Proverb about singing

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Oct 10 - 04:10 AM

My mother's version was "Sing before breakfast, cry before supper". She was never sure why either.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 05:45 PM

"Whistle before breakfast - tears before bed time".

One that my mother used to quote, I have no idea of the reasoning behind it.

"Who knows, the horse may sing".

An optimists view of the world about the story of the man who told the King that he could teach a horse to sing or else be put to death if he failed.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,ArranBrownButterfly
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 05:34 PM

One of the Guide Laws was along the lines of,

'A Guide smiles and sings at all times'.

When I was in the Guides this had changed to,

'A Guide has courage and is cheerful in all difficulties'.

Hence my imperfect recollection of the older version, as it wasn't the one I had to learn. Doubtless some slightly older ex-Guide can put me right.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: mayomick
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 12:38 PM

One of William Blake's Proverbs from Hell isn't solely about singing but I think it applies.

"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings"

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,CrazyEddie
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 10:24 AM

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought

Not a proverb, a line from "Ode to a Skylark" by Shelley


I've also heard something along the lines of "sing good & loud, & if you can't sing good, sing loud"
But I dont remember where.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Desi C
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 08:28 AM

A most enjoyable thread, more please

Maybe she just has to sing, for the sake of the song
(Townes Van Zandt)

They'll be singing in Kilkenny, when my time has come to go
(from my own song)

Desi C

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: KirstenE
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 06:20 AM

"Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure, thrill the deepest notes of woe"
Robert Burns

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,straw-ghana
Date: 12 Oct 10 - 06:12 AM

what words can do ......music does is better

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Greenacres
Date: 28 Jan 09 - 08:56 AM

If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot

Sasaki Nanao

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 28 Jan 09 - 05:21 AM

"Singing a song in the morning,
Singing it again at night.
I don't even know what I'm singing about
But it makes me feel I feel all right..."
- Kevin Ayers

I used to think that was quite profound, as a song lyric. Actually, I still think it's quite profound.

And who can forget Peter Blegvad's "The only song"? Here are the first few verses:

Imagine a world where this was the only song
And, against your will,
You had to listen to it all day long
Until it made you ill,
Until it made you ill.

Imagine a world where this was the only song
And, against your will,
You had to listen to it all day long
Until it made you ill,
Until it made you ill.

Imagine a world where this was the only song
And, against your will,
You had to listen to it all day long
Until it made you ill,
Until it made you ill.
...

"Ah, music. A magic beyond all we do here!" - Albus Dumbledore

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 28 Jan 09 - 05:03 AM

Not a proverb, exactly, but ...

Quite a few of my guitar pupils have claimed that they "couldn't sing". How did they know? They'd tried, a long time ago, and parents, teachers, siblings or school friends had urged them to give it up, because they were "tone deaf".   My rehab programme for them started with this limerick:

There was a young fellow from Tring
Who said when they asked him to sing
"You may think it's odd
But I cannot tell God
Save the Weasel from Pop Goes the King!"

If you can recognise the difference between one note and another, you are not tone deaf. If you are not tone deaf, and you can talk, then you can learn to sing – maybe not brilliantly, but at least adequately. It's just a matter of technique – like walking, swimming, or riding a bicycle. Find a good teacher, and work at it.

Listening to great singers is a joy – but so is singing for yourself and your friends. Don't miss out on it for the rest of your life, just because some ill-informed person heard you hit a clinker and told you to give up.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Jan 09 - 04:19 AM

"Those of you who will not sing mus' be playing wi' your own ding-a-ling"
(Chuck Berry)

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 28 Jan 09 - 03:12 AM

Not a proverb, but my all-time favourite quote:

"If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation.
Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (Scottish patriot and anti-unionist) 1655-1716"

or my mother's comment on my singing:
"If you were singing for s**t you wouldn't get the smell of it".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 27 Jan 09 - 09:39 PM

If only the finest bird was allowed to sing, the forest would be a very silent place.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Joe_F
Date: 27 Jan 09 - 08:50 PM

A song makes you feel a thought.

Those who can't play sing; those who can't sing dance; those who can't dance play.

And for the lifetime of a song,
The fickle were true and the weak were strong.

Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. -- G. K. Chesterton (1906)

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: High Hopes (inactive)
Date: 27 Jan 09 - 03:24 PM

If you know all the words to the songs, you probably don't know enough songs

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Tyra Symone
Date: 27 Jan 09 - 03:08 PM

Those who wish to sing, always find a song.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Padre
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 10:55 PM

"If you sing 'Fox on the Run' first thing in the morning, nothing worse can happen to you the rest of the day."
                   Anonymous bluegrass singer @ Berryville, 1975

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Com Seangan
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 02:44 PM

Sorry my Greek symbols didn't come out. I'll try copy and paste:
Áõñéïí áäéïù áów

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Com Seangan
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 02:41 PM

áõñéïí áäéïí áów

Tomorrow I'll sing another song
(from the Greek)

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 11:23 AM

More's the pity, my Bartlett's doesn't include your "Music unlocks" quote.   Nor does the index show me such a quote by someone else. Sorry.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Cookieless KathWestra at work
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 11:04 AM

Nice thread. I'm glad it got revived!

I have a Dutch Delft plate on my wall with a well-known (and very true) Dutch proverb. The English translation of the text, which is in Dutch, is:
"In the concert of life, nobody gets a program."

Another favorite is a Chekov (I think) quote that goes something like:
"Music unlocks the frozen rivers of the heart." (anybody got a Bartlett's to check on the exact words?)
Kathy

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Burke
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 10:26 AM

The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark
When neither is attended.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) Portia, in The Merchant of Venice, act 5, sc. 1, l. 102-3.

Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.
Edgar Albert Guest (1881–1959) It Couldn't Be Done (l. 23–24). . .


Swans sing before they die—'twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) Epigram on a Bad Singer, Poetical Works, ed. James Dyke Campbell (1893).


If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there are night owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) Letter, December 22, 1853, to Harrison Blake, in The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6, p. 224, Houghton Mifflin (1906).

I can't stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain't music, it's close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
Billie Holiday (1915–1959) and William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues, ch. 4 (1956, rev. 1975).

All found in:
The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Pres at Bartleby.com

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: A Wandering Minstrel
Date: 05 Jan 05 - 07:51 AM

Alas for those who will not sing and die with all their music still within them - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Charley Noble
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 09:08 PM

Alice Gerrard

For you gave me a song
Of a place that I call home;
A song of then,
A song of now,
A song of yet to come.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Mudlark
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 06:32 PM

Isak Dinesen said, "All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story." Equally true of music/song.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Burke
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 05:59 PM

Guest, thanks for the original. I've heard it as "He who sings, prays twice" and "He who sings well, prays twice." I'm equally glad to know the source.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jan 05 - 02:03 PM

"Qui orationem cantat, bis orat"
"He who sings his prayers, prays twice"
St. Augustine

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,grace
Date: 03 Jan 05 - 10:55 PM

"my song is my gift; this one's for you"

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 May 00 - 01:03 PM

Liz, I think you're thinking about:

A Whistling woman and a crowing hen
Come alike to no good end.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 May 00 - 02:43 AM

Another slight creep - there's one about a whistling woman, in that she shouldn't or else some great calamity will occur, but I can't remember it too well - it is before 8.00am on a Saturday!!

LTS

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 May 00 - 02:31 AM

"Then to my raptured ear
Let one sweet song be giv'n
Let music charm me last on earth
And greet me first in heav'n."

Last verse of a song that Ginny Hawker, among others, sings. Ebbie

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Robo
Date: 13 May 00 - 01:51 AM

Dave . . . loved the Belloc. Here's an old one from the Stones' "December's Children" album that could draw some comment: It's "The Singer, Not the Song."

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Allan C.
Date: 12 May 00 - 08:46 AM

Among my all-time favorites is:

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."
-Henry Van Dyke

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Wolfgang
Date: 12 May 00 - 08:18 AM

German song:
Wo man singt, da lass Dich ruhig nieder,
böse Menschen haben keine Lieder.

(Where there's singing, sit down without fear,
mean people do not have songs)

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 12 May 00 - 08:05 AM

Not about singing but stillmusic-related, got this from my current reading (Terminal event by James Thayer):
The narrator is an amateur blues harp player:"A drum solo is like a sneeze. You know when it's coming but you can't do a damn thing about it."
RtS

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: kendall
Date: 10 May 00 - 12:59 PM

Make a joyful noise unto the lord..come into his presense with singing and into his courts with praise.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Metchosin
Date: 10 May 00 - 12:45 PM

slight drift..."I write music as a sow piddles" Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: folk1234
Date: 10 May 00 - 12:32 PM

There was an earlier thread re the Song, "When You Learn a Song, You've Got A Friend For Life".

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 10 May 00 - 08:41 AM

To JZG ('way up near the top of the thread):
"If you can walk, you can dance...etc." is attributed to the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

"Music is too important to be left to professionals" I've seen attributed to Michelle Shocked!

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: keltcgrasshoppper
Date: 10 May 00 - 07:05 AM

"Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long, And so make life, and death, and that forever, one grand sweet song." Charles Kingsley

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 10 May 00 - 03:46 AM

"If the bar empties early, the Skiffler must be singing" (anon but usedd widely in UK,and has over the last 20 or so years spread to Greece as well)
RtS

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Lanfranc
Date: 09 May 00 - 06:29 PM

"Sing before breakfast, cry before night" was a saying in my mother's family in Yorkshire.

Never stopped me though!

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: fulurum
Date: 09 May 00 - 05:13 PM

music is the soul of the world embedded in sound

unknown

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 May 00 - 05:08 PM

"Exuberance is beauty." -- William Blake

It applies to singing as well as anything else.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Wesley S
Date: 09 May 00 - 04:22 PM

Someone said "Pete Seeger taught the world to sing and we haven't forgiven him yet"

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Angun
Date: 09 May 00 - 03:11 PM

Thanks to all of you! What a great place this is!

Anyone know this in gaelic? A sharing of gold is but brief, but a sharing of song lasts long. ~Gaelic Proverb~

Angun

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 May 00 - 03:08 PM

Life is a shipwreck but we should not forget to sing in the lifeboats. Voltaire.

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: keltcgrasshoppper
Date: 09 May 00 - 07:14 AM

"And even the sun in dawn a chorus sings, a celestial melody to the earth below" Tjaden ....Have a great day KGH..

Subject: RE: Proverb about singing
From: GUEST,Sian in Wales
Date: 09 May 00 - 05:13 AM

My dad had a version of Clinton's Gran's: Sing at the table, die in the workhouse (he could be quite miserable, by dad...)

Then there's the song The Silver Swan (which, living, hath no note. When Death approached unlocked her silent throat, etc.)

And the most well known in Welsh is, "Can di bennill mwyn i'th nain, Ac fe gan dy nain i tithau." (Sing a gentle verse to your Granny, and your Granny will sing back to you) Sort of ... one good turn deserves another.

Sian