179 



Saint Mamcrt, Saint Pancrace 

 , Et Saint Scrvais 



Sans froid ces Saiuts de Glace 

 Ne vont jamais.* 

 The festivals of these Saints occur on three consecutive days, the 

 11th, 12th, and 13th day of May, and the noticeable thing is that 

 these three days coincide with one of those short periods of 

 anomalous cold, or wintry relapse, which occur in the earlier 

 months, and of which that in May is, perhaps, the one most 

 generally known ; thereby again establishing the truth of an old 

 adage — though the phenomenon to which it bears reference has 

 only of late years, comparatively speaking, attracted the attention 

 of meteorologists, or been clearly ascertained to be a fact. There 

 are similar interruptions to the regular com-se of the mean diurnal 

 temperature at other periods of the year, especially a marked one 

 the second week in April, or about the end of March, Old Style, 

 this being the cold weather known by the name of the Borrowing 

 Days, to which the following old Scotch rhymes relate : — 

 March borrows frae Aprill 

 Three days, and they are ill : 

 The first o' them is wun' an' weet. 

 The second it is snaw and sleet ; 

 The third o' them is a peel-a-bane. 

 And freezes the wee bird's neb tae stane. 

 These Borrowed Days are connected with a fable, of which some 

 account is given by Chambers, t The days themselves are alluded 

 to by Sir Thos. Browne in his "Vulgar Errors," but the idea 

 seems to date further back than his time. 



There are many other sayings, however, connected with Saints'- 

 Days and Festivals which seem due to superstition alone, and in 

 which it is difficult to discover any truth that can be brovight into 

 harmony with the facts of meteorology. They would, therefore, 

 be scarcely deserving of notice did they not tend further to 

 illustrate the practice observable in those we have already 

 considered relating to a forty days' rain, viz., the practice so 

 prevalent, it would seem, in olden times of connecting with different 

 Saints the same ideas and prognostications as to weather, favourable 



* " Notes and Queries," Ser. 4., vol. iv., p. 37. t Book of Days, vol. i., p. 

 448. See also Forster's Perennial Calendar, p. 147. 



