Meaning & Analysis
Taking back what you have given is a mark of bad faith; a gift recalled is figuratively the devil’s ornament.
Insights
Bad-faith generosity
A rescinded gift exposes the giver’s counterfeit goodwill—kindness becomes a trap that advertises virtue while reclaiming cost.
Strings-attached power
Gifts recalled or made conditional function as control tactics; the recipient is kept in debt, never secure in ownership.
Breach of social covenant
A true gift inaugurates reciprocity; reversing it snaps the moral circuit and signals that promises and honors are unreliable.
Allure and corruption
The ‘gold ring’ glitters—appealing reward—but belongs to the devil: apparent benefit hides moral stain and future harm.
Instability of promises
What is given today and reclaimed tomorrow trains a culture of distrust, where words and vows are understood as provisional.
Children’s law
Collected as schoolyard cant, the chant teaches early that a gift is a transfer, not a loan; playground ethics codify property norms before formal law does.
Ancient pedigree
Moralists (e.g., the report via Fuller that Plato knew the proverb) long held that a true ‘giving’ is irrevocable; the saying compresses that classical ideal into vernacular rhyme.
Gift-economy logic
Maussian exchange depends on freedom and timing; retracting a gift breaches the tacit contract of gratitude and counters-gift, souring the social ledger.
Theology of duplicity
Invoking the devil paints reversal as diabolical: deception masquerading as charity. The ‘gold ring’ evokes covenantal symbolism perverted—an anti-wedding band binding giver and taker to mistrust.
Psychological hook
Giving-then-taking resembles intermittent reinforcement: the recipient is destabilized, made compliant by fear of loss; the act is less generosity than manipulation.
Rhetorical Devices
Rhyme and rhythm
The sing-song cadence (‘Give a thing and take a thing’) brands the rule for easy recall, fitting its nursery provenance.
Reduplication
Repeating ‘thing’ with mirrored verbs dramatizes the reversal and spotlights its pettiness.
Metaphor
‘Devil’s gold ring’ personifies the act as a flashy but cursed token, moralizing the behavior through vivid emblem.
Antithesis/Chiasmus
Give ↔ take set in symmetrical order enacts the flip that the proverb condemns.
Colloquial gnomic form
Plain diction and proverbially tight phrasing make the judgment portable for everyday disputes over gifts and favors.
Transcription
Quotations
To give a thing and take a thing; to weare the diuells gold-ring.
It is . . . a Prouerbe among our children, To giue a thing, and take a thing, is fit for the Deuils darling.
Plato saith that in his time it was a Prouerb amongst Children . . . Things that are truly given must not be taken away again.
(As the English say, to give a thing, and take it again, is).
Give a thing and take a thing, etc.
Give a Thing, and take a Thing, Is the ill Man's Goud Ring.
Cross References
Annotations
- A Cant among Children, when they demand a Thing again, which they had bestowed.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.