Nederlandisch Proverbs--(vi)

That Dutch I'm not. Both my dad and my father-in-law loved pickled herring, but I didn't grow up with the madness some Dutch folks carry about in their genes, a sinful lust for a fish so small they should really be thrown back. They eat 'em raw, too, which is almost enough to make me pledge my ethnic allegiance elsewhere on the continent.

I remember once being in Amsterdam at that much ballyhooed time when the new catch arrives, late spring to early summer. Herring don't suddenly appear in the North Sea; for most of the year the tasty little morsels lack the plumpness the Dutch love. Hence, come June, when they're well-rounded, fresh-from-the-sea herring--brine-d or soused--hit the market in a storm of well-relished saltiness, and the Dutch go all fish-y.

And, no, nobody frys 'em or bakes 'em or rolls 'em in corn meal. They eat 'em raw. Grab 'em by the tail, raise 'em up high, and lower them onto the tongue. Not at all Calvinistic.

Herring are so unmistakably Dutch that, as you can imagine, even in the 16th century Breughel couldn't leave them alone--whole schools of herring proverbs are here on this famous canvas.

On the far left, a third of the way up, on his knees inside the building, a man is working hard at cleaning fish--herring, of course. You can hardly see him. Let me bring him up a little.

--this guy, flailing away with his left hand. You're going to have to trust me on this--or rather Wikipedia--because even up as close, it's a stretch to see he's cleaning fish, but he is. What I'm told Brueghel has in mind is the old saw, De haring braden om de hom of kuit, which likely doesn't translate well, but is meant to suggest that he's doing way too much for far too little, frying all of the fish for the sake of the roe, the meaty, delicious part--which is to say (maybe especially to retired people like me), you're taking far too long to finish something that could have been done in an hour. (Couldn't help saying that because here, as we say, "the shoe fits.")

But there's more. The poor guy is simply working too hard at getting the goods ready to eat. De hering braadt hier niet, is another old saw that works, I'm told. It's an assessment that may well have to be translated into the present tense--"the herring is not frying well here." In other words, poor guy is working way too hard, which suggests that things are just not going all that swimmingly.

Above the guy's head another poor herring hangs, the source of yet another proverb. If you look on the canvas, you'll see him right beneath the globe . Here he is, up close--

Real Dutch scholars assign two old aphorisms to this fated character. First, De haring hangt on zijn eigen kieuen ("the herring hangs by his own gills"--which is to say, he's the culprit who got himself in trouble). More than a little unkind to a sad little fish far out of water. A rough English equivalent is "hoist by his own petard," which is not Dutch, but Shakespearean (Hamlet actually), suggesting that none of these wise little proverbs are "just" Dutch. Really, they're all unmistakably human. It's just that the Dutch are preachers. Me too.

Last bite of herring? How about this: Daar steekt meer in dan een enkele panhering, which roughly translates this way: "there's more in it than an empty herring," or there's more to it than meets the eye.

It's all rather catechism-like, don't you think? This entire painting, loaded to the gills with wisdom, is a sober course in life itself. 

Today, I swear, I'm going to buy some pickled herring and try to figure out what both my fathers loved so well. If I don't finish it, I'll send you what's left.