Collection of Scotch Proverbs | Page 2

another with the manuscript against the book. Since only twelve proverbs from this second manuscript are in print, any inferences about relationships are risky.
The successful career of Fergusson's collection or the manuscripts from which it was derived extended even farther than a share in the collections already mentioned. In four collections which remain to be discussed we can reckon with a close direct or indirect connection with Fergusson's printed text. John Ray printed Fergusson's collection in a partially anglicized form with minor changes and additions of uncertain origin in A Collection of English Proverbs (London, 1670). This book became, after several editions, the foundation of the standard modern collections. Except for anglicization, "D" in Ray, and Fergusson, 1641, agree exactly even to tearm [term] in "Dead and marriage make tearm-day." Variations not found in the edition of 1641 like reply for plie [plea] in "Na plie is best" and churn for kirne in "Na man can seek his marrow in the kirne, sa weill as hee that has been in it himself" suggest that Ray may have been following a later edition than that of 1641. According to Beveridge (p. xvi), Fergusson's collection also appears in _A Select Collection of Scots Poems, Chiefly in the Broad Buchan Dialect_ (Edinburgh, 1777, 1785). The two editions are the same, except that that of 1777 has no publisher's name and that of 1785 was issued by T. Ruddiman and Co. The proverbs come at the end and are paged separately.
Finally, Fergusson's collection was the source of both this collection bearing the mysterious name Pappity Stampoy and a derivative of it, but again with some modifications. Since all the variations except the Latin parallel texts that are, according to Beveridge (pp. xxxvii-xxxix), characteristic of the edition of Fergusson published in 1692 are present in Pappity Stampoy, these variations must have been introduced into one or both of the editions of 1649 and 1659. With such information as is at present available it is impossible to determine whether Pappity Stampoy's rare additions were his own or were also derived, as seems probable, from an edition of Fergusson. Such proverbs as "Drunken wife gat ay the drunken penny" (Pappity Stampoy, p. 17), "Eat and drink measurely, and defie the mediciners" (p. 18), and "Put your hand into the creel, and you will get either an adder, or an Eele" (p. 43) do not appear in the 1641 edition, but may be present in a later one. In any event, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs vouches for the currency of the last two proverbs in the sixteenth century. Pappity Stampoy may have followed his source in rejecting the "Proverbiale speeches" (Beveridge, pp. 46-50) or may have discarded them on his own responsibility. As F. P. Wilson points out, he showed ingenuity of a sort. "The thief jumbles the order of the first 81 proverbs given in Fergusson under the letter A; then, having put his reader off the scent, he gives the remaining proverbs under this letter in Fergusson's order. Under another letter he may give a run of proverbs in reverse order." [6]
Pappity Stampoy, who was scarcely an honorable man, soon got a Roland for his Oliver. As Wilson says, the _Adagia Scotica or a Collection of Scotch Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Collected by R. B. Very Usefull and Delightfull_ (London: Nathaniel Brooke, 1668) "Turns out to be a page-for-page reprint ... provided with a new title and the initials of a new collector in order (is it unjust to say?) to deceive customers."
Apart from its rarity, Pappity Stampoy's little book has both a curious interest and a value of its own. Bibliographers have failed to decipher the pseudonym, or to identify the printer. Some lucky chance may supply the answers to these questions. The collection has some value to a student of proverbs for a few scantily recorded texts that have presumably been taken from the 1659 edition of Fergusson. Although they do not appear in the old standard collections made by Bohn, Apperson, and Hazlitt, Morris P. Tilley, who has used R. B.'s collection, has found and pinned them down. More interesting and important than such details about the recording of proverbs is the publication of Pappity Stampoy's book in London. It is therefore an early instance of English interest in Scottish proverbs. R. B.'s plagiarism of 1668 is in the same tradition, and so also is John Bay's publication of Scottish proverbs in 1670. A selection of 126 Scottish proverbs, which like the others appears to have been derived from Fergusson, may be found in the anonymous _Select Proverbs, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Scotish, British &c_. (London, 1707), which is credited to John Mapletoft. It was reprinted with a slight variation in title in 1710. F. P. Wilson notes an even better