A rolling stone gathers no moss is an old proverb, credited to Publilius Syrus, who in his Sententiae states, People who are always moving, with no roots in one place or another, avoid responsibilities and cares. Inversely, a common modern meaning is that a person must stay active to avoid stagnation.
In English
The conventional English translation appeared in John Heywood's collection of Proverbs in 1546. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable also credits Erasmus, and relates it to other Latin proverbs, Planta quae saepius transfertus non coalescit or Saepius plantata arbor fructum profert exiguum, which mean that a frequently replanted plant or tree yields little fruit. It appears that the original intent of the proverb saw the growth of moss as desirable, and that the intent was to condemn mobility as unprofitable. The contemporary interpretation of equating moss to undesirable stagnation has turned the traditional understanding on its head. Erasmus's proverb gave the name "rolling stone" to people who are agile and never get rusty due to constant motion. "A day in the moss" refers to cutting peat in bogs or mosses. Metaphorically, this refers to the hard work in preparation for winter. An itinerant "rolling stone" will not likely feel the timely need to apply for access to a community's peat bog.
Accuracy
The saying may not be authentic to Syrus; the Latin form usually given, Saxum volutum non obducitur musco, does not appear in the edited texts of Publilius Syrus. It does, however, appear with similar wording in Erasmus'Adagia, which was first published around 1500. It is also given as "Musco lapis volutus haud obducitur", and in some cases as "Musco lapis volutus haud obvolvitur". The literal meaning of the statement itself is true. The television showMythBusters showed that after six months of constantly rolling a stone does not grow moss.
In psychiatry
Because it is so well known, this saying is one of the most common proverbs used in psychological tests for mental illness, particularly schizophrenia, to look for difficulty with abstraction. American research conducted in the 1950s between Air Force basic airmen and hospitalized Veterans Administration patients with schizophrenia found that the way a person interprets proverbs can be used to determine abstraction ability. The lack of abstraction ability in these studies was statistically significantly higher in the VA patients and it has thus been construed as indicating pathology. As persons with mental illness are generally believed to demonstrate "concrete" thinking the research results have, in practice, often been improperly generalized to suggest proverbs alone can be a sufficient indicator of mental illness. A "concrete" interpretation of the proverb "a rolling stone gathers no moss" would simply restate the proverb in different words, rather than delivering any metaphorical meaning.
Cultural references
In comics
A gag of George Herriman's Krazy Kat has Krazy run behind a rolling stone on Ignatz Mouse's account, to literally see whether "it gathers any moss?"
In literature
In Swallows and Amazons, published in 1930 by the English children's authorArthur Ransome, the fictional Captain Flint alludes to the proverb by calling his memoirs Mixed Moss by A Rolling Stone. The theft of the manuscript of the fictional book is a major theme of the real book.
In The Rolling Stones, a 1952 novel by science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein, a family travels throughout the Solar System looking for adventure and money. Hazel Stone, the grandmother, says "this city life is getting us covered with moss" when buying their ship. The theme carries throughout the book.
In music
The union activist Joe Hill's last will, written in the form of a song in 1915, states: "My kin don't need to fuss and moan / Moss does not cling to rolling stone."
Hank Williams's "Lost Highway" opens with the line "I'm a rolling stone/All alone and lost", inspiring later songs to use the rolling stone metaphor.
"Rollin' Stone" is a 1950 song recorded by blues legend Muddy Waters. The single went on to inspire both the band The Rolling Stones and the magazine Rolling Stone.
"Like a Rolling Stone" is a song by Bob Dylan from his album 1965 Highway 61 Revisited.
The Temptations released the song "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" in 1971.
BTS's song Nevermind.
In film
In the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a psychologist asks McMurphy what he thinks the proverb means. After an initial smart-aleck response, McMurphy says he guesses it means, "It's hard for something to grow on something that's moving."
