Red Sky At Night - And All That (10 February 1978)

I am writing this piece on Wednesday, February 1.  Sleet is blowing in the wind at the moment, which should not be surprising, seeing that February is supposed to be the month that “fills the dykes with black and white,” and sleet is a mixture of both.

What concerns me now, however, is not so much what the weather is like today as what is was like last Wednesday – January 25.  Over the past two or three weeks we have had practically every kind of weather that winter can send us, and I cannot for the life of me remember whether last Wednesday was snowy, sleety, rainy, frosty, windy, balmy, or whatever.  And it is important that I should know, just as a matter of curiosity.

You see, January 25 was St Paul’s Day, and at one time the weather on that day was supposed to be a guide to the weather, not only for the next few days, nor for longer periods like St. Swithun’s 40 days and 40 nights, but for the whole of the ensuing 12 months.

There was a rhyme about it which went something like:

If St Paul’s be fine and clear

It doth betide a happy year,

But if it chance to snow or rain.

Dear will be all sorts of grain.

Those were the days before the chaps from the Meteorological Office (what a word!) came along with their talk of isobars, millibars, warm fronts, cold fronts, occluded fronts (whatever that might mean), depressions and anticyclones in what looks like an attempt to blind us with science on the subject.

Not that the weather wizards do all that badly – not with weather than(sic) can be foretold by a look at the sky, anyway.  But with all their science, plus weather ships and even weather satellites, they didn’t tell us much about the blizzards that were about to sweep America and Scotland, did they?  And If we do not want them for that sort of climatic phenomenon, what do we want them for?

For their entertainment value, perhaps?  But then, in my youth, we got as much entertainment out of St. Swithun’s Day and Old Moore’s Almanack and seeing how wrong they could be.

When it came to weather forecasting, a lot of people in my boyhood used to place great faith in the moon, and possibly some still do.

At the beginning of the lunar month they waited for the crescent moon to appear.  Then, if the crescent tilted slightly on its back it would hold water and the rest of the lunar month would be dry.  But if the crescent tilted slightly forward, it would not hold water and farmers who wanted water would be pleased and those who didn’t would be as disgruntled as usual.

People also used to say:  “There’ll be no change in the weather until the moon changes,” and they were right as often as they were wrong – on the whole.

There was lot of other weather lore.  One saying which has stood the test of time is:

Red sky at night is the shepherd’s delight.

But red in the morning is the shepherd’s warning.

This is pretty accurate, provided we recognise different shades of redness.  There is one – a brassy sort of red – which betokens anything but a delightful night and day to follow.

A good deal of notice was also taken of the behaviour of birds and animals.  It could be that there is a scientific explanation of this.  It could be that over the course of evolution other creatures have learned to feel sensations which we can no longer feel.

However, I have known people to foretell wet weather because their corns have started aching or their rheumatics have started playing them up, though there are some rheumaticky people who dread the change to warm and not to cold.

Actually, this other lore was more likely to have been accurate than the references to saints’ days, especially if those references were in circulation before 1752.  For in that year this country changed from the Julian calendar, which originated in 45 BC, to the present, much more accurate Gregorian calendar.

The Gregorian originated in 1582 and country after country adopted it, but it was not until 1752 that Britain deigned to follow suit.  The change was accomplished by eliminating the 11 days between September 2 and September 14.  The English Church also revised its calendar of festivals and saints’ days to suit the new civil calendar.

Thereafter, while the dates stayed as they were, there was a difference of 11 days in the actual day, if you get my meaning.

To most people, the change did not matter, but it mattered a great deal to some.  Notable were the travelling fairs people.  They knew little about calendars.  All they knew was that a certain fair or feast took place so many days before or after another feast at another place.  Many of these feasts had been tied to the saint’s day of the local parish church.

When, after the change, the fairs people arrived in a parish, they found they had come 11 days too early.  But they had come in such numbers that they decided to hold the fair or feast there and then, rather than disturb their time-honoured itinerary.

This created a gap between the fair and the local church’s saint’s day, but it is a gap which seems to have continued in some places down to the present.  In former times there no going to the seaside for the annual week’s holiday.  The local fair was a big attraction and it would be interesting to know how many annual wakes weeks and the like up and down the country still begin 11 or so days before the local churches’ saints’ days on that account.

In this connection, there was an interesting happening at Newton Longville as recently as the 1950s.  No fairs people had been there for years.  Then, one day, some did arrive and proceeded to set up their roundabout or whatever on what remained of the village green.  Elderly local people said they had certainly got the date right.  And it was exactly 11 days before the commemoration day of St Faith, the parish church’s patron saint!

But I am still curious about the weather on January 25.