Good fences make good neighbours
March 1, 2004
I found this expression while subtitling an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard. It is meant to indicate that the best way to maintain cordial relationships with your neighbours is to make sure their space and yours are clearly demarcated. Boss Hogg uses it to warn gangsters from Atlanta who have come to the county of Hazzard that they'd better stay in their territory and he won't meddle in theirs.
I had to find an equivalent, and I thought of "Chacun chez soi et les poules seront bien gardées" (literally, each in their home and the chickens will be well looked after). It doesn't give exactly the same idea of demarcation and separation between two people living close by. It insists more on the idea that people should look after their own business, not that they must clearly delimit their space and other people's.
However, I thought that it was still faithful to what Boss Hogg was trying to say and it seemed that for the general tone of that scene, it was important to keep an expression (rather than go for a litteral translation, which was an option here) to show that Boss Hogg is a down-to-earth kind of man.
Incidentally, this is also one of the preferred expressions used by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to justify the barrier that Israel is building to cut itself off from the West Bank. Perhaps in this particular case, it's more a matter of "bad fences make bad neighbours"?
Posted by céline, in Idioms, on March 1, 2004MENDING WALL
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
© Robert Frost
I didn't know if you were aware of the origin of "Good fences make good neighbors." Frost is one of my favourite poets, and I seem to think there are other, equally telling expressions he's come up with.
I enjoyed your blog immensely.
Posted by Rethabile Masilo on April 29, 2004 11:11 PMPrevious: February 27, 2004
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