A collection of proverbs and popular sayings relating to the seasons, the weather, and agricultural pursuits / gathered chiefly from oral tradition. By M.A. Denham.

  • Denham, M. A. (Michael Aislabie), -1859.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A collection of proverbs and popular sayings relating to the seasons, the weather, and agricultural pursuits / gathered chiefly from oral tradition. By M.A. Denham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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63/86 (page 53)
No tempest, good July, Lest com come off’ blue by. In Poor Robin's Almanack for 1697, the prognostic is thus recorded:— “ In this month is St. Swithin’s day; On which, if that it rain, they say, Full xl days after it will, Or more or less some rain distill. This Swithin was a saint, 1 trow, And Winchester’s bp. also, Who in his time did many a feat, As popish legends do repeat.” Gay, in his Trivia, writes:— “How if, on Swithin’s feast the welkin lours, And ev'ry pent-house streams with hasty show’rs, Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain, And wash the pavements with incessant rain.” Churchill thus glances at the superstitious notions about rain on St. Swithin’s day:— “July to whom the dog-star in her train, St. James gives oysters, and St. Swithin rain.” In Mr. Howard’s work on the Climate of London, cited by Dr. Forster, in his Per. Calendar, is the following remark;— “To do justice to popular observation, I may now state, that in a majority of our summers, a showery period, which, with some latitude as to time and local circumstances, may be admitted to constitute daily rain for xl days, does come on about the time indicated by this tradition : not that any long space before is often so dry as to mark distinctly its commencement.” Query.—May not the foolish and superstitious idea of xl days’ rain after St. Swithin, have originated in a still more ancient tradition of Noah having on that day entered the ark? “ when the foundations of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened, and it rained for xl days and