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Paper short abstract

Globally birds and beasts are familiar in proverbs. My paper explores those in a classic corpus of 100 common European proverbs. The fauna include both domestic and wild as well as exotic. In some proverbs the animals vary from language to language. The corpus includes the odd Universal proverb.

Paper long abstract

Animals and birds are familiar referents in proverbs worldwide but which and how frequently? My proposal is to explore the fauna which occur in a classic corpus of proverbs, namely, Gyula Paczolay's 'European Proverbs in 55 Languages with Equivalents in Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese.' (Veszprem 1997). The corpus consists of around 100 proverbs which the Editor defines as 'Common European,' namely, those found throughout Europe and in over half of the 55 living languages there. My paper will look at how often within the corpus fauna are used as the main referents and what kind of fauna feature - domesticated -dog, wild -hare, exotic -elephant? Are there any mythological animals? The range is quite astonishing and even includes insects. Do some categories show up more than others and why? In certain proverbs some fauna are specifically named while other proverbs simply use generics such as 'bird,' 'fish' or 'snake'. In some proverbs this varies from language to language and, again, possible reasons why will be suggested. The Editor of the corpus, Paczolay, designates a few of the one hundred different proverbs 'Universal,' that is, that they also occur in several non-European languages like Arabic and Japanese. 'A barking dog doesn't bite' is one such. As well as being found outside Europe it is the third commonest within Europe. The other Universal proverbs will be highlit and a special look will be taken of the proverbs in Ireland which are in Paczolay's top one hundred.