Walter K. Kelly

Children are certain cares, but uncertain comforts.

"Little children and headaches—great children and heartaches" (Italian).[115] Nevertheless, "He knows not what love is that has not children" (Italian).[116]

It is a wise child that knows his own father.

Happily, as a French sage remarks, "One is always somebody's child, and that is a comfort."[117] "The child names the father; the mother knows him" (Livonian).

The mother knows best if the child be like the father.

The mither's breath is aye sweet.—Scotch.

This proverb, which belongs exclusively to Scotland, appears to me even more "exquisitely graceful and tender" than that German and French proverb so justly admired by Dean Trench, "Mother's truth keeps constant youth."[118] "There is no mother like the mother that bore us" (Spanish).[119] "The child that gets a stepmother gets a stepfather also" (Danish).[120]

The crow thinks her own bird the fairest.

"Every mother's child is handsome" (German).[121] "No ape but swears he has the finest children" (German).[122] "If our child squints, our neighbour's child has a cast in both eyes" (Livonian).

As the old cock crows so crows the young; or,

As the old cock crows the young cock learns.

If the mare have a bald face the filly will have a blaze.

Trot feyther, trot mither, how can foal amble?—Scotch.

Children generally follow the example of their parents, but imitate their faults more surely than their virtues. Thus,—

A light-heeled mother makes a heavy-heeled daughter.

Unless the mother transfers a part of her household cares to the daughter, the latter will grow up in sloth and ignorance of good housewifery. "A tender-hearted mother rears a scabby daughter" (French, Italian).[123]

A child may have too much of its mother's blessing.

Her foolish fondness may spoil it.

The worst store is a maid unbestowed.—Welsh.

"A house full of daughters is a cellar full of sour beer" (Dutch).[124] Chaucer says,—

"Marry your son when you will, and your daughter when you can" (Spanish).[125]

This is a woman's calculation. She knows that a son-in-law will submit to her sway more tamely than a daughter-in-law.

Little pitchers have long ears.

"What the child hears at the fire is soon known at the minster" (French).[126]

Children and fools tell truth.

And tell it when it were better left untold. "These terrible children!" (French.)[127]

Children and fools have merry lives.

They quickly forget past sorrows, and are careless of the future.

Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when they are old.