), and "teeming with fish" (
), as applied to the sea. Society in the same or parallel stage ever gives the same utterance.
The reality, too, of the elements, as Lear and Jacques would say, touches the poor to the quick. Hence in the north they simply call rain "waters," just in the same way as the Greeks used
whilst in the midland counties they nearly as often say "it is wetting" as "it is raining." Their proverbs, too, smack of the fierceness of men who have struggled with the storm. So the Anglian countryman sings of the first three days of March,
"First comes David, then comes Chad.
Then comes Winnol blowing like mad."
Their vocabulary, too, teems with words expressive of every shade and variety of weather. Our skies and clouds have entered far more into the composition of popular phrases than we are commonly aware. Such trivial expressions as "being under a cloud," "laying up for a rainy day," unconsciously reflect the character of our weather. Its power overshadows even the altar and the grave in the common rhyme:
"Happy the bride whom the sun shines on.
Happy the dead whom the rain rains on."