PHRASE AND FABLE

Prof. K. VISWANATHAM

There is a phrase in every fable and a fable in every phrase. Meeting words and phrases is as exciting as meeting friends or strangers. We may not be knowing much even about friends and we know nothing about strangers. We should try to elicit their biographies. This paper tries to narrate the stories in some expressions. Most people use words without knowing their etymology. They speak or write in a language without a knowledge of the origins of expressions in that language. But a knowledge of etymology makes us more sensitive to the sumless treasures in the little room of a word. Stevenson, for instance, refer to volcanic regions as tremendous neighbourhood: tremendous comes from a Latin root meaning tremble and volcanic region trembles and inspires awe; in Stevenson’s use of the word the ordinary meaning and the etymological coalesce aptly and capitally. Likewise if we know how the expressions we use arise, there is keener appreciation. How many of us suspect a story behind expression: “There is many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip” Ancaeus, the helmsman of Jason’s ship Argo, was told by a slave that he would never live to taste the wine of his vineyards. When a bottle made from his own grapes was set before him, he sent for the slave to laugh at his prognostications. But the slave made the remark about the slip betwixt the cup and the lip. At this instant a messenger came in and told Ancaeus that the Calydonian boar was laying waste his vineyards, whereupon he set down his cup, went out against the boar and was killed in the encounter. Nothing is certain until we possess it: someone refined this expression more precisely into “There is many a slip betwixt the lip and the sip.”

“halavidhiparipakah kenava langhaniyah”

We advise others “Stick to your last.” This refers to a Greek painter Apelles. The Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, tells the story that the painter was in the habit of hanging pictures where they could be seen by the passers-by and listening to their comments. One day a shoemaker criticized the shoe latchet in a picture and found the next day that it was repainted. Proud of his success as a critic he began to find fault with the thigh in the picture when Apelles called out from behind the canvas: “Shoemaker don’t go above your last.” Last means the wooden or metal model for shaping the footwear. However clever the cobbler may be at his trade, he should not try to give advice on other matters. A plumber does not welcome the advice of an electrician nor the electrician that of the plumber. A chemistry man should not try to be an authority on physics or physics man on civil engineering. Today everybody is an authority on areas other than his own and all are authorities on the teaching of English. Hence the saying, “Cobbler, stick to your last.” In these days of inter-disciplinary approach one should not perhaps stick to the last. We may not know even the last. As Arnold puts it, one who knows only the Bible does not know even the Bible.

Because of the lack of knowledge, words and expressions are incorrectly used. For instance, the word “allergy” in the medical sense has nothing to do with “dislike”. “Students are allergic to studies”, we say; this is incorrect. One may be allergic to something of which one is very fond.

Likewise the expression: “If the mountain does not come to Mahomet, Mahomet shall go to the mountain” is used, as if Mahomet’s pretensions are seen through. On the other hand the story reveals the uncanny insight of Mahomet by which he snatched victory from defeat. The Arabs were reluctant to accept the teaching of Mahomet until he performed a miracle. He ordered Mt. Safa outside the holy city of Mecca to come to him. When it did not move, he said: “God is merciful. Had it obeyed me, it would have fallen on us and destroyed us. I will therefore go to the mountain and thank God that He had mercy on us.” This ought to remind one of the stories of William the Conqueror who slipped and fell as soon as he set foot on English soil but converted a bad omen to one of thanks-giving.

Greek myth and fable, the Bible and Literature and History are the matrix for most of these expressions. “Sisyphean task”, meaning an endless and fruitless task, refers to Sisyphus, king of Corinth, condemned by Zeus for his cruelty to roll a huge stone up a high mountain on reaching the summit of which it rolled to the bottom. Dionysius, king of Syracuse, wishing to teach Damocles, a flattering courtier, a lesson, had a sword suspended above him by a hair at a banquet, to show the precariousness of happiness and we get the expression “Damocles’s sword” “A sop to Cerberus”, meaning a bribe, is the story of the many-headed dog lulled to sleep by a medicated cake by the Sibyl who then entered Hades. “Apple of discord”, meaning cause of quarrel, is the apple which the Goddess Eris threw among the gods and Goddesses at the marriage of Thetis and Peleus to which she was not invited–ultimately the cause of the Trojan War. Thetis to make her son invulnerable held him by the heel and dipped him in Styx. So that part remained vulnerable and the arrow of Paris pierced him there. Hence the expression “the Achillean heel.” Scylla and Charybdis are the two dangers encountered by the Argonauts–two legendary monsters on the Italian and Scilian shores–if you avoid the one, you are caught by the other. Stevenson writes that the Gordian knot should be smilingly unravelled. Alexander could not unfasten it, so cut it and unfastened it, as it was prophesied that whoever unfastened it would be the conqueror of the world. The pole of the wagon in which Gordius, a peasant of ancient Phyrygia, travelled and was made king, was fastened to the yoke by a kind of bark: “to cut the Gordian knot” is to slove a difficulty by drastic action. Not even a student of literature suspects a Greek story behind expressions like – Leave no stone unturned, flea in the ear, put shoulder to the wheel, under the rose. Polycrates, a Theban of the 5th C. B. C., wanted to find out a treasure hidden in the battlefield of Plataea by a Persian general Mardonius, defeated by the Greeks and was told in these words by the Delphic Oracle and he found the treasure. “Under the rose,” meaning serecy, alludes to the rose given by the Cupid to Harpocrates, the God of silence, not to betray the amours of Venus. When Croseus, the king of Lydia, demanded tribute of Samos, the Samians influenced by Aesop sent back the ambassador with “a flea in his ear” meaning peremptory dismissal. Hercules reprimanded the carter that he should not call upon gods without putting his shoulders to the wheel and putting the cart out of the rut.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 B. C. unconstitutionally, he took a decisive and irrevocable step: “crossing the Rubicon” means such a step. A Pyrrhic victory is as good as defeat because of the remark made by Pyrrhus, king of_Epirus, at Asculum in 280 B. C. when he defeated the Romans: Another such victory and we are done for. From Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice we get “a pound of flesh” and from Don Quixote, “a pot calling the kettle black.” The Bible, of course, is one of the great reservoirs of phrases. “Cast the first stone” refers to the story of Jesus and the woman taken in adultery. Jesus told the Pharisees, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” What is wrong with “putting new wine in old bottles?” Old bottles are economical too. The point is, “bottle” in this expression does not mean a bottle made of glass but a wineskin which is liable to burst if new wine is put into it. “Out-Heroding Herod” is obvious. “Writing on the wall” refers to the mystic writing at Nebuchednazer’s feast. Expressions like “seeing eye to eye with,” “iron entered his soul.” “he who runs may read” are incorrect translations of the Hebrew. “Go to the dogs” meaning take to bad courses is curiously from the Bible. We know that the Greeks and the Romans extolled the fidelity of the dog enshrined in the remark of a French wit: The more I see dogs the less I like human beings and in a poem by Wordsworth. Of course some Greek philosophers belonging to the sect of Antisthenes who believed in doing publicly what is natural were called cynics derived from the Greek word meaning dog. In the Bible the dog appears as an unclean and degraded animal. Shakespeare too does not seem to think well of dogs. And we call him “universal,” quips Bradley. The only favourable mention in the Bible is that of the dog which accompanied Tobias as the dog in the Mahabharata accompanied Dharma who would not enter even heaven without it. Eliot in The Waste Land has the line:

Oh keep the dog hence that is friend to men

Or with his nails he will dig it up again!

We the well-known fables. A man having a goose that laid a golden egg everyday cut it open to get what he imagined would be a large number of eggs to findthat all he had was a dead bird. A monkey wished to get chestnuts from the fire without hurting itself and used the paw of a cat. A shepherd boy so often cried wolf to cause excitement and alarm to the neighbours that, when at last a wolf did come, nobody paid attention and all the sheep, he was in charge of, were killed. A market woman said she would sell all her eggs, buy a goose, grow rich, then buy a cow and so on but in her excitement she kicked over the basket and all her eggs were broken. The race was won by the slow tortoise which plodded steadily on while the fast hare, confident of victory, took things too easily. These fables give us–the goose that lays the golden eggs, cat’s paw, cry wolf!, count the chickens before the eggs are hatched, slow and steady wins the race. Giving one the cold shoulder may arise from giving cold shoulder of beef to a guest who has overstayed and grass widows are perhaps wives sent to the grass of the hills by the husbands in the plains. Some expressions may have to be reviled. A blue moon or sun is seen everyday somewhere in the world. Coal may have to be carried to Newcastle. Why a hatter should be taken as a typical madman in ‘mad as a hatter’ is not known. “Tit for tat” may have been originally “tip for tap,” tip meaning a blow. Let us find out why Hobson’s choice means no choice, that sending to conventry may be connected with the covin tree, that in Shakespeare’s I cannot tell what the Dickens his name is, Dickens cannot have anything to do with the novelist. “Devil to pay” may be from the story of Dr Faustus who bartered away his soul to the Devil for the pleasures of the world and in the expression “between the devil and the deep sea” the devil has nothing to do with the devil. Can we guess that ‘canter’ comes from the way pilgrims rode to Canterbury? And a lord’s gambling gives us ‘sandwich.’

The romance of words and expressions is the truest romance: there may be elopement but no divorce; language is the biography of the human mind. He who turns away from Semantics turns away from sense and makes noises like an animal: vidya vihinah pasuh. In the words of Wilfred Funk words are windows to look though at the past; words are alive with history and are an exciting adventives.

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