs Tell Us About Ourselves,’ they explore Irish proverbs and the role they played - and continue to play - in Irish society.
The proverbs that are still commonplace in conversations around the country today were used in much the same fashion hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago. That proverbs relating to human behaviour centuries ago are still applicable today is one of the most fascinating aspects of the research.
“A lot of proverbs are as relevant now as they were 1,000 years ago”, explains Professor Moran. “A proverb such as 'eight views, eight recollections' says that people recall events in different ways. Likewise, 'what a child sees, he does' shows that children learn through observation. There are also numerous proverbs dealing with gambling, all of which warn gamblers from believing their luck is about to change when in reality they are just losing more”.
While proverbs are not a uniquely Irish phenomenon - just think of how many times you read of ‘old Chinese proverbs’ – Irish proverbs do take on a uniquely Irish fashion. One distinctively Irish trait is the ‘triad’ – a figurative expression in which three things are grouped together for the purposes of comparison. Many of these triads contain witty observations, such as this one that reveals the three things most difficult to comprehend - ‘the labour of the bees, the ebb and flow of the tide, the mind of a woman’.
The use of animals in proverbs, say Moran and O'Connell, is another one of the key characteristics of an Irish proverb. For example, selfish people are referred to as cats, ‘a cat purrs for himself’; people of limited intelligence are referred to as donkeys, while people who work hard are compared to horses. Animals play another crucial role in the Irish proverb, however, and that relates to man’s attempts to second-guess weather patterns.
Throughout the centuries, Irish people have used the behaviour of animals as a way to plan for the coming day’s weather. “Our forefathers had a vested interest in trying to predict the weather, so they used animal behaviour and the pattern of the sky to guess what the weather would be like”, says Moran. “It shows the kinship between man and nature”.
In the course of their research, Moran and O'Connell came across one very obvious problem: it is not possible to translate all proverbs from Irish into English. While there are hundreds of Irish proverbs that made the switch into English and are today widely used, others did not translate. “There are literally thousands of proverbs, many of which are extremely difficult to translate”, says O’Connell. “Others lose meaning when they are translated. In Irish the proverb might rely on the repetition of the same sound, and you lose that by translating it into English, in the same way as you would if you translated Irish poetry into English”.
Amongst the most fascinating proverbs are those relating to alcohol and to women. The psychologists admit that they were surprised that the attitude to both alcohol and women was largely negative in traditional Irish proverbs. Proverbs connected with alcohol are almost entirely one sided, forming a long note of warning against drinking too much. While the Irish of centuries ago were as fond of a tipple as the Irish of today, they did not indulge without a fair degree of warning. Many of these warnings revolved around the monetary problems associated with drinking. For example, ‘the three faults of drink: a sorrowful morning, a dirty coat, and an empty pocket’. Other proverbs, meanwhile, focused on health warnings - ‘wine drowns more men than water’.
Interestingly, Timeless Wisdom:What Irish Proverbs Tell Us About Ourselves argues that proverbs offered a negative view of alcohol because they were an early form of public warning. Whereas today we have government warnings on cigarette packets, centuries ago people had only the warnings of their peers. “Proverbs acted as health warnings” says O'Connell. “Society requires a brake on certain issues, such as alcohol, and so the proverbs stress the negative in order to warn young men off drinking too much or to help women warn their husbands not to drink too much”.
One other engaging issue is the treatment of women. Although there are some positive proverbs relating to women, by and large women are treated harshly. Proverbs tended to show women in a negative light, suggesting in no uncertain terms that men are better off on their own - ‘every expensive thing, the wish of every woman’, ‘the dowry disappears, but the woman remains a fool’.
Prof Aidan Moran
Likewise, Irish proverbs also warn any would-be groom of the ill-effects of marriage - ‘the only cure for love is marriage’, ‘from the day you marry, your heart will be in your mouth and your hand in your pocket’. Moran and O’Connell explain this by pointing to the structure of traditional society, which placed women very much below men. The marginal role of women in society allowed men to ridicule them at every opportunity. It is also worth remembering, they say, that the Irish marriages of centuries ago were likely to be at least semi-arranged for reasons other than love. This perhaps offers a warning that is still relevant today against jumping into marriage without knowing your partner fully. After all, you should never judge a book by its cover.
Homepage image: Seosamh Ó Dálaigh recording on the ediphone from Cáit and Máire Ruiséal, Dún Chaoin, County Kerry. Full-time folklore collectors like Seosamh Ó Dálaigh made repeated visits to exceptional informants in an effort to record as fully as possible their repertoire of tales and other folklore material. Photographer: Tomás Ó Muircheartaigh, c.1942.
Image courtesy of UCD Delargy Centre for Irish Folklore and the National Folklore Collection. The National Folklore Collection consists of Manuscript, Photographic and Audio/Video archives, a specialist Library, and a Folk Music section. The Collection contains approximately three million manuscript pages, a three hundred thousand-item card index and other computerised indices, thousands of hours of audio recordings (including early wax cylinders), approximately 70,000 photographs and drawings, and a collection of paintings. The specialist library contains some 50,000 printed books, periodicals and off-prints relating to Irish and comparative folklore, ethnology and related fields.
‘Timeless Wisdom: What Irish Proverbs Tell Us About Ourselves’, by Aidan Moran and Michael O'Connell, is published by UCD Press.