St. Swithin’s Day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithin’s Day, if thou be fair,
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.
So goes a bit of British weather lore for St. Swithin’s Day, the 15th of July. Potentially forty days of rain may seem a lot to bear, but not, perhaps, to St. Swithin, who, before he died, asked to buried just outside the walls of the cathedral that was his home, so that raindrops from the eaves of the roof could fall upon his grave.
St. Swithin was a 9th century Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester, and he was buried, as requested, outside Winchester Cathedral. The poor fellow has not had a very restful sleep, however. His body was moved to an indoor shrine in 971––apparently accompanied by a great downpour, which some took as an expression of Swithin’s unhappiness with this change of residence. His relics have been disturbed and moved about many times since.
There is some truth, it is said, to the weather lore for St. Swithin’s Day, for the jet stream over Britain tends to follow a regular pattern at this time of year, dictating the weather patterns for the next five to six weeks. Should the jet stream lie north of Britain, the weather will typically be clear and mild. Should the jet stream lie across or south of Britain, stormy weather may be expected as rain moves in from the Atlantic. And so science seems to confirm the weather lore. Or else St. Swithin just really loves a rainy day.
Image: Rain in an Oak Forest by Ivan Shishkin. Oil on canvas, 1891, [Public domain] via WikiMedia Commons.