Meaning & Analysis
The proverb suggests that visiting a particular household—especially that of a miser or inhospitable person—is so fruitless that one is more likely to suffer injury (e.g., break their neck) than receive food to break their fast.
Insights
Extreme Inhospitality
Criticizes the stinginess or unwelcoming nature of a host, suggesting their home offers more danger or discomfort than nourishment or kindness.
Futility of Effort
Highlights the uselessness of expecting help or sustenance from someone so uncharitable—effort leads to harm rather than benefit.
Satire of Social Pretenses
Mocks those who maintain the appearance of hospitality while offering nothing of substance, turning social rituals into absurd or even hazardous experiences.
Early Modern Hospitality Norms
In early modern society, hospitality was a moral and social obligation, especially among the gentry. This proverb flips that expectation, mocking hosts who betray the sacred duty of feeding guests.
Miserliness as Social Vice
The saying aligns with a long tradition of anti-miser sentiment in European literature and folklore, where withholding food symbolizes broader moral deficiency and social contempt.
Blending Humor and Critique
The dark humor of comparing fasting with neck-breaking reflects a cultural tendency to use absurd exaggeration to shame anti-social behavior, especially around generosity and sustenance.
Rhetorical Devices
Hyperbole
Exaggerates the danger of visiting a miser’s home to the point of suggesting fatal injury, thereby intensifying the critique through comic extremity.
Antithesis
Juxtaposes the expected reward of a visit (breaking one’s fast) with an unexpected danger (breaking one’s neck), creating ironic dissonance.
Dark Humor
The morbid comparison between starvation and physical harm satirizes the severity of miserliness, evoking both laughter and criticism.
Transcription
Quotations
(A man shall as soone).
Ye wil break your neck and fast alyk in his house.
And, ever since, they say . . . That men may break their neck soon as their fast.
I aduise you goe not fasting to such a house, for there you may as soon breake your necke as your fast.
A man shall as soone breake his necke as his fast In a miser’s house.
A man may as soone breake his head at his house, as breake his fast.
A man may break his neck as soon as his fast in his house.
(ones neck, as ones fast at his house).
Ye will break your crag as soon as your fast in his house.
You may as soon break your neck as your fast.
(at your House).
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.