Arrieros somos…
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Norma Angélica Pérez García for having e-mailed me about the donkey sayings we saw recently. She would like to add a few to the list. With pleasure!
One of her addenda is El miedo no anda en burro (“Fear doesn’t ride a donkey”), and she explains it as meaning that “there is always something to be afraid about.” This is true. In other words: donkeys are generally slow animals and you don’t use them to win races. So when you want to express how quickly you can be possessed by fear, you can say El miedo no anda en burro. This also applies to groups. Once someone is taken over by fear, it may quickly spread to everyone else because el miedo no anda en burro: it spreads like wildfire.
Norma, apropos of the phrase el burro hablando de orejas, adds another: la vaca hablando de leche, which means exactly the same thing. For those who don’t remember what we said about the donkey talking about ears, let’s go back to that column: “In English there is a saying that goes something like this: “That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.” We use it when one person criticizes another for something the first person is known for. Let’s say a shady politician calls an equally shady lawyer dishonest; well, that’s the pot calling the kettle black. In Spanish we say it’s el burro hablando de orejas, or “the donkey talking about [long] ears.” (One has to remember that donkeys are known for their long ears; this is understood without it having to be stated specifically.)
"There is another saying in Spanish that means exactly the same thing but without the animal reference: el comal le dijo a la olla. The comal is a flat piece of round metal, traditionally used to warm up tortillas. The olla is your everyday pot. Both tend to get black on the bottom because they are placed directly above the fire (or the flame in modern kitchens). So just imagine the comal telling the olla that it’s not clean…”So with the welcome addition of la vaca hablando de leche, we have three different sayings that mean more or less the same thing.
Another great burro saying Norma sent in is la carne de burro no es transparente. Magnificent. I remember my mother saying to me, when I got between her and the television set, “Your father wasn’t a glassmaker.” Like father, like son: I wasn’t transparent. That’s why this saying is so beautifully efficient in Spanish: in one fell swoop it lets us know that the person getting in the way is a burro (dull, unconscious, dumb, inconsiderate; pick the adjective of your choice) precisely because he or she has decided to get in everybody’s way.
Norma’s last contribution to “Joy of Spanish” is el burro por delante (the donkey goes first), which is just as delicious as la carne de burro no es transparente. When the arrieros, or “muleteers” in English, walk with their animals, the mules — or donkeys in this case — go first and one follows. Now we don’t have to repeat the fact that being called a donkey is no compliment. We’ve seen that “donkeys” get in the way without realizing it, and the only way a “donkey” can do anything right is practically by accident (el burro que tocó la flauta), etc. Well, one way of teaching children that they shouldn’t put themselves first when formulating their sentences is by saying el burro por delante when they do it. It’s like what happened to us in English. If we were to say “Me and Jamie found this frog…,” our mother would cringe in disgust and then correct us: “Jamie and I found this frog…” To which we would invariable reply: “Yeah! Me and Jamie found this frog…” This is a perfect case of el burro por delante.
Now that we’ve talked about arrieros, a term which naturally has to do with donkeys and mules, it would be a good time to include this very Mexican admonitory saying: arrieros somos y en el camino andamos (“Muleteers we are and on the road we travel”). This is something you say when someone has gotten — temporarily we hope — the upper hand on us. It’s sort of like “he who laughs last, last best” (el que ríe al último, ríe mejor), only it’s much more ominous. It also works against us: if we have gotten the upper hand, our competitor may not become upset or irate, he or she may just come out with Arrieros somos y en el camino andamos. Just imagine meeting up with this person in the desert, each of us with our donkeys. Who’s to know who will be dealt the final and necessarily fatal blow? Why bother doing it when and where everyone can see? Because we are all muleteers and because we all travel on the road, “we shall meet again,” at which time justice — or injustice — may be done with not much ado. It’s a matter of patience, and the ability to hold a grudge.
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