|
Weather
Rhymes
Many
of the old rhymes about weather have a grain or more of truth
in them, but others have not. When the cock goes
crowing to his bed, hell rise inthe morning with a watery
head! Well, Ive been out of my bed at night as often
as most people, and have heard cocks crowing at bedtime, midnight,
dawn and at every hour in between. As often as not the next day
was exceptionally fine. In actual fact, if one cock starts crowing
at night, other cocks hear him and respondthats all
there is to it ?
Nevertheless,
before the days of scientific forecasting, country and sea-faring
folk had to keep their weather eye open, and they realised that
the swing of the wind, the movements of birds, beasts and insects,
the clarity of the air, etc., meant a change for good or ill.
Flashes of wildfire, or the weird appearance of the Merry
Dancers were sure indications of unsettled weather. Grey
mares tails in the upper sky meant that a wet spell
would continue. Spiders spinning, and swallows flying high indicated
good weather to be.
A
well-known Angus rhyme introduces the Sidlaws:
When Craigowl puts on his cowl,
and Coolie Law his hood,
The folk o Lundie may look dool,
for the dayll no be good.
There
is a Fife version:
When Falkland Hill puts on his cap,
the Howe o Fife will get a drap,
And when the Bishop draws his cowl,
look out for wind and weather foul!
Another rhyme Mony haws, mony snaws connects
a rich harvest of hedgerow berries with a cold winter. Apparently,
too, An air winter maks a sair winter.
Another
traditional rhyme claims that Winter thunder bodes summer
hunger, but the connection seems farfetched, and it
is doubtful if many of these longterm forecasts had any
truth in them at all.
Some rhymes feature the moon:
When the moon is on her back,
Gae mend yer shoon and sort yer thack!
Here is another:
When round the moon there is a brugh,
The weather will be cauld and rough!
The cold late spring of the hills and glens (where snow may linger
into April and May) is caught in the Gaelic saying:
Spring with a serpents head and a peacocks tail.
And typical eastcoast weather (in bad years, at least) is
well described in the line:
It greets a winter, and girns a summer.
Two rather similar rhymes from Angus:
Geese tae the sea,
guid weather tae be;
Geese tac the hill,
guid weather tac spill.
And
here is the other:
Mist on the hills, weather spills;
Mist inthe howes, weather grows.
There are many others, including that oldtime question put
by country bairns to a passing snail:
Snailie, snailie. shoot oot yer horn,
And tell us if itll be a bonny day the morn.
In Angus, at the lambing time in the glens (April) they still
speak of the Teuchats storms. In Fife they talk
of the coo-quack o May.
The local sayings sound better when given in the local dialect,
and so
you'll just have to visit.
Return
to Folklore
|
|