lives," implies that disagreeable actions, instead of being lost sight
of, only too frequently cling to a man in after years, or, as Ray says,
"stink in his nostrils." The man who abandons some good enterprise for a
worthless, or insignificant, undertaking is said to "cut down an oak and
plant a thistle," of which there is a further version, "to cut down an
oak and set up a strawberry." The truth of the next adage needs no
comment--"Usurers live by the fall of heirs, as swine by the droppings
of acorns."

Things that are slow but sure in their progress are the subject of a
well-known Gloucestershire saying:--

"It is as long in coming as Cotswold barley."

"The corn in this cold country," writes Ray, "exposed to the winds,
bleak and shelterless, is very backward at the first, but afterwards
overtakes the forwardest in the country, if not in the barn, in the
bushel, both for the quantity and goodness thereof." According to the
Italians, "Every grain hath its bran," which corresponds with our
saying, "Every bean hath its black," The meaning being that nothing is
without certain imperfections. A person in extreme poverty is often
described as being "as bare as the birch at Yule Even," and an
ill-natured or evil-disposed person who tries to do harm, but cannot, is
commonly said to:--

"Jump at it like a cock at a gooseberry."

Then the idea of durableness is thus expressed in a Wiltshire proverb:--

"An eldern stake and a blackthorn ether [hedge],