Scottish Proverb

“Scottish Proverb” (or “Scottish Folk Saying”) is a generic attribution used when a quotation is drawn from Scotland’s oral tradition rather than a single identifiable author. Such sayings circulated for generations in everyday speech, storytelling, and song, and were often passed along without a fixed original wording. Many were later collected by antiquarians and folklorists in printed compilations of proverbs and popular lore, sometimes with regional variants. Because these expressions belong to communal tradition, authorship is typically listed as anonymous, with “Scottish” indicating cultural and linguistic origin (including Scots and Scottish Gaelic contexts). The attribution signals shared wisdom shaped by lived experience, not an individual literary voice.