Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
At first glance, the Older Scots romance Eger and Grime seems to be a stereotypical medieval tale about prowess, revenge and love. Perhaps this is why Eger and Grime has not been extensively studied. In general, medieval romances entertain, and this is certainly true of Eger and Grime. However, romances also convey, strengthen and uphold social bonds, opinions, prejudices, hopes and fears. In this they function very much like proverbs. Proverbial sayings ‘propose a world of moral implications to those who pause to consider them’. By pausing thus over the proverbs deployed in romances, one may gain a better understanding of what the authors of these texts were trying to convey. From the thirty categories of paroemial segment (proverbs and proverbial phrases) identified in Eger and Grime by Bartlett Whiting in his two-part article ‘Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings from Scottish Writings before 1600’, supplemented by twelve not noted by Whiting, I have identified groups of proverbs in the romance which exhibit some common characteristics. This chapter will consider three of these groups – proverbial comparisons; proverbs touching on the condition of women; and reciprocity. The proverbial comparisons are fairly conventional phrases one would expect to find in a tale of knights, combat and love, but should not be overlooked for this reason. Traditional phraseology generates meaning by deploying well-established conventions that function similarly each time they are used.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.