Netherlandish Proverbs--(ii)

I can't help it--the plain fact of the matter is that I look a ton more Dutch than Spanish. I don't wear wooden shoes, but when I walk, I klompen. So one day, by myself somewhere in the Netherlands, I was walking down Main Street among a host of others while the kind of rainy mist that's native to my country of origin was all around. 

I have no idea who he was, will never know, but a man who happened to be walking beside said something about the foggy morning, and did so with an intonation I recognized as some old proverb he knew because everyone did. It never dawned on him that I didn't, so I have no idea what he said. No matter. I looked at him and smiled, as if to tell him that about the clingy mist, he'd nailed it. 

The penchant for ancient wisdom in a wee package is, at least to me, quintessentially Dutch. Ben Franklin may well have been America's first proverb peddler--"a stitch in time saves nine." Poor Richard had a notebook full. But the Dutch are masters.

Wee wisdom is going on in Pieter Brueghel's Netherlandish Proverbs, a canvas full of sermons in teaspoons, more of a catechism than a masterpiece.  

Try this: 

I wouldn't doubt that the man's red pantlegs signify something, but what I don't know. He appears to be pulling along chunk of a trunk that may or may not have legs like a stool. By the angle of his efforts, it's a stiff job. There's a bit of Sisyphus here maybe, that poor king sentenced by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill endlessly.  

The Dutch line is easy enough, just three words: "de blok slepen," which Wikipedia translates as "to drag the block" and explains as "to work at a pointless task." It's his punishing duty to drag this beastly thing around, for what sin or crime we don't know. What seems to be implied is that his sentence is not likely to end soon.

Somewhere, however, this little witticism developed a specific usage by what Shakespeare called "cuckolding." Apparently, there's often something sexual about this man's misery. Poor guy was deceived by a lover. He is, therefore, dragging the block. Linguistically, that doesn't work in English, which is not to say it's beyond understanding. Still, I get it.

Here's another: 

So I'm walking my kids' dog on one of those expanding leashes, which is likely a mistake, given my idiocy about things mechanical. Without letting me know, the dog bolts. He's just a lap dog whose most fearsome trait is his bark. But immediately I'm thinking the worst: he'll get hit by a car or he'll run off to Fort Sill. So I take off after him.

Well, that's a misrepresentation--"take off" bears no resemblance to what happened on that sidewalk. I'm 71 years old, and the fact is, I haven't run or jogged since having back surgery 20 years ago. I didn't "take off" because what I learned at that moment is that I can't run. Somewhere in the earlier chapters of my story, I left running, never was my forte' anyway, behind. What I learned at that moment is that I can't run--not that I don't run, but I can't. Literally. Fifty feet away, the dog stopped and waited for me. An act of mercy. Didn't giggle either. 

Brueghel's old woman here is running, doing the impossible. She is highly conscious of those beasts at her heels and thoroughly believes they mean to make a meal of her. In the fire of her adroit fear, in her madness, she runs. 

Maybe I could too with those medieval beasts salivating behind me. 

Noot doet zelfs oude vrouwen rennen--"thus doth fear make old women trot." What you can do if you have to is amazing. 

One more quickie. Gotta love it, but then, unlike the English, the potato-eating Dutch are un-apologetically earthy. 

It's not pretty. In Dutch, the line goes like this:  Paardonkeutels zijn geen vijgen, or "horseapples are not figs," which is just an blushingly Dutch turn on "you can't tell a book by its cover" or "all that glitters is not gold." Better yet, "you can't make a purse from a sow's ear," or, to return to the Dutch, "you can't put pink ribbons on wooden shoes."

That's more than enough wisdom for one morning.
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All three proverbs exist in the upper right hand corner of Netherlandic Proverbs.