What Makes a Proverb a Proverb?

In order to find the proverbs of Middle-earth, we need to know how to identify them. What is a proverb? It’s an awkward question. In spite of having a stream of academic study—paremiology—entirely devoted to them, it seems that proverbs are easier to discern than to define. Professor Wolfgang Mieder of the University of Vermont, long considered the world’s pre-eminent paremiologist, says that ‘A proverb is a concise statement of an apparent truth that has had, has, or will have currency among the people.’^[i] Problematically, this definition implies that virtually any phrase can be a proverb, if it gains ‘currency among the people’ as a conscious reference to received wisdom. No parameters of style or content are defined. This boundary-free definition is frustrating, but it is accurate. While proverbs are often thought of as poetic expressions—and many do make use of imagery, alliteration, or rhyme—some of the most common (Absence makes the heart grow fonder, for example, or There’s no such thing as a free lunch) have no poetic features at all; some simply assert a bare fact and no more. And yet, somehow, we still recognise a proverb when we hear one.

If, in conversation, proverbs are relatively easy to discern, they are less so in print. Most of the phrases that have been identified as proverbs in this volume could be nothing else, or at least have the balance of probability comfortably on their side, but others are arguable. Since any phrase might potentially gain ‘currency among the people’ and be used as a proverb, how can the proverbs of The Lord Of The Rings or The Hobbit be detected?

Tom Shippey, discussing the same question, makes it clear that when on this search ‘you cannot always tell what is a proverb and what is not’.^[ii] Yet sometimes it is straightforward. For a start, some are explicitly described as such. Never laugh at live dragons, says Bilbo to himself, ‘and it became a favourite saying of his, and passed into a proverb.’^[iii] Others are recognisable for the simple fact that they are not Tolkien’s inventions at all: Gollum’s More haste, less speed; Merry’s Mind your Ps and Qs; and Farmer Maggot’s All’s well as ends well, are all in contemporary use and therefore recognisably proverbial.

Further help in identifying proverbs in the text is found when phrases are credited to tradition by their speakers, as when Butterbur qualifies There’s no accounting for East and West, with ‘as we say in Bree’,^[iv] or when Gildor prefixes Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger, with ‘it is said’.^[v] While these signpost-phrases helpfully clarify that we are reading a citation and not a normal part of speech, they are a formality mainly used when strangers of different origins meet.^[vi] In normal conversation, particularly between close friends, signposting of proverbs is rare.^[vii]

Standalone sentences, especially those with poetic features like Boromir’s rhyming couplet The wolf that one hears is worse than the orc that one fears (and Aragorn’s reply-in-kind, Where the warg howls, there also the orc prowls), sometimes declare themselves as proverbs, while others have what Michael Stanton describes as ‘a definite air of sayings that are being repeated, not originated’.^[viii] Beyond that point, however, the waters become murky and discerning what is or isn’t a proverb starts to become a matter of taste and opinion. Do Never travel far without a rope and Do not speak before your master have currency among the people as oral encapsulations of tradition wisdom, or are they merely sensible advice spontaneously spoken? We cannot know. Likewise, while some proverbs may be recognised due to their poetic properties, the heightened language in which many of Middle-earth’s more cultured peoples speak confuses the matter. For example, the phrase Seeing is both good and perilous may sound proverbial due to its lyrical elegance and grace, but so also does everything else Galadriel says.

Deciding which of Middle-earth’s phrases can be identified proverbs is, to a degree, a matter of personal preference and shrouded in subjectivity. But what is undeniable is that Middle-earth has hundreds of proverbs. Scattered throughout the Tolkien corpus we hear proverbial-sounding sayings in the mouths of every culture and people. While the proverbs identified in this volume are limited to those from books published in Tolkien’s lifetime—The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings—this does not reflect the full range of Arda’s proverbial depth. The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The Children Of Húrin each contain a further treasure trove of proverbial material, demonstrating that Tolkien’s commitment to convincing inner reality was not a late addition, tacked on to the texts at the last minute to add a sheen of realism, but was entwined within the creative process itself. The Tree grew from its leaves, not the other way around.