proverb, authors from Chaucer's time, and earlier, apparently did
attempt on occasion to distinguish the common English proverb as
a species in itself. The proverb was designated most often, perhaps,
as "the common proverb," the "proverb of old English," or "our
English proverb." It was known, also, as an "old proverb," an "old
ancient proverb," "the proverb of antiquity," "the old spoken prov-
erb," or "the old and trite proverb."

Current synonyms for the proverb included "ballad," "byword,"
"old clerk's saw," "text," "old said saw," "old common saying," and
"word." Palsgrave and Elyot, as noted, called it "adage," and Richard
Huloet called it "the vulgar speech," ² anticipating the common
seventeenth-century reference to it as "the vulgar proverb."

Heywood himself used a wide variety of synonyms for the common
proverb in his Dialogue of Proverbs: "old balet" ( 1729), "old saw"
( 1915), "old said saw" ( 1611), "sage said saw" (109), "sage saying"
(121), "term" ( 1645, 1741, 2204[B]), "text" (2521), "old text" (1203);
and "lessons" (909), "parables" (123), "sentences" (320, 838, 1195),
"old things" (832).

Although Heywood, as well as earlier and contemporary writers,
employed innumerable synonyms or substitute expressions for the
common proverb, they agreed traditionally in the belief in the
inherent wisdom, efficacy, and need for interpretation of proverb
and adage alike. They learned from Scripture of the mystery or
enigma of proverb:

These are the prouerbes of Salomon the sonne of Dauid Kynge of
Israel: to lerne wysdome nurtoure, vnderstondinge, prudence,
rightuousnesse, iudgment and equite. That the very babes might
haue knowlege and vnderstondinge. By hearinge, the wyse mā
shal cōme by more wysdome: and by experience, he shal be more
apte to vnderstonde a parable, and the interpretacion therof: the
wordes of the wyse, and the darcke speaches of the same. ³

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