# za každým čechem stojí čert s měchem



## Lekason

Co zmaněná toto přisloví a jakou má historie?


----------



## Enquiring Mind

Hi Lekason, well you posted your question well over two days ago, and still no-one's answering. Maybe you touched a raw nerve! Anyway, for what it's worth, I'll just refer you to the comments (by the same poster) under a YouTube film clip here. The two comments say:

"_This doesn't mean that every Czech is a thief, but that temptation is ever-present and therefore we have to be careful of Czechs. This is probably the experience of previous generations in Moravia. It's a humorous exaggeration ..._" 

"_Of course it's an exaggeration, but it has been known since time immemorial that Czechs will take things that don't belong to them. In Austria they use the word "thief" and the same in Germany. It's a sort of Czech sport. So in Moravia they say that behind every Czech there's a devil with a sack, so the devil serves as a lesson, and he has a sack into which a light-fingered person puts everything he lays his hands on._"

Moravia, as I'm sure you know, was not always part of the same "country" as Bohemia, and the Great Moravian Empire existed from AD 500-1306. Even today some Moravians are fiercely proud of their "Moravian-ness" and don't like to be identified as "Czechs".

The word "měch" is interesting. In today's standard Czech you usually come across it in the plural (měchy) and it means "bellows" (мехи). In this particular saying it means a bag or a sack, derived from the same root as мешок, and it's not the normal word for a bag or sack, which is pytel.


----------



## Mori.cze

Just a brief comment to the Enquiring Mind's answer (exhaustive as always):
As for no-one answering: personally I have never heard this proverb... given that I am a Bohemian Czech this might not be that surprising
As for "měch" instead of "pytel" wording: clearly this choice was made for sake of the rhyme.


----------



## bibax

IMO it means that all Czechs (in Bohemia) are ungodly false people and Old Scratch is ready to drag them to hell in his sack. On the other side the Moravians are good-hearted godly people (in their own opinion, of course), there must be an angel behind every Moravian.


----------



## morior_invictus

bibax said:


> IMO it means that all Czechs (in Bohemia) are ungodly false people and Old Scratch is ready to drag them to hell in his sack. On the other side the Moravians are good-hearted godly people (in their own opinion, of course; there must be an angel behind every Moravian).


I, basically, agree with bibax's explanation, though, to me, the proverb in question seems to mean that Bohemians can't be trusted. They will betray/deceive/trick Moravians at the first opportunity. Bohemians always come with a devil standing behind their backs who is ready to drag Moravians*** down to hell in his burlap sack. In the fairy-tales I read as a kid, devils used burlap sacks only for kidnapping purposes (never for stealing things - they don't need things; they need people to keep a fire burning beneath cauldrons).

_____________________
***a Bohemian will just bring him along but he will leave with a Moravian (in his burlap sack), in my opinion (this is where I seriously differ with bibax )


----------



## ilocas2

A za každým Slezanem stojí Mikuláš...


----------



## Lekason

Thank you all! I also asked my Czech colleagues (about 10 people) - and nobody knew this saying. I heard it in the movie "Vsechny dobri rodaci" (the one Enquiring Mind refered to).


----------



## ilocas2

And what did make you think that a sentence that you hear in a movie is a proverb or a saying?

Maybe this "saying" was uttered for the first time in that movie.


----------



## Lekason

I understand Czech well enough to distinguish between a sentence and a saying, i.e. a statement that has a meaning that is different from the simple meanings of the words it contains.


----------



## ilocas2

This is only a partial definition of a saying.


----------

