Title: A Loyal Friend

General information about item:

• Verbal folklore, proverb
• Language: Russian
• Country of origin: Russia
• Informant: Katarina Nesic
• Date collected: 11/9/18

Informant Data:

Katarina is a junior at Dartmouth College. She is 21 years old and was born and raised in Serbia. At 16, she attended boarding school in Switzerland and came to Dartmouth after.

Contextual Data:

Katarina learned this proverb while studying abroad in St. Petersburg in the summer of 2017. She is also currently taking classes in Russian at Dartmouth to further her study of the language.

Item

Верный друг лучше сотни слуг.

Literal translation: “A loyal friend is better than a hundred servants.”

Meaning: It is more important to have someone who values and respects you than to have possibly disloyal followers.

Associated file: 

Transcript: “‘Верный друг лучше сотни слуг.’ A lawyer friend- a loyal frie-friend — oh my God — is better than a hundred servants.”

Informant’s comments:

“[It’s] pretty common … I [didn’t hear it] so much … I learned [it] in class.”

Collector’s comments:

This proverb, like other Russian proverbs I collected, emphasized the importance of existing friendships over new ones. It also reinforces the idea that money is only of so much value, and that it is strong social relationships that should instead be cultivated. This proverb was in use before the advent of the Soviet Union, but an attitude of trusting one’s peers rather than one’s inferiors also seems like it could strike a note there.

Like many Russian proverbs I collected, this one follows a two-part structure in which one thing is directly compared to another, with the first one being considered superior. It also uses a disjoint in quantity (one vs. a hundred) to emphasize its point, which came up in other Russian proverbs as well.

Collector’s name: Zachary Benjamin