Can anyone find a source or citation for a Scottish proverb?

My wife has a college friend whose parents emigrated to the US from Scotland around 1955.
This woman’s parents used to use a saying that went something like this: “it’s ne’er off the water he licked it” or maybe “it’s nae off the water he licked it”. It equates to something like “the apple does not fall far from the tree”

I can not find any mention of this particular phrase on Google and we want to know if we have it right. Can anyone find this phrase quoted somewhere or explained somewhere?

Thanks to all