The Proverbs of Hendyng is a poem from around the second half of the thirteenth century in which one Hendyng, son of Marcolf, utters a series of proverbial stanzas.
Marcolf appears as an interlocutor with Solomon in some German poems in the Solomon and Saturn tradition,[2] while “ "Hendyng" seems to be a personification generated from the word hende ["skilled, clever"], and seems to mean something like "the clever one" ”.
[3] In The Proverbs of Hendyng, “Hending[equated with Hendyng]... is represented as the author of a collection of traditional proverbial wisdom in South-West Midland Middle English, each proverb ending with 'quoth Hending' ”,[4] a construction like that of a Wellerism.
The Proverbs of Hendyng is also noted for containing the earliest attestation of the word cunt in English outside placenames and personal names.
[5] Ten manuscripts are known to attest to the poem in whole or in part (sometimes only one stanza or couplet).