Tithes were established in England through St. Swithin, who prevailed on Ethelwolf to enact a law, by which he gave the tenth of the land to the church, on condition that the king should have a prayer said for his soul every Wednesday in all the churches for ever. Ethelwolf solemnized the grant by laying the charter on the altar of St. Peter at Rome, in a pilgrimage he made to that city, and by procuring the pope to confirm it.

St. Swithin died on the 2d of July, 862, in the reign of king Ethelbert, and he was buried, according to his own order, in the churchyard. Alban Butler, from whom these particulars are related, affirms the translation of his relics into the church a hundred years afterwards, and refers to the monkish historians for the relation of “such a number of miraculous cures of all kinds wrought by them, as was never known in any other place.” His relics were afterwards removed into the cathedral of Winchester, on its being built under William the Conqueror. It was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, under the patronage of St. Peter, afterwards to St. Swithin, in 980, and was called St. Swithin’s until Henry VIII. ordered it to be called by the name of the Holy Trinity.

Among the notable miracles alleged to have been worked by St. Swithin is this, that after he had built the bridge at Winchester, a woman came over it with her lap full of eggs, which a rude fellow broke, but the woman showed the eggs to the saint, who was passing at the time, and he lifted up his hand and blessed the eggs, “and they were made hole and sounde.” To this may be added another story; that when his body was translated, or removed, two rings of iron, fastened on his grave-stone, came out as soon as they were touched, and left no mark of their place in the stone; but when the stone was taken up, and touched by the rings, they of themselves fastened to it again.[211]

St. Swithin’s Day.

“If it rains on St. Swithin’s day, there will be rain the next forty days afterwards.” The occasion of this old and well-known saying is obscure. In Mr. Douce’s interleaved copy of Brand’s “Popular Antiquities,” there is a printed statement “seemingly cut out of a newspaper” cited, in the last edition of Mr. Brand’s work, thus:—“In the year 865, St. Swithin, bishop of Winchester, to which rank he was raised by king Ethelwolfe, the dane, dying, was canonized by the then pope. He was singular for his desire to be buried in the open church-yard, and not in the chancel of the minster, as was usual with other bishops, which request was complied with; but the monks, on his being canonized, taking it into their heads that it was disgraceful for the saint to lie in the open church-yard, resolved to remove his body into the choir, which was to have been done with solemn procession on the 15th of July. It rained, however, so violently on that day, and for forty days succeeding, as had hardly ever been known, which made them set aside their design as heretical and blasphemous: and, instead, they erected a chapel over his grave, at which many miracles are said to have been wrought.”

Also in “Poor Robin’s Almanac” for 1697, the saying, together with one of the miracles before related, is noticed in these lines:—

“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.”

The satirical Churchill also mentions the superstitious notions concerning rain on this day:—

“July, to whom, the dog-star in her train,
St. James gives oisters, and St. Swithin rain.”

The same legend is recorded by Mr. Brand, from a memorandum by Mr. Douce: “I have heard these lines upon St. Swithin’s day:—