"He is not worth his ears full of water,"—
which last, one might see, is the proverb of a
thirsty country.

When we say, "Such a man is like Paul
Pry," the Spaniards say, "He is like the soul
of Garibary." When we say, "That will be
when pigs fly," they say, "When oxen fly."
When we say, "That is to expect to catch fish
ready roasted," they say, "That is to expect
the wolf to leave meat at your door." When
we say, "Such a one is on the ground," they
say "At the horse's feet" When we say
"It is not for asses to lick honey," they say,
"Pine–apple  kernels are not for monkeys."
When we say, a naked person is dressed in
"Adam's livery," they say, he is "as the
devil appeared to Saint Benedict." All
stories we tell of Yorkshiremen, Spaniards
tell of Biscayans or Andalusians. The
contempt we heap on Frenchmen in old stories,
they pile on the Portuguese. A large class of
Spanish proverbs consists of sayings of some
fabulous personage like our Robin Hood or
Friar Tuck. Such is Pedro Grullo, who
when his hand was closed called it his fist;
Martha, who sang when she had had her
dinner; Zonta, whose dogs, when they had
nothing else to bite, bit each other; and
daughter Gomez, who looked well and ate
well.

There is, indeed, no end to the wit and salt
of Spanish proverbs, by which a clever man
with a good memory might find something
clever to say for a whole year's conversation,
and yet not take the trouble to invent or
coin one new observation of his own. A
Spaniard's conversation without a proverb in
it, would be indeed like a sermon without a
quotation from Saint Augustin, or an olla
without bacon.

As marginal references to Spanish history,
as running comments on Spanish social
manners, these proverbs are invaluable; for
here you have a nation who still have
proverbs without having books, and who still
sing and recite ballads, such as we now collect
in England as antiquarianisms. It would
not be difficult to get some hard hits at the
national church of Spain from the proverbs,
which show that if there was never a
Reformation in Spain, at least there were
lampooners and bitter–tongued would–be
reformers. They say, "The sacristan's
money comes singing and goes singing;"
"That the devil gets up to the belfry by the
vicar's skirts;" " That the friar says No, and
holds out his cowl." "We pray by saints,
but not by all of them," is another saying of
some unknown Spanish Wickliffe.

Now, whether proverbs are verses of old
books broken loose, or lines of old romances
escaped from their cages, or wise men's
sayings passed from mouth to mouth, and so
handed down—certain it is that many
proverbs allude to local stories, in themselves
very amusing, but not intelligible unless you
know the story.

Of these my Moro, on board the steamer,
told me many: whenever, indeed, I stopped
him at a saying I did not understand: for
instance, when we say such a thing is
"everybody's secret," they say it is "the secret of
Anchuelos." This refers to a story of a
shepherd and shepherdess who kept their
flocks almost as wise as themselves on two
hills on either side of the town of Anchuelos.
All their "dart–and–heart" raptures
were bandied from hill to hill, and they
always concluded, by mutual entreaties, to
keep what all the towns–people below could
hear—a profound secret. "The help of
Escalona " is another proverb with a story.
Escalona is a town eight leagues from Toledo,
and is built upon a steep hill, at the foot
of which runs the river Alberche. It was
once burnt down from the difficulty of bringing
up the water, and, as in Spain, all evils
curable only by forethought and energy are
incurable, the same difficulty is still
unremedied, and the town, named after the
Eastern Ascalon, is still in danger.

Another well–known Spanish story turns
on the proverb,"God save you. Peter!" "There
is no need; the ass is strong." It arose from
a kind man seeing a countryman run away
with by his mule. And seeing it he cried,
looking after him, "God save you! " But
Sancho looking back as he jolted on, cried
simply, "There is no fear; the mule is
strong." Ambrose, whose carbine was "worth
threepence less than nothing," is as well known
in proverbial history as the Pedro and Guzman,
who are always doing foolish things,
just like Juan de Urdemala, who would
"have the whole mountain or nothing."

Of the numerous stories of the simple
Biscayner who outwits everybody, like the
Irishman in old jest–books, the best is one of a
Bilboa man who is dining off fish with two
mocking Castilians. When the fish is put on
the table, one of the Castilians says he
does not like the part near the head, and the
other declares he cannot touch the part near
the tail, meaning to divide the middle between
them. Upon this the Biscayner cuts the
fish in three pieces, gives the head to the
tail hater, the tail to the head hater, and
puts the middle on his own plate, saying,
with a grin: "The silly Biscayner takes the
middle."

There is no occasion when a Spaniard will
not use a proverb; he is full of them, and
when a cigar is not in his mouth, out comes a
proverb. When you see a band of gossips
balancing on ricketty chairs at the barber's
door; the little shining brass basin dangling
and glittering over head; there the air is full
of proverb as the summer air of flies. When
muleteers, whips in hand, meet at a road–
side wine–shop, there proverbs flutter about
thick as bees round a hawthorn bush in
flower. Where round the green billiard–table
the brown burgesses of Spanish cities meet by
lamplight, there are proverbs swarming thick