Money Makes the Mare to Go (I)

DESCRIPTION: "Will you lend me your mare to go a mile?" "No; no she is lame, leaping over a stile." "But if you will her to me spare You shall have money for your mare." "Oh, ho! say you so? Money will make the mare to go."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1893 (broadside, Walsh)
KEYWORDS: request money nonballad horse
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, p. 303, "Money Will Make the Mare to Go" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Ox 190)
ADDITIONAL: William S Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiousities (Philadelphia, 1893 ("Digitized by Google")), pp. 734-735, ("Will you lend me your mare to go a mile?") (1 text)
Roud #1332
NOTES [179 words]: The current description is all of the Walsh text.
Walsh: "Money makes the mare go, an old English proverb of uncertain origin. It may be a far-off variant of the ancient phrase found in this form in Publius Syrus: 'Money alone sets all the world in motion.' (Maxim 656) There is an old glee that contains the following lines: ... There is no evidence, however, to show that the glee was not taken from the saw. In Caleb Bingham's 'American Preceptor,' published inj 1794, is a dialog called 'Self-Interest,' in which an English rustic, named Scrapewell, makes all sorts of false excuses to avoid lending his mare to a neighbor, but afterwards, finding that the loan is to be profitable to himself, he takes back all the excuses and lets the mare go. The author's name is given as Berquin. Probably it is a paraphrase from the French writer for children Arnauld Berquin (1749-91). The glee may have been founded on this dialogue, as it follows it in all essentials. And, as the proverb is not mentioned in the dialogue, the saw as well as the glee may have arisen therefrom." - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: WT303AB

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography