Forty days and...

The fifteenth of July, St. Swithin’s Day, and it’s raining.

According to my grandmother it will now proceed to rain for the next forty days and forty nights.

Driving home through Oxfordshire yesterday I could see that St. Swithin was getting into the swim of things, trying to make his mind up whether to deliver forty days rain or forty days shine and it looked like he came down on the side of the rain. The clouds were huge, the sky was black, and at times the rain so torrential it was like driving underwater. I stopped to take a picture of a rapeseed field and got drenched running back to my car.

Swithin was a Saxon Bishop of Winchester. Born in the kingdom of Wessex and educated in its capital, Winchester, he was famous for doing ‘good works’ - making charitable gifts, building churches, feeding the poor, rescuing the odd fallen woman or two, the full gamut of ‘good works’ as listed in ‘The Would Be Saints Guide to Getting Sainted’.

As he lay on his deathbed (no doubt brought low by all the ‘good working’) he asked to be buried out of doors where he would be trodden and rained on. An odd request, but then imminent death probably gives you a new perspective on things like ‘final resting places’, and for nine atmospherically fine years his wishes were followed.

But then, one sunny 15^th July in 971, the monks of Winchester decided to move his remains to a brand spanking new shiny shrine inside the cathedral. During the move, just as the monks were getting into the swing of their chant topping new single, the heavens opened and a huge rainstorm ensued drowning out the sound of their droning. No doubt, this signalled St. Swithin’s wrath over his removal, and since that day if it rains on St. Swithin’s day and… well, you know the rest.

Of course the flip-side of the rain coin is that if it is sunny on St Swith’s Day then we will have glorious weather for the next forty days and forty nights - although, according to the Met Office, it is all (surprise, surprise) a myth, nothing more than an old wives tale (or in my case an old grandmother’s tale). On the last 55 occasions when it has been wet on St Swithin's Day 40 days of rain did not follow and weather was pretty much as one expects from a British Summer – mixed.

Oh well, we’ll have to wait and see won’t we.

'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.'