60 THE BORROWING DAYS 



XVII 



So mutable is our meteorology that, notwithstanding 

 what has been remarked above about the 

 Borrowing change in the calendar (pp. 18-20), some of the 

 Days old weather saws hold good notwithstanding 

 the alteration of dates, and the modern March seldom 

 merges into April without presenting the phenomenon 

 known to our ancestors as ' the Borrowing Days.' For 

 example, this year (1907) the first week of April, which, 

 according to the old calendar would have been reckoned 

 into March, was delightfully warm, with nourishing 

 rain ; but in the south of Scotland, at least, we rose on 

 Sunday, the 7th, to find a white world, with a blizzard 

 driving before a shrill north wind. March was repaying 

 the debt which it had borrowed from April, according 

 to a tradition the origin whereof lies in unwritten 

 antiquity, but one that long ago found expression in 

 the literature of many lands. Thus in The Complaynt 

 of Scotland, composed in the sixteenth century, the 

 Borrowing Days are referred to as something so 

 familiarly known as to need no explanation, although 

 it is doubtful whether many board school teachers of 

 the present day, let alone their pupils, would under- 

 stand the allusion in the following passage : 



' There eftir i entrit in ane grene forest to contempil the 

 tender yong frutes of grene treis, becaus the borial blastis of 

 the thre borowing dais of Marche had chassit the fragrant 

 flureise of evyrie frut trie far athourt the feildis.' 



Sir Thomas Browne, setting himself the ungrateful 



