Proverbs of the Pennsylvania Germans is a follow-up and companion volume to Edwin Miller Fogel's 1915 publication Beliefs and Superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans. This volume focuses on the proverb in its broadest sense, including adages, aphorisms, and some appropriate idiomatic expressions. This "spontaneous expression of experience," so widely used in the Germanic linguistic tradition, is in Fogel's words "the very bone and sinew of the Pennsylvania German] dialect."

This collection is the result of the author's years of field research in Pennsylvania and...

Since its publication in 1915, Beliefs and Superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans has been not only a valuable addition to the catalogue of American folklore but also a vital resource in preserving a linguistic culture and traditions that were already fading from the American consciousness. Edwin Miller Fogel's years of research in both Pennsylvania and Germany led to this collection, the most complete of its time, of more than two thousand Pennsylvania German aphorisms.

This work displays a panorama of beliefs reflecting every aspect of Pennsylvania German life, from...