Meaning & Analysis
One who does not prosper blames everything and everyone else; failure seeks scapegoats rather than owning its causes.
Insights
Scapegoat reflex
When outcomes are poor, responsibility is pushed outward; tools, luck, weather, or rivals are indicted so the self can remain innocent.
External locus
Treats fortune as wholly outside one’s agency: by assigning blame to ‘all things,’ the sufferer denies control and thus forecloses improvement.
Rationalization
After-the-fact stories explain away losses; blame becomes a protective fable that soothes pride while leaving root problems untouched.
Contagion of gloom
In bad seasons, perception darkens generally: when ‘no well fares,’ even neutral objects are read as hostile, spreading negativity across the whole field.
Scots diction
‘Wites’ (to blame) is a Scots/Northern verb; the proverb’s cadence—‘All things wites that no well fares’—captures the folk observation that misfortune breeds accusation more readily than reflection.
Self-serving bias
Psychology names the pattern: successes are owned, failures are outsourced. By mocking the impulse to ‘wite all things,’ the saying nudges toward accountability as a precondition of learning.
Proverbial kin
It rhymes with the workshop sneer, ‘A bad workman blames his tools’: both rebuke the same alibi habit and imply that skill begins where excuses end.
Social harm
Blame-shifting corrodes trust—teams waste energy defending themselves instead of fixing process. Communities under strain seek culprits, turning neighbors into scapegoats.
Counter-wisdom
Balanced against ‘Things done cannot be undone’ and patience maxims, the line urges a pause: before indicting the world, audit your part—method, preparation, and prudence.
Rhetorical Devices
Archaism/dialect
The Scots verb ‘wites’ and the compact word order lend gnomic gravity and local color, sharpening the rebuke.
Hyperbole
‘All things’ exaggerates to spotlight the breadth of the excuse-making impulse when fortunes sour.
Antithesis (implied)
Sets outward blame against inward responsibility, inviting the listener to reverse the default direction of accusation.
Alliteration
The w-echo in ‘wites’ and ‘well’ gives the line a biting snap that aids memorability.
Aphoristic inversion
The slightly inverted syntax (‘that no well fares’) marks the clause as proverbial, compacting circumstance before verdict.
Transcription
Quotations
(that weill not fairis).
[As in a.1598 Ferg.]
*A Man who miscarries in his Business will lay the blame on any thing, rather than take it to himself.
Annotations
- are blamed
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.