CELEBRATING ST SWITHIN'S DAY 15 JULY

For centuries, the month of July was always considered to be the height of summer, fairly temperate, often as in the preceding month, but there seemed an element of violence in the British countryside. With paintings showing  reapers flashing scythes through the cornfields, stags fighting for supremacy over their rivals, sparrow hawks hungrily hunting rodents and ferrets chasing rabbits; the wild animal kingdom in July seems to have been at its ferocious height. This time of year is also often characterised by fierce and unexpected thunderstorms -  perhaps not the best news for our farmers, gardeners and allotmenteers.

This is where St Swithin (or more properly, Swithun) makes an entrance in our British folklore. He was a Saxon Bishop of Winchester, born in the ninth century in the reign of King Athelwulf of Essex, in the kingdom of Wessex. He was consecrated in 852. This particular saint seems to have been one of the people, renowned for his kindly acts, building churches and helping farmers in their apple orchards, but his chief link with modern times is his association with the weather.  A legend says that as the Bishop lay on his deathbed, he asked to be buried out of doors, where he would be rained and trodden upon.  For many years, his wishes were followed, but then, the monks of Winchester attempted to remove his remains to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral on 15 July 971. According to folklore, there was a tumultuously heavy storm during the ceremony. The emblems of raindrops are often used to remember St Swithin and refer to the superstition of the forty days' rain that followed his demise. So the story has persisted over the following one thousand years.

Oddly enough, while most gardeners and holiday makers would prefer not see rain on July 15th, our English apple-growers really hope for a good soaking on this particular day. This is because many old farmers used to say that the 'saints are watering the crops.' If they fail to do so, the apple-harvest will be a poor one. Furthermore, no apple should picked or eaten before July 15th.The other side of the superstition is that apple-growers believe all embryo apples still growing on St Swithin's day will fully ripen.  If the early part of June has been hot, then a few showers were not wholly unwelcome in July. Even today, many British schoolchildren might be familiar with the weather-rhyme well known throughout the British Isles since Elizabethan times. 

'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.'  (nae mair = no more}