You ride as if you went to fetch the MIDWIFE

Meaning & Analysis

The person being addressed is riding a horse (or, by extension, driving any vehicle) with extreme and desperate speed, comparable to the haste required when summoning a midwife for an imminent birth.

Insights

Extreme Urgency

The proverb serves as a powerful metaphor for any action performed with frantic, desperate haste. The comparison to fetching a midwife elevates the perceived speed to a matter of life-and-death importance.

Reckless Haste

It can be used critically or humorously to describe someone moving recklessly or with excessive speed, questioning whether their haste is justified or simply careless and frantic.

Purpose-Driven Speed

The proverb highlights a state of intense, focused action driven by a singular, critical objective. The rider's speed is not chaotic but is instead propelled by a clear and vital purpose.

Historical and Social Context

The midwife was a critical figure in pre-modern communities, and a successful birth often depended on her timely arrival. The proverb encapsulates the profound social and medical reality of a time when fetching help required a desperate, high-stakes journey.

Cultural Trope of Urgency

The image of a frantic ride to summon medical help is a powerful and enduring trope in literature and film, particularly in historical dramas and Westerns. It universally signifies a life-and-death race against time before the advent of modern communication.

Psychological Dimension

The proverb taps into the primal anxiety and helplessness associated with a medical emergency, especially childbirth. It evokes the psychological state of someone who is acting under immense pressure, where speed is the only available remedy to a critical situation.

Rhetorical Devices

Simile

The proverb is a direct simile, using the phrase 'as if' to compare the subject's manner of riding to the specific, culturally understood scenario of fetching a midwife.

Hyperbole

It employs exaggeration to emphasize the rider's speed. By equating it with a life-or-death emergency, the proverb dramatically magnifies the intensity of the action for rhetorical effect.

Vivid Imagery

The phrase conjures a powerful and dramatic mental picture of a horse and rider galloping furiously, instantly conveying a sense of crisis and desperate motion.

urgencyspeedhastehyperbolechildbirthemergency

Analyzed with gemini-2.5-pro on September 25, 2025

Transcription

Quotations

— 1678, RAY, p. 266

Related Proverbs

S341 Swear by your burnt SHINS 91.1%W702 WOMEN are in church saints, abroad angels, at home devils 90.5%M33 As merry as the MAIDS 90.4%E210 She stamps like a EWE upon yeaning¹ 90.2%M700 It is dangerous MARRYING a widow because she has cast her rider 90.1%W633 A journeying WOMAN speaks much of all and all of her 90.0%W854 WORKING and making a fire do discretion require 90.0%H277 You have a handsome HEAD of hair, pray give me a tester¹ 89.9%H501 To drive one's HOGS to market 89.9%W731 WOO, wed, and bed (wear) her 89.9%G167 As lecherous as a GOAT 89.9%W317 You are as fine as if you had a WHITING hanging at your side or girdle 89.8%W685 He is mad that quarrels with WOMEN or beasts 89.8%M1128 He strives for the MOONSHINE in the water 89.8%C345 When CHILDREN stand quiet they have done some ill 89.8%M1323 You may make as good MUSIC on (as) a wheel-barrow 89.8%M269 A MAN may spit in his hand and do full ill 89.7%S275 SHAME is past the shed of your hair 89.6%C10 He builds CAGES for oxen to bring up birds in 89.6%M848 You are in your roast MEAT when others are in their sod 89.4%

These connections are generated using word-embeddings. Learn more.