On Swithun's day if it do rain/ for forty days it shall remain

[tree_and_leaf]

It's S. Swithun's day (and also S. Bonaventura, but this is of less meteorological import): predict the weather for the next forty days now!

I am pleased to note that at the moment it's sunny and the sky is blue, but that it's rather cool than otherwise. It's welcome to stay like this!

Of course, the weather rhymes work even less reliably than they used to since they reformed the calendar - but I'm hoping it'll hold this year, anyway.

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

*Looks out of window at windy, cold, humid weather that will certainly bring rain by the end of the day.*

You're just rubbing it in, aren't you?

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

/ Tenth Doctor

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

From here (http://www.lexscripta.com/articles/calendar.html#implementation):

One correspondent wrote to a popular journal regarding the Glastonbury Thorn, which was reputed to blossom every year exactly on Christmas Day, that it had "contemptuously ignored the new style" and "burst into blossom on the 5th January, thus indicating that Old Christmas Day should alone be observed, in spite of an irreligious legislature".

[tree_and_leaf]

That's brilliant, and a fascinating page altogether:

One of the few remaining practical implications of the principle that the law takes no cognisance of fractions of a day is the rule - which the High Court of Australia reaffirmed as recently as 1961 [42] - that a person is taken to achieve a particular age from the first moment of the day preceding the person's birthday. Yet even this rule has been called into question by Sir Gerard Brennan. On the day preceding his Honour's retirement from the High Court, a prominent member of the Sydney Bar made the suggestion - no doubt in a jocular way - that the effect of the decision in Prowse v. McIntyre casts "some doubt about the validity of the farewell tomorrow". Sir Gerard replied in these terms[43]:

"If I might say so, Mr. Bennett, although I am conscious of the reported case to which you refer, the practice of this Court - and of course the practice of the Court is the law of the Court - quite clearly establishes that the 70th year is attained on the last moment of the eve of one's birthday. Tomorrow's ceremony, therefore, I judicially declare, if it be the last function that I perform, will be a valid ceremony."


How interesting. I have been this age for longer than I thought!

[azdak.livejournal.com]

The only reliable weather rhyme is that of Flanders and Swann:

January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.

February's ice and sleet,
Freeze the toes right off your feet.

Welcome, March, with wint'ry wind,
Would thou weren't not so unkind.

April brings the sweet spring showers,
On and on for hours and hours.

Farmers fear unkindly May,
Frost by night and hail by day.

June just rains and never stops,
Thirty days and spoils the crops.

In July the sun is hot,
Flanders: Is it shining?
Swann: No it's not!

Both: August, cold and dank and wet,
Brings more rain than any yet.

Bleak September's mist and mud,
Is enough to chill the blood.

Then October adds a gale,
Wind and slush and rain and hail.

Dark November brings the fog,
Should not do it to a dog.

Freezing wet December, then...
Bloody January again!

[tree_and_leaf]

True, true, true. Aber die Hoffnung stirbt bekanntlich zuletzt.

[carlanime.livejournal.com]

If you also know the lyrics to the "She's Shy" song, you have a fan for life now.

[tree_and_leaf]

She's terribly, terribly shy....

[carlanime.livejournal.com]

All I rememebr is her looking so sweet (I think sweet) in her topless dress, but underneath she's shy!

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Ooni-luku-maka-chee-chee-chee.

Alas.

[carlanime.livejournal.com]

♥ anyway!

...so, I guess I need to hunt out my F&S cds, since now I have a craving.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Me too!

[tree_and_leaf]

The lyrics aren't on line, shockingly. I've googled several phrases from it, and none of them get me anywhere.

I think my favourite line is 'he's shy, he's shy, though he wears a fluorescent tie... when you hear that laugh like a sonic boom, go right on over to meet your doom, for underneath he's shy'

Flanders and Swann are love (and yes, it is 'she looks quite sweet in her topless dress)

[carlanime.livejournal.com]

It's overcast, windy, and probably about to rain. (And yet it's been sunny for weeks, so clearly St. Swithin (???) is doing this on purpose.)

[tree_and_leaf]

Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester, d 862. He was buried outside, rather than in his cathedral, because he wanted 'the sweet rain of heaven' to fall on his grave. However, a later generation moved him indoors for the purpose of easier veneration - and, the legend goes, it promptly rained torrentially for forty days.

There is an alternative version of the rhyme: 'On Swithin's day if it do pour/ you're bettr off to stay in doors'.

Either spelling of the name is possible.