It's a poor musician who blames his instrument

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on September 20, 2008 at 14:14

In Reply to: It's a poor musician who blames his instrument posted by Benjamin M. Strozykowski on September 20, 2008 at 12:36:

: I'm trying to find the origin of the phrase/adage/saying:
: "It's a poor musician who blames his instrument"

: I can't find heads nor tails on the internet using Google, Wikipedia or Wikiquotes. Searching here does not provide anything, either.

It's a variant of "A bad workman blames his tools", which is a very ancient proverb. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, the oldest known version is in 13th-century French: "mauves ouvriers ne trovera ja bon hostill" (literally, "a bad workman will never find a good tool"). (VSD)