St. Swithin's Day
Forty Days of Rain or Shine?
"St Swithin's Day, if it does rain
Full forty days, it will remain
St Swithin's Day, if it be fair
For forty days, t'will rain no more"
July 15th every year is St. Swithin’s Day, the annual portent of doom that if it rains on this day with will do so for 40 more…equally if it is dry the rule follows. As I write this it is raining, and is forecast to rain really heavily later on so it doesn’t bode well according to St. Swithin, I hope it doesn’t stay like this for weeks and weeks as I have a festival to go to in August for which I would really prefer it dry!
So where did the legend come from? Well it dates back to Anglo-Saxon times when St. Swithin (also known as St. Swithun) was the Bishop of Winchester from 852 to 862 upon his death. He had requested to be buried in a simple grave among the common people outside the church rather than in a position of prominence where ‘the sweet rain of heaven may fall upon my grave’ which did indeed happen. However, after being named patron saint of Winchester, his body was exhumed and moved to a shrine inside the building on 15th July 971 against his express wishes over a hundred years earlier. On the day his remains were moved, a great storm occurred and the rain didn’t stop for 40 days - hence the legend began. Even today, St. Swithin is one of the saints to pray to in times of drought.
‘If on St. Swithun's day it really pours
You're better off to stay indoors’
Clearly the legend rarely holds water (pardon the pun) as it is almost unheard of for a weather pattern to stay the same for such a long period of time - although some summers do feel that way, and July is a notoriously unstable month in the meteorological calendar as anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors knows all too well. It also depends on where you live in the world in July, fine dry weather is almost guaranteed around the Mediterranean, but the same can definitely not be said of the UK.
So even with today’s rain, let us hope we get enough over the next few weeks to keep the garden happy (overnight would be most acceptable) with warm, dry days to bring a sense of summer…and hope St. Swithin isn’t too vengeful.
