It is the first edition, and very rare.

A quaint little thin volume, such as delights the eyes of true bibliomaniacs, unpaged, and published at Edinburgh 1641--although on the title-page the proverbs are said to have been collected at Mr.Fergusson's death, 1598[85].

There is no preface or notice by the author, but an address from the printer, "to the merrie, judicious, and discreet reader." The proverbs, amounting to 945, are given without any comment or explanation.

Many of them are of a very antique cast of language; indeed some would be to most persons quite unintelligible without a lexicon.
The printer, in his address "to the merrie, judicious, and discreet reader," refers in the following quaint expressions to the author:--"Therefore manie in this realme that hath hard of David Fergusson, sometime minister at Dunfermline, and of his quick answers and speeches, both to great persons and others inferiours, and hath hard of his proverbs which hee gathered together in his time, and now we put downe according to the order of the alphabet; and manie, of all ranks of persons, being verie desirous to have the said proverbs, I have thought good to put them to the presse for thy better satisfaction....

I know that there may be some that will say and marvell that a minister should have taken pains to gather such proverbs together; but they that knew his forme of powerfull preaching the word, and his ordinar talking, ever almost using proverbiall speeches, will not finde fault with this that he hath done.