Читать книгу Proverbs of All Nations, Compared, Explained, and Illustrated онлайн

23 страница из 49

He that marries a widow will have a dead man's head cast in his dish.

Happy is the wife who is married to a motherless son.

"Uno animo omnes socrus oderunt nurus," says Terence; and this is the common testimony of experience in all ages and countries. "The husband's mother is the wife's devil" (German, Dutch).ssss1 "As long as I was a daughter-in-law I never had a good mother-in-law, and as long as I was a mother-in-law I never had a good daughter-in-law" (Spanish).ssss1 "The mother-in-law forgets that she was a daughter-in-law" (Spanish).ssss1 "She is well married who has neither mother-in-law nor sister-in-law" (Spanish).ssss1 Men, too, do not always regard their wives' mothers with tender affection, and some of the many bitter sayings against mothers-in-law seem to be common to both sexes. Such is this queer Ulster rhyme:—

"Of all the ould women that ever I saw,

Sweet bad luck to my mother in-law."

Also these Low German:—"There is no good mother-in-law but she that wears a green gown;"ssss1 i.e., that is covered with the turf of the churchyard;—"The best mother-in-law is she on whose gown the geese feed;"ssss1 and this Portuguese, "If my mother-in-law dies, I will fetch somebody to flay her."ssss1