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1 may seem to have dwelt long on this part of our subject, but 

 it is not without its lessons. Of course no weather sayings due 

 to superstition alone are of the smallest value as weather prog- 

 nostications. But the sayings in connection with Saints' Days are 

 not all of this character ; and those that are still yield instruction 

 only in a different way. There is no science in them, properly so 

 called ; but they instruct us by exhibiting that particular frame of 

 mind, which seems to have so universally prevailed when men 

 were first led to think at all about the phenomena of the outer 

 world, when nature was rather worshipped than questioned, in the 

 way that we question her, — a phase of thought through which 

 science seems to have formerly passed, or rather from which it first 

 emanated, before assuming anything of that form in which it 

 presents itself to us at the present day. 



Let us DOW proceed to consider some of the Saints' Day weather 

 sayings, taking those first which are best known and oftenest 

 repeated, and about which I shall have most to say, namely those 

 relating to St. Swithin's Day, the 15th of July in our present 

 calendar. The following lines will be familiar to many persons : — 

 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 distil. 

 A Scotch proverb makes out that it may be either wet or fine for 

 forty days, according to what the weather may be on St. Swithin's 

 Day : — St. Swithin's Day, gif ye do rain, 



For forty daies it will remain ; 

 St. Swithin's Day, an ye be fair, 

 For forty daies 'twill rain na mair. 

 Gay commences a humorous description of a rainy St. Swithin 

 with the following lines : — 



Now, if on Swithin's feast the welkin lours. 

 And every pent house streams with hasty showers. 

 Twice twenty days shall clouds their fleeces drain, 

 . And wash the pavements with incessant rain. 

 And he adds — 



Let not such vulgar tales debase thy mind ; 

 Nor Paul nor Swithin rule the clouds and wind. 

 But " vulgar tales," or so considered, are still sometimes worth 



