Who goeth a borrowing Goeth a sorrowing.

Thomas Tusser (c. 1524–1580) was an English poet best known for practical, moralizing verse about household and farm management. The couplet “Who goeth a borrowing / Goeth a sorrowing” belongs to the tradition of early modern English proverbial wisdom warning against debt and dependence. In Tusser’s didactic writing—aimed at ordinary householders and husbandmen—financial prudence is treated as a moral as well as an economic virtue. The line circulated widely as a proverb in later centuries, often detached from Tusser’s original setting, but it reflects the anxieties of a credit-based economy in Tudor England, where borrowing could quickly lead to obligation, loss of reputation, or legal trouble.

The rhyme compresses a social lesson into a memorable moral: borrowing invites worry, constraint, and eventual pain. “Sorrowing” suggests more than mere inconvenience—it implies the emotional burden of owing, the risk of default, and the erosion of independence. The proverb also carries a reputational warning: a borrower may be viewed as improvident or unreliable, and the relationship between lender and borrower can sour. In Tusser’s broader didactic mode, the couplet encourages self-sufficiency, careful budgeting, and living within one’s means. Its endurance comes from its simple causal logic and its musical phrasing, which makes the warning easy to recall and repeat.

1) “He that goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing.”
2) “Who goes a borrowing, goes a sorrowing.”
3) “He that goeth a borrowing, goeth a sorrowing.”