Narmukhametova N.M.,

Zhuztayev Zh.B.

L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University

 

 

The Cobbler words everywhere

“A shoemaker should not judge above his shoes”

“The son of the shoemaker has no shoes”.

                                                                                                                             (English proverbs)    

            Shoemaking is the process of making footwear. Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand. Traditional handicraft shoemaking has now been largely superseded in volume of shoes produced by industrial mass production of footwear, but not necessarily in quality, attention to detail, or craftsmanship.

            Shoemakers or cordwainers (cobblers being those who repair shoes) may produce a range of footwear items, including shoes, sandals, clogs and moccasins. Such items are generally made of leather, wood, rubber, plastic, jute or other plant material, and often consist of multiple parts for better durability of the soul, stitched to a leather upper.

            Shoes appeared at an early stage of human development. In different periods of history, it has changed, improved, performing functions: protection, comfort, a reflection, of the inner world, the indicator status.

            In  the literature, shoes change the lives of heroes brings fabulous  wealth and happiness. Shoes are seen in different genres: songs, proverbs, tongue-twisters, quotes, sayings.

            Shoemakers were in the proverbs of different nations.

§        Shoemakers are always the worst shod. (French proverb)

§        The tailor ill-dressed, the shoemaker ill-shod. (Portuguese proverb)

§        A shoemaker’s wife and a smith’s mare are always the worst shod. (Spanish proverb)

§        Shoemakers go to mass and pray that sheep may die. (Spanish proverb)

§        The shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot. (Danish proverb)

§        The shoemakers children go barefoot. (Danish proverb)

§        Shoemaker stick to your last. (Danish proverb)

§        The shoemaker’s child goes barefoot. (Turkish proverb)

§        The shoemaker’s shoes have no heels. (Persian proverb)

§        If a Jew cannot be a shoemaker, he will dream of being a professor. (Yiddish proverb)

§        The medicine that cures the tailor can kill the shoemaker. (Spanish proverb)

§        The mare of the smith and the children of the shoemaker, always goes barefooted. (Spanish proverb)

§        None more bare than the shoemaker’s wife and the smith’s mare. (Romanian proverb)

§        Three simple shoemakers equal one brilliant strategist. (Chinese proverb)

§        The shoemaker’s wife and the blacksmith’s horse often go unshod. (Irish proverb)

§        Let the shoemaker remain at his last. (Hungarian proverb)

§        Be not a shoemaker nor yet a shaft maker save for thyself alone: let the shoe be misshapen, or crooked the shaft, and a curse on thy head will be called. (Norse proverb)

§        There’s no hurry, said the shoemaker, he had gruel with his awl. (Swedish proverb)

§        Three humble shoemakers brainstorming make a great statesman. (Chinese proverb)

§        The cobbler should not go beyond his last. (Latin proverb)

§        The cobbler’s gaze is on the feet. (Goan proverb)

§        There will be trouble if the cobbler starts making pies. (Russian proverb)

§        A cobbler formed the shape of shoes on a wooden foot shaped last. If it lasted long he was happy. (English proverb)

§        Let the cobbler Paul grumble, he should only make good sandals. (Hungarian proverb)

§        There was often a bad cloth on a tailor and a bad shoe on a cobbler. (Irish proverb)

    Shoe saying perform people’s need in wearing items protecting their feet from discomfort, pain, cold and heat. Shoe saying:

§        “I cried because I had no shoes, then I met a man who had no feet”.

§        “Before you criticize, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes”. 

§        “Don’t throw away your old shoes until you have a new pair”.

§        “Comfortable as an old shoe”.

Famous people did not ignore such necessary things as shoes. They praised them, sometimes criticized cobblers dedicated them poems, songs. A number of quotes witness their interest to this ancient trade.  Poems:

The shoemaker – by Lulu Gee

The shoemaker – by Games Whitcomb Riley’s poem.

Shoemaker – by Aleksandr Pushkin.

Shoemaker – by Gaurav Juyal

Shoemaker’s Holiday, or The Gentle Craft – by Thomas Dekker.

The Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker – by William Allingham.

The Shoemaker – by Jhon Greenleaf Whittier.

The Son of a Shoemaker – by Linda Black.

         Quotes

“That is a very good question. I don’t know the answer. But can you tell me the name of a classical Greek shoemaker?” Arthur Miller quotes (American playwright).

“Words sound be an intense pleasure just as leather should be to a shoemaker” Evelyn Waugh quotes (English writer).

“She no thought of the play out of which her part was taken, than a shoemaker thinks of the skin, out of which the piece of leather, of which he is making a pair of shoes, is cut” Samuel Johnson quotes (English poet, critic and writer).

“Ah, punster, would my lot were cast, Where the cobbler is unknown, So that I might forget his last and hear your own – Gargo Repsky” Ambrose Bierce quotes (American writer  journalist and editor).

“A cobbler, … produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last” – Joseph Addison Quotes.

“To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said: “I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot” – Agesilaus, The Great Quotes.

“Him that makes shoes go barefoot himself”–Robert Burton Quotes.

“Ye tuneful cobblers! Still your notes prolong, compose at once a slipper and a song; So shall the fair your handiwork peruse, Your sonnets sure shall please–perhaps your shoes” – Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)

Quotes

“The shoemaker a good shoe because he makes nothing else” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes.

“If you had taken off the shoe then, at length you would feel in what part it pinched you”– Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes.

“One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: because, it more stood upon than any other thing in the world” – William Hazlitt.

“Remember, cobbler, to keep to your leather”– Frederick Locker-Lampson Quotes.

“Shoemaker, stick to your last” – Edward Moore Quotes.

“As I take my shoes from the shoemaker, and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest”– Oliver Goldsmith Quotes (Irish born British Essayist, Poet, Novelist and Dramatist).

Teachers use different tongue-twisters as phonetic drill practicing them in learning process. Tongue-twister about shoemaker:

   Simon Short-Smithfield’s Sole,

Surviving Shoemaker Shoes Soles,

Sewed Super-finely.

    Our cobbler is all cobbler’s cobbler,

nobody can over- cobbler our cobbler.

Mankind sang songs in different situations: feasts, wars. Song took place in various professions and trades. We see cobblers in such songs as:

 

                                    Song “The Cobbler”

                                    Album: Hearty and Hellish

Oh, me name is Dick Darby, I’m a cobbler

I served my time at ould camp

Some call me an old agitator

But now I’m resolved to repent

It’s forty long years I have traveled

All by the contents of me pack

Me hammers, me awls and me pinchers

I carry them all on me back

             Chorus:

With me ing-twing of an ing-thing of an i-doe

With me ing-twing of an ing-thing of an i-doe

With me roo-boo-boo- roo-boo-boo randy

And me lab stone keeps beating away

Oh, my wife she is humpy, she’ lumpy

Me wife she’s the devil, she’s cracked

And no matter what I may do with her

Her tongue, it clickety-clack

It was early one fine summer’s morning

A little before it was day

I dipped her three times in the river

And carelessly bade her “Good day”

 

         Cobbler and the cowboy

Looking down where rows of shoes

Awaits his hand, no time to lose,

Looking up, up to time the street

Shoes again on passing feet.

This is all the cobbler knows –

Broken counters, scuffed-up toes,

This is all the cobbler feels-

Worn-out soles and run-down heels,

Until a child catastrophe

Breaks in an monotony,

A pint-size holster must be mended.

Looking down, he sews with care.

Reinforcing it for wear,

Looking up, his work repaid

In boyhood’s faith before him laid.

                        (by Melanie Maguire)

    Shoe songs

§        Arctic Monkeys-Dancing Shoes

§        Traffic-Hole In My Shoe

§        Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris-The New Soft Shoe

§        Shed Seven-Devil in Your Shoes

§        Paul Simon-Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

§        Kirsty MacColl-In These Shoes?

§        Elvis Presley-Blue Suede Shoes

§        Elvis Costello-(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes

§        Adam Ant-Goody Two Shoes

§        Johnny Boy-You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve

§        “The Little Shoemaker” based on the French song, “Le petit cordonnier”, – by Rudi Revil. The Shoemaker Song – by Willie Evans

§        A Shoemaker Makes Shoes – Kid’s Song

§        My Johnny Is a Shoemaker –an English traditional song

§        The little Shoemaker–by the Gaylords

§        The Shoemaker’s Song–by Allen Peabody

§        The  Shoemaker (Shoemaker Named Schumann) –by Jock Strapp Ensemble

§        The Little Shoemaker-by Petula Clark.

               Movies

§           The  Shoemaker’s Holiday (Movie) 1938

§           The  Shoemaker 2012

§           Lapitch the Little Shoemaker (Croation film)

Even, toponymy did not avoid cobbler words in naming streets as it is shown in American states and cities.

Places

§           Shoemaker St, Birmingham, AL

§           Shoemaker St, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

§           Shoemaker St, Detroit, MI

§           Shoemaker St, Forty Fort, PA

§           Shoemaker St, Swoyersville, PA

§           Shoemaker St, Dunmore, PA

§           Shoemaker St, NW, Washington D.C.

§           Shoemaker St, Jackson, GA

The shoemaker profession makes a number of appearances in popular culture, such as in stories about shoemaker’s elves and proverb “The shoemaker’s children go barefoot”. The patron saint of shoemakers is Saint Crispin.

Chefs and cooks sometimes use the term “shoemaker” as an insult to others who have prepared substandard food, possibly by overcooking, implying that the chef in question has made his or her as tough as shoe leather or hard leather shoe soles, and thus may be in the wrong profession.

Traditional shoemakers still exist today, especially in poorer parts of the world, and create custom shoes. Current crafters, in developing regions or supply constrained areas may use surplus car or truck tire tread sections as an inexpensive and plentiful material resource to make strong shoe soles or sandals with.

 

 

References:

1.      Art before History by Manpreet. Bhatti

2.      Charles .W.Carey (2009) American inventors Enterpreneurs and Business Visionaries. (Infobase. Publishing. p.27)

3.      “English industries of the Middle Ages”, L.F. Salzman,1923

4.      en.wikipedia.org

5.      www.shoeinfonet.com