Is there a term for folk sayings? Not old wives tales, but pseudo-scientific rhymes and idiomatic phrases to help educate people within a culture?
Some examples:
“Red on yellow will kill a fellow.”
“Beer before liquor, never been sicker.”
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.”
Proverbs
Saws
Complete sentences from folk tradition are called proverbs (all the examples you give). The broadest term is “folk speech,” and within that you have a whole giant variety of categories, from argot to wellerisms. “Saws” is a correct answer but not used a technical term by paremiologists (those who study proverbs).
Adage, aphorism, and apothegm all fill the bill, although they aren’t necessarily in poetic form. Epigrams are similar but often in poetic form. Possibly “folk epigram” would describe your examples.
For some reason, folklorists don’t really talk about epigrams the way scholars of literature do. I suspect it has to do with the fact that it isn’t poem first, speech second, but a kind of speech that uses poetic devices such as rhyme, meter, alliteration in order to enhance its function. There’s certainly a lot of similarity between true epigrams and two- or four-line folk rhymes (another term that used to be used, now considered old fashioned).
Mnemonics?
Thirty day hath September . . . .
Old wives’ tales?
Actually, though, I think they’re called folk sayings.
Calling something an old wives’ tale usually means it’s thought to be false. Of the examples in the OP, the first (about venomous snakes) is true (at least in the US), and the third has a meteorological basis.
I doubt that there’s a standard term for the specific kind of rhymed sayings in the OP. They’re mnemonic adages, in which the rhyme helps recall the information.
Why do you doubt this? They are all proverbs. Paremiologists may well have more technical subtypes, but there certainly is a specific term which applies to these statements and not to other types of folk speech. Not all proverbs rhyme, of course, but the “red sky” one is common across multiple languages and I doubt if all of them rhyme; it certainly doesn’t in the English translation of the Bible.
“Adage” certainly applies to them, but it is not a technical term in the field that studies such sayings. Proverb is.
I wasn’t saying they weren’t proverbs. However, as you note proverb is a broader term that lacks the mnemonic element of the examples given in the OP. Is there a more specific term that covers the examples in the OP but not non-mnemonic proverbs?
I think all proverbs do have this mnemonic element. It’s just that (1) rhyme isn’t always the key to the mnemonic, and (2) the proverb isn’t always about a (perceived) fact, but more often about behaviour or something.
“A bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush” uses both alliteration and the anapest, but doesn’t rhyme or help with a fact.
Alan Dundes just calls them “mnemonics” (“Mnemonic Devices,” Midwest Folklore 11:3 (1961), but he includes both examples of the OP, but also things like ROY G. BIV which isn’t a proverb or a rhyme. Elsewhere, though, he denies that these are proverbs, claiming they’re superstitions in rhyming form (Wolfgang Mieder begs to differ).
Hmm… there may not be an agreement in the sub-genre. I don’t have access right now to Charles Doyle’s dictionary, whose introduction is probably the place to look.
Based on the sometimes accurate Wikipedia, most proverbs are intended to be sort of universal truths, not in their literal meaning as the sayings I have in mind do:
“Haste makes waste”
“Mustn’t cry over spilled milk.”
“You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”
None of the examples in my OP have a deeper connotation, but virtually all of the ones on the Wikipedia page are usually used in a figurative sense.
They’re usually abbreviations or associations used to memorize something, like “Roy G. Biv” to remember the colors of the rainbow. In theory, it seems like it fits, but in practice I don’t see it.
Apothegm looks possible, although it appears to be similar (to me) to a proverb. Aphorisms appear to be more about wit, whereas my examples are all about conveying factual information. Like wise, Epigrams seem more concerned with poetry than a clear message.
Adage seems like a strong contender. Folk adage?
Not quite. The harmless Sonoran shovel-nosed snake has the “kill a fellow” color sequence.