The nightly virgin while her wheel she plies
Foresees the storm impending in the skies
When sparkling lamps their sputtering lights advance,
And in their sockets oily bubbles dance.
Lamps, from the manner in which they burn, forebode weather. Before rain they burn less bright, the flame snaps and crackles, and a sort of fungous excrescence grows from the wicks, which Virgil was mindful to put among his prognostics of rain and wind. From this indicatorial property of the burning lights arose many superstitions relating to them, as the blue color of the flame being a sign of ghost and death, and so on, of which the following explanation is already offered in the Perennial Calendar:
“Numerous were the omens attached by credulous persons in former days to the manner in which candles burnt, and particularly to their flames. When they burned blue, it was accounted ill luck, or else that some ghostly apparition was announced. Now when the brain and nervous system are in a certain state peculiarly favorable to spectral illusions, the imagination may easily color the flame of a candle, without its really changing its tint; just as, in fevers, people see spots of color on the wall, or imagine insects on the bedclothes. For the same morbid condition of the animal system which may cause persons to see the spectral prognostic, would in this case cause them to behold the subsequent phantom, and thus the omen and its awful consequence would be viewed together to the support of superstition. Besides this, the particular mode of burning observed in the wicks of lamps and candles is really found to be caused by atmospherical peculiarities, and is a sure sign of rain.” (Forster’s Encyclopædia of Natural Phenomena.)
Light.
Refractions of light of any remarkable kind frequently forebode rain, sometimes storms; at sea the knowledge of this is very useful. Circles around the sun and moon, mock suns, and other phenomena of this kind, together with the unusual elevation of distant coasts, masts of ships, &c., particularly when the refracted images are inverted, are known to be frequent foreboders of stormy weather.
Long Island.
When Long Island comes up the harbor, expect a storm. (Connecticut.)