"When, wild with delight, I saw a swallow glancing through the sunny springtime air, I ran to tell my father. Can I forget how he too, who had been a 'snapper-up of unconsidered trifles,' seeming not to share in my gladness, looked up and said warningly, 'One swallow does not make a summer.' '”—LOUISE V. Boyd in Arthur's Magazine, 1873.

"It's surely summer, for there's a swallow:
Come one swallow, his mate will follow,

The bird-race quicken and wheel and thicken.” CHRISTINA G. Rosetti, A.d. 1830-1894, Bird Song.

VARIANT PROVERBS

A single flower or a single swallow does not always announce the Spring. (Armenian).

One actor cannot make a play. (Chinese).

One basket of grapes does not make a vintage. (Italian). One brier does not make a hedge. (Italian).

One cloud does not make a winter. (Osmanli).

One crow does not make a winter. (German, Dutch). One day of great heat never yet made a summer. (Breton). One devil does not make hell. (Italian).

One finger does not make a hand nor one swallow a sum

One flower does not make spring. (Latin, Osmanli).
One flower makes no garland. (English).

One horseman does not raise a dust cloud. (Bannu).
One rain won't make a crop. (Negro-Tide-water section

of Georgia).

One stone does not make a stone wall. (Osmanli.)

One swallow does not make a spring nor one woodcock a winter. (English).

One tree does not make a forest. (Negro-Tide-water section of Georgia).

ALLIED PROVERBS

One dose will not cure nor one feed make fat. (Gaelic). One grain fills not a sack but helps his fellows. (English). One makes not a people-nor a town. (African-Accra). What dust will rise from one horseman. (Bannu).

When one man has his stomach full it cannot satisfy every man. (Vai-West Africa).

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE

60

The proverb is applied to people who in their endeavor to extricate themselves from one difficulty complicate themselves in another and greater difficulty; or who, laboring under hard conditions, seek relief in an employment where the work is much more severe.

The origin of the saying is not known. It is used in various forms in different parts of the world. In its old Latin form: "Out of the smoke into the flame" it predates the fourth century for we find it quoted by Amianus Marcellinus, the Roman historian. In its Greek form which is the same as the Latin it was used by Lucian the satirical writer in the second century.

The English equivalent-"Out of the frying pan into the fire" seems to have a direct reference to fish that fall into the flame when being cooked. John Heywood (A.D. 1497-1580) wrote:

"I mislike not only your watch in vain,

But also, if ye took him, what could ye gain?
From suspicion to knowledge of ill, forsooth!
Could make ye do but as the flounder doeth-
Leap out of the frying pan into the fire,

And change from ill pain to worse is worth small hire."

A writer in Blackwoods Magazine (1864) gives

expression to the same idea in the stanza: ·

"The fish that left the frying pan,

On feeling that desire, sir,
Took little by their change of plan,

When floundering in the fire, sir.”

Several of Æsop's fables illustrate the thought of the proverb. Among them may be noted The old Woman and her Maids, The Ass and his Master and The Stag and the Lion.

In modern times we find it illustrated by a West African practice. On cold nights, it is said, the Negroes of the gold coast huddle close to a fire for warmth. Sometimes the smoke from the burning logs annoys them and in half wakeful condition they call to their companions who are near the blaze, to remove the smoking log. Should the log be removed and the smoke continue, the request is repeated and another log is thrown aside. This being done a number of times the fire goes out and there is no warmth. In relieving themselves of the annoyance of smoke they have the greater annoyance of cold. This occurs so often that the practice gave rise to the Oji proverb-"Throw it away! Throw it away! Then we shall soon sleep without fire."

On the Afghan frontier a story is told of a certain Hindoo, who, being ordered by a Mohammedan king to repeat when attending him the words "Ram, Ram," the requirement so

annoyed the Hindoo that he determined to escape from the tyranny of such a useless procedure, so he fled and, being captured, was sold into slavery, hence the Pashto saying-"I was escaping from the Ram and fell on hard work."

A pictorial illustration of the proverb is found in Barber's Hand Book (1859) where a man is represented as seeking to escape from a wolf. In his endeavor to keep beyond the animal's reach he came to a precipice and is shown as hanging on a rock above the yawning chasm and near to the wolf's savage teeth. The stanza beneath the picture tells the story of the man's dilemma thus:

"See here a man doth true courage lack,
He flies apace-a wolf is on his track;

Nearer he comes-the man doth swifter flee;
The verge he gains; he leaps into the sea:
Out of one danger into one more great,
The foolish creature finds his certain fate."

"The short and the long is, I take it to be the wisest course to jog home and look after our harvest and not to run rambling from Ceca to Mecca, lest we 'leap out of the frying pan into the fire,' or 'out of God's blessing into the warm sun.'"-MIGUEL de Cervantes Saavedra, A.D. 1547-1616, Don Quixote.

"Thus must I from the smoke into the smother;
From tyrant Duke into tyrant brother:

But heavenly Rosalind!"

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A.D. 1564-1616, As You Like It.