The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Papa Was a Saxum Volutum

Marvin Gaye didn’t write ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’. It was written for him by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, who also wrote the classic ‘Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone’, which is based on another old phrase.

Revolving minerals already had their (movable) place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bob Dylan had written ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and some students from London had formed a band called The Rolling Stones, named after the Muddy Waters song ‘Rollin’ Stone’.

All these rock and rollers were referring indirectly to the fact that a rolling stone gathers no moss. This was observed in the 1530s by the poet Thomas Wyatt:

The phrase also crops up in Erasmus’ adages of 1500, where it’s rendered in Latin as saxum volutum non obducitur musco. But why are all these stones rolling? On the rare occasion that you actually see a stone rolling downhill, it usually gets to the bottom a few seconds later and stops. Its brief trip doesn’t tend to knock much moss off, and if it does, then the moss will just grow back later. To keep a stone moss-free, it needs to be rolled regularly.

That’s why the original rolling stones were not boulders crashing down a hillside. In fact, the sort of rolling stone that gathers no moss is helpfully pinned down in a dictionary of 1611 as a gardening implement used to make your lawn nice and flat. The solicitous gardener who rolls his lawn every weekend will find that his rolling stone gathers no moss.

Which means that Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Muddy Waters et al are all referring to diligent gardening. Moreover, one of the most successful bands of the twentieth century belongs in the garden shed.

The part of the phrase about gathering no moss actually predates the gardening implement. In the mid-fourteenth century you can find this observation on stone flooring:

Which translates loosely as moss doesn’t grow on marble that gets trodden on a lot. That line is from a mystic allegorical poem called The Vision of Piers Plowman. So before we proceed, what has Piers got to do with a parrot?