In this month is St Swithin's day;
On which, if that it rain, they say
Full forty days after it will,
Or more or less, some rain distill.
This Swithin was a saint, I trow,
And Winchester's bishop also.
Who in his time did many a feat,
As popish legends do repeat:
A woman having broke her eggs
By stumbling at another's legs,
For which she made a woful cry,
St Swithin chanc'd for to come by,
Who made them all as sound, or more
Than ever that they were before.
But whether this were so or no
'Tis more than you or I do know:
Better it is to rise betime,
And to make hay while sun doth shine,
Than to believe in tales and lies
Which idle monks and friars devise.
Poor Robin's Almanac, 1697 (July)
A shower of rain in July,
When the corn begins to fill,
Is worth a plough of oxen,
And all belongs theretill.
In this month is St Swithin’s Day,
On which, if that rain, men say,
Full forty days after it will
For more or less some rain distill,
Till Swithin’s Day is past and gone
There may be hops, or there may be
none.
Traditional (St Swithin’s Day, July 15) (Nigel
Pennick,
The
Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA,
1992, 85)
Now, if on Swithin's feast the welkin lours,
And every penthouse streams with hasty showers,
Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain
And was the pavements with incessant rain.
Let not such vulgar tales debase thy mind;
Nor Paul nor Swithin rule the clouds and wind.
John Gay,
Trivia
St Swithin is christening the apples.
Old English saying when it rained on this day Brand, Popular Antiquities, 1813, i, 342
With my own hands
When I make love to your memory
It's not the same
I miss the thunder
I miss the rain
And the fact that you don't understand
Casts a shadow over this land
But the sun still shines from behind it.
Thanks all the same
But i just can't bring myself to answer your letters
It's not your fault
But your honesty touches me like a fire
The polaroids that hold us together
Will surely fade away
Like the love that we spoke of forever
On st swithin's day
Billy Bragg, English working class singer/songwriter
and activist, born on December 20, 1957;
'St
Swithin’s Day'
More on Billy Bragg
|
|
 July 15
| Feast
day of St Swithin
(Swithun)
Confessor,
patron of Winchester, England
(Small Cape marigold, Calendula pluvialis, is today's
plant, dedicated to this saint).
Watch the weather today
Our story today takes us back more than a
millennium, to the days when the British Isles were beset by Viking raids and Charlemagne’s
empire ruled supreme in Europe. St
Swithin (or Swithun) was Bishop
of Winchester in 852 and adviser to
King
Egbert of Wessex (d. 839) and probably tutor to his son Ethelwulf. He was called the ‘drunken saint’, but
no such behaviour is recorded of him.
Swithin was the one who introduced tithing into
England: he persuaded King Ethelwulf to enact a law, by which he gave a
tenth of his land to the church, on condition that the king should be
prayed for every Wednesday in every church forever. Among other
remarkable feats, Swithin once restored broken eggs.
Swithin’s consecration by Ceolnoth,
Archbishop of Canterbury, seems to have taken place on October 30, 852. We
don’t know the date of his birth, but his death is entered in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle under the year 861;
his death date is believed to be July
2 (some sources say in 862).
An old English legend says that the good bishop
wished to be buried in the churchyard of the cathedral, in a humble grave outside the north wall, so that the ‘sweet rain of heaven might fall
upon his grave’. Nine years later his monks tried to move his remains
inside the cathedral but there was a violent thunderstorm and rain for the following 40 days and 40
nights. Believing their beloved late bishop to be weeping in distress,
they abandoned the venture. Miraculously, two rings of iron, fastened on
his gravestone, came out as soon as they were touched, and left no mark
of their place in the stone. When the stone was taken up, and touched by
the rings, by themselves they fastened to it again.
A century passed and 971
came around (the year Eric Bloodaxe
became the second king of
Norway, by the
way, not that Eric has anything to do with our tale, sorry, but it’s
such a great handle). Swithin was canonized (declared a saint
– St Swithin was never actually canonised by a pope; he is a
‘home-made saint’) and, following a vision by St Ethelwold (909
- 984), the monks decided to honour him by placing his
body in the Winchester
Cathedral choir rather than outside amongst the common folks’
graves. So….
They booked July 15 for the
ceremony of the ‘translation’
of his relics (bones), and this time it was successful. His head is in
one part of the cathedral and his body in another. Oh, and one of his
arms ended up in St Svithun’s Cathedral at Stavanger,
Norway. Perhaps he should be the patron of disarmament.
St
Swithin’s shrine was destroyed during the Reformation
and a new one was dedicated in 1962. Various miracles have been
performed at the tomb, such as the cure of a hunchback, and of a man
with a “grievous ailment in his eyes”. Or so it is said.
Swithin is appropriately
patron of
drought relief and of Winchester.
How did St Swithin's
legend come about?
Possibly there was an even more ancient tradition relating to a day
about this time of year and we note the pervasiveness of similar customs
in Europe. Other rain prognostication days in Europe include: St Médard’s
Day (June 8), France; Saints Gervais
and Protais (June 19), St Godelieve, Belgium (July 6); the Seven Sleepers, Germany
(July 27). Keep watching the
Almanac for these.
Examination of the meteorological records of
England reveals the legend to be fallacious. Nineteenth-century British
folklorist Robert Chambers found that between 1841 and 1860, a dry St
Swithin's day was actually more likely to have the larger number of
succeeding wet days! Those who believe in this superstition ignore the
fact that it is based upon the dating of the Julian calendar and
therefore could not hold for 40 days from the current July 15, which is
based on the Gregorian
year, a calendar that Britain did not adopt until 1752.
Rain today “blesses
and christens the apples”. Apples should not be picked or eaten before
this day. All apples growing at this time will ripen and come to
maturity.
To mark St Swithin's Day, you could read
more
international weather
wisdom, featuring such gems as "snow is due when the cat
washes behind both ears". Or you can sing (and play) along to Billy
Bragg's
musical
ode.
Today’s weather
worldwide
And my local
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