Meaning & Analysis
People often believe that crops—or more broadly, results—on their neighbor’s land are more abundant or successful than their own, regardless of actual conditions.
Insights
Envy and Comparison
Captures the tendency to overvalue what others have while undervaluing one's own possessions or circumstances, driven by envy and dissatisfaction.
Idealization of the Other
Reflects the human inclination to romanticize or exaggerate the appeal of things that are distant, unfamiliar, or unavailable, regardless of reality.
Discontent with the Familiar
Points to a psychological bias where the known and habitual is taken for granted, while novelty or external appearances are falsely equated with superiority.
Erasmian and Classical Roots
Rooted in Erasmus’s *Adagia* (‘Fertilior seges est alieno semper in arvo’), the proverb draws from a classical Latin tradition of moral reflection on human fickleness and covetousness, showing its enduring relevance across centuries and cultures.
Moral Critique of Covetousness
As Baret and others note, the proverb warns against a restless, greedy mindset—where the possessions of others are always deemed more desirable, revealing both ingratitude and a lack of self-awareness.
Universality Across Cultures
The proverb’s concept appears globally in variations such as 'the grass is always greener on the other side,' underscoring a near-universal human struggle with contentment and comparative thinking.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
Uses agricultural imagery as a metaphor for general life satisfaction, rendering abstract emotional tendencies in tangible, rural terms.
Antithesis
Contrasts ‘our ground’ with ‘our neighbor’s’ to dramatize the gap between perception and reality, reinforcing the emotional dissonance at the heart of the proverb.
Allegory
The entire proverb functions as a subtle allegory for human nature, with land and crops standing in for success, happiness, or worth.
Transcription
Quotations
Fertilior seges est alieno semper in arvo.
The corne in an other mans grounde semeth euer more fertyll and plentyfull then doth oure owne. By this is noted the lyghtnesse, newe fangelnesse and constancye of mankynde which estemeth euen straunge thynges better then his owne.
Fertilior seges in agro alieno. *A Prouerbe to be applied to those, which are of a couetous and vnsatiable mind, and thinke all too much that other haue.
Wee thinke alwayes the corne that growes in another bodies ground to be better then our owne.
My neighbours goat gives more milk then mine.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.