WEATHER RULES.
(Vol. vii., p. 522.)
Your correspondent J. A., jun., invites further contributions on the subject to which he refers. Though by no means infallible, such prognostics are not without a measure of truth, founded as they are on habits of close observation:
1. "Si sol splendescat Maria Purificante
Major erit glacies post festum quàm fuit ante."
Rendered thus:
"When on the Purification sun hath shin'd,
The greater part of winter comes behind."
2. "If the sun shines on Easter-day, it shines on Whit
Sunday likewise."
To this I may add the French adage:
"Quel est Vendredi tel Dimanche."
From a MS. now in my possession, dating two centuries back, I extract the following remarks on "Times and Seasons," as not wholly unconnected with the present subject:
"Easter-day never falleth lower than the 22nd of March, and never higher than the 25th of April."
"Shrove Sunday has its range between the 1st of February and the 7th of March."
"Whit Sunday between the 10th of May and the 13th of June."
"A rule of Shrovetide:—The Tuesday after the second change of the moon after New Year's-day is always Shrove Tuesday."
To these I may perhaps be permitted to add certain cautions, derived frown the same source:
"The first Monday in April, the day on which Cain was born, and Abel was slain.
"The second Monday in August, on which day Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed.
"The 31st of December, on which day Judas was born, who betrayed Christ.
"These are dangerous days to begin any business, fall sick, or undertake any journey."
We smile at the superstition which thus stamps these several periods as days of ill omen, especially when we reflect that farther inquiry would probably place every other day of the week under a like ban, and thus greatly impede the business of life—Friday, for instance, which, since our Lord's crucifixion on that day, we are strongly disinclined to make the starting-point of any new enterprise.
In many cases this superstition is based on unpleasing associations connected with the days proscribed. Who can wonder if, in times less enlightened than our own, undue importance were attached to the strange coincidence which marked the deaths of Henry VIII. and his posterity. They all died on a Tuesday; himself on Tuesday, January 28, 1547; Edward VI. on Tuesday, July 6,
1553; Mary on Tuesday, November 17, 1558; Elizabeth on Tuesday, March 24, 1603.
John Booker.
Prestwich.
It is a saying in Norwich,—
"When three daws are seen on St. Peter's vane together,
Then we are sure to have bad weather."
I think the observation is tolerably correct.
Anon.