Meaning & Analysis
To send or receive something via a fictional carrier named 'John Long' or 'Tom Long', whose name is a pun indicating that the delivery will be extremely slow and take a very long time.
Insights
Procrastination and Delay
The proverb is a metaphor for any task, communication, or process characterized by extreme slowness or procrastination. To 'send by John Long' is to consign something to a long and indefinite delay.
Inefficiency and Unreliability
'John Long the carrier' symbolizes any unreliable or inefficient person, system, or service. It's a critique of those who fail to perform their duties in a timely or dependable manner.
Ironic Excuse
The phrase can be used ironically as a veiled excuse for tardiness. By blaming the fictional 'carrier', a person can deflect responsibility for a delay, attributing it to a slow-moving external force.
Frustrated Expectations
The proverb highlights the frustrating gap between an anticipated outcome and a delayed reality. It encapsulates the feeling of being let down when something expected fails to arrive on time.
Historical Personification
The proverb personifies the abstract concept of delay into a fictional, memorable character, 'John Long' or 'Tom Long'. This was particularly resonant in an era when the speed and reliability of physical carriers were crucial for communication and commerce, making slowness a common and frustrating experience.
Linguistic Wordplay
The core of the proverb is a clever and simple pun on the name 'Long', which directly equates the carrier with the concept of a long wait. This linguistic playfulness makes the expression witty, memorable, and easily transmitted through oral culture.
Cultural Archetype
Beyond a simple complaint about tardiness, the proverb serves as a cultural archetype for inefficiency and unreliability. 'Tom Long the carrier' became a stock figure representing any person or system that operates with frustrating slowness, a universally understood scapegoat for the anxiety of waiting.
Psychology of Waiting
The phrase captures the psychological tension between expectation and reality. It speaks to the universal frustration of waiting for something that is overdue, transforming a private annoyance into a shared, proverbial complaint.
Rhetorical Devices
Pun / Wordplay
The central device is the pun on the name 'Long', which humorously and memorably connects the carrier to the idea of a long, tedious wait.
Personification
The abstract concept of 'delay' is given a human name and identity, transforming it into a concrete, relatable, and culpable figure.
Archetype
'John Long' serves as a cultural archetype for any slow or unreliable messenger, a shorthand for a common social frustration.
Irony
The phrase is often used with situational irony, where the expectation of a carrier's speed is humorously subverted by the reality of the delay implied by his name.
Transcription
Quotations
But for my rewarde, let him be no longer tarier. I will send it him, by John Longe the carier.
Take heede you send them not by Tomlong the cariour.
To stay for John Long the Carrier; to tarrie long for that which comes but slowly.
That which is sent by John Long the carrier: Makes him that lookes for't a passing longe tarrier.
A day after the faire like Tom Long the carrier.
If I prove not As just a Carrier as my friend Tom Long was, Then call me his curtall.
That yours should be a whole month in making scarce 100 English miles . . is strange to me, unless you purposely sent it by John Long the Carrier.
(It comes by).
(I will send it by).
That thou mayst like Tom Long for ever go, And ne'r come where thou art assign'd unto.
To send the farthest way, and the most tedioust for to have returns; the English say, to send by Tom Long the Carrier.
To be a lazy messenger, long a comming with an answer; the English call such a one, Tom Long the Carrier.
(Tom Long).
Whether all things are carried by Tom Long the Carrier.
Come by Tom Long the Carrier, of what is very late, or long a coming.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.