My grandma always said, “What will be, will be.” In other words, “Don’t worry about it! The future will take care of itself.”

Feel free to share your grandmother’s sayings or words of wisdom with us in the comments below!

Mama Lisa

It’s interesting that the specific wording of the proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors” is fairly modern. It comes from Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall from 1914. The poem centers around this concept and questions whether it’s true or not. Here’s the poem…

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors”.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Listen to an MP3 of Mending Wall as read by Alan Davis-Drake for LibriVox

Listen to a different MP3 of Mending Wall as read by Teresa Montgomery for Librivox

The narrator of the poem is annoyed by his neighbor’s insistence that there has to be a fence between them. If only his neighbor would get beyond his father’s beliefs – originating in an old proverb – and reconsider his thinking.

What’s ironic is that Frost coined the new wording of a proverb: “Good fences make good neighbors”, while questioning the very wisdom behind it!

What do you think?

Time and tide wait for no man.

My husband and I almost learned this lesson the hard way today.  We were taking a hike on the shore of a river… on the way back we noticed the water was very obviously rising.  Good thing we decided to turn back when we had or we would have had to swim back and I wouldn’t have had these lovely shots to take home (my camera would have gotten wet!)…

By Joanna Baillie

Hi all. My grandmother is full Finnish and as a child she always had 2 different sayings that she’d say to us. I don’t know how to spell them or anything, but I’m going to do my best to explain them.

The first one was about a bird coming to get you. It sounded like “Keeva kava, asa houka toula. Skoopy skoopy skoopy”.

The second was about a pastor coming for dinner and sounded like “poplien appel poppel dopple” or something like that.

Any help would be amazing and would make my 10 siblings VERY happy. Thanks so much.

If anyone can help Paul, please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks!

Mama Lisa

Here are some proverbs for Earth Day…

Old Proverbs:

-The Earth produces all things and receives all again.
-Earth is the Best Shelter
-What the heaven showers down, the Earth drinks up. (Greek Proverb)

This one is not about the Earth, but it involves the Earth.

-Six feet of earth make all men of one size. (Italian – Sei pie di terra agguaglion tutti.)

Here’s a line from Tennyson, The Day Dream (L’ Envoi.):

We are Ancients of the earth,
And in the morning of the times.

Happy Earth Day!

Mama Lisa

PS Feel free to add any poems or proverbs about Earth in the comments below.

Here are some rhymes and poems I found that are generally about cleanliness, keeping clean or washing up…

First, here’s a traditional nursery rhyme that mentions having a clean face:

The Clock

There’s a neat little clock,
In the schoolroom it stands,
And it points to the time
With its two little hands.

And may we, like the clock,
Keep a face clean and bright,
With hands ever ready
To do what is right.

This next rhyme is about washing feet:

Marguerite

Marguerite, go wash your feet;
The board of health is ‘cross the street.

Here’s a song you can sing when washing up or brushing teeth:

This is the Way We Wash our Hands
(To the tune of Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush)

This is the way we wash our hands
Wash our hands, wash our hands,
This is the way we wash our hands
In the afternoon (or “To keep us very healthy”)

(You can continue with washing other body parts or substitute the line “This is the way we brush our teeth”.)

Here’s a song about washing away germs:

GERMS!

Wash your face and hands with soap,
Wash them every day!
Keeping clean by using soap
Will help keep germs away

Finally, below you’ll find an old poem called Cleanliness by Charles and Mary Lamb from around 1874. First I’ve given a shortened version that I found and after that you’ll find the full, longer version of it:

Cleanliness

All-endearing cleanliness,
Virtue next to godliness,
Easiest, cheapest, needfull’st duty,
To the body health and beauty;
Who that’s human would refuse it,
When a little water does it?

Here’s the longer version:

Cleanliness

Come, my little Robert, near-
Fie! what filthy hands are here!
Who, that e’er could understand
The rare structure of a hand,
With its branching fingers fine,
Work itself of hands divine,
Strong, yet delicately knit,
For ten thousand uses fit,
Overlaid with so clear skin
You may see the blood within,-
Who this hand would choose to cover
With a crust of dirt all over,
Till it look’d in hue and shape
Like the forefoot of an ape!
Man or boy that works or plays
In the fields or the highways,
May, without offence or hurt,
From the soil contract a dirt
Which the next clear spring or river
Washes out and out for ever-
But to cherish stains impure,
Soil deliberate to endure,
On the skin to fix a stain
Till it works into the grain,
Argues a degenerate mind,
Sordid, slothful, ill-inclined,
Wanting in that self-respect
Which does virtue best protect.
All-endearing cleanliness,
Virtue next to godliness,
Easiest, cheapest, needfull’st duty,
To the body health and beauty;
Who that’s human would refuse it,
When a little water does it?

If you know of any songs, rhymes, poems, or sayings about cleanliness or washing up, please let us know about them in the comments below.

Thanks!

Mama Lisa

I have a correction to make – and investigating my error has led me to an interesting discovery. Way back in 2005, I was asked about the saying, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” At the time I attributed it to Benjamin Franklin. The saying was in Franklin’s book “Poor Richard’s Almanac” in 1735.

(An aside: Everyone has heard about Almanacs. They used to be very important. In Benjamin Franklin’s time, everyone had one. They gave information about the tides, the cycles of the moon, seasons, the dates of the holidays, etc. You have to consider the times to realize their significance. For example, if you were going out at night, the cycle of the moon was important, since there weren’t street lamps lighting the whole way!)

Franklin, as well as other almanac writers, peppered his book with witticisms and proverbs. “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is one of the sayings he used. This proverb actually originated long before Franklin’s time. It was seen in print as early as 1496, in a piece called The Treatise of Fishing with an Angle. There it is referred to as an old English proverb:

Also whoever wishes to practice the sport of angling, he must rise early, which thing is profitable to a man in this way. That is, to wit: most for the welfare of his soul. For it will cause him to be holy, and for the health of his body. For it will cause him to be well, also for the increase of his goods, for it will make him rich. As the old English proverb says: “Whoever will rise early shall be holy, healthy, and happy.”

So the proverb was around in some form before 1496, since they were already calling it old, even then.

After 1496, the proverb is found in print in other variations:

1523 – Early rising maketh a man whole in body, holer (holier?) in soul and richer in goods.
(Found in The Book of Husbandry by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert)
1577 – Rise you early in the morning, for it hath properties three: holiness, health and happy wealth, as my father taught me.
(Found in the Boke of Nurture by Hugh Rhodes)

Finally, in 1639 the proverb is seen in print in its current form in a book called Paroemiologia by John Clarke: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

Interestingly, there’s another similar proverb from around 1830, “The cock doth crow to let you know, If you be wise, ‘Tis time to rise.”

The two proverbs came together to form the nursery rhyme:

The cock crows in the morn
To tell us to rise,
And he that lies late
Will never be wise:
For early to bed,
And early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy,
And wealthy and wise.

So remember – Go to bed early tonight!

-Mama Lisa

Quite a while back, Arlene Charest wrote me with some rhymes and sayings she remembered from growing up in the 1940’s. I felt these are important to try to preserve. Here are a couple, along with what Arlene had to say about the times…

I know so many rhymes and sayings from 1940 and during the war when we could roller skate down the center of a no longer busy street (no gas, no rubber, no young men), holding hands and singing, “Coming in on a wing on a prayer…”. We did a lot of ball bouncing:

One Two Three a Nation,
I observed my confirmation,
On the day of decoration,
One Two Three a Nation.

The other one was:

“A” my name is Arlene,
My husband’s name is Alfred,
We live in Albany
And we eat Apples, and so on through the alphabet.

My grandmother had an old victrola with the wind up handle and, “It’s a long way to Tiperarie; it’s a long way to go; it’s a long way to Tiperarie, to the sweetest girl I know…” and of course, “There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover” which everybody old knows. -Arlene

Arlene mentioned other sayings in an earlier email:

“Go up to your kind policeman; he’ll tell you just where to go.”

-From NYC school system, to keep children from getting frightened if they got lost, around 1940.

Also, my husband remembers his uncle singing a rhyme:

“Sitting on a curbstone chewing Pepsin gum….
Go on you big fat lobster, said the little bum.”

And that brings me to expressions like “Eh Gads and Saints Preserve Us and For Heaven’s Sake” – nobody, boy or girl ever swore that I can recall, but there were many funny exclamations like these.

There were wonderful rope jumping rhymes and I am trying to bring them back to mind – if I had a word or two, I know it would come. Maybe one of your readers knows part of a phrase and I could then remember.

Just tickling our memories. -Arlene

If anyone would like to share any rhymes or songs from the 1930’s and ’40’s to help Arlene remember, please feel free to comment below or email me.

Lisa