A general one on the winds is this: East and wast, The sign of a blast; In Teonge's Diary, 1675, the following English proverb is quoted : The wind from north-east, Neither good for man nor beast. In Edinburgh, the east wind is the one of worst character among the medical faculty; while Sir John Dalyell expresses his belief (Darker Superstitions of Scotland) that the north is the most fatal to health, adducing the fact, that an epidemic prevailed in 1833, after the wind had remained unusually steady in that direction. According to the rhyme, the truth lies between. The following was taken down in Northumberland, but expresses an idea also prevalent amongst the Scottish peasantry : A west wind north about, That is, a wind which goes round from east to west, as our forefathers expressed it, withershins, or contrary to the course of the sun, rarely continues, but soon relapses into the congenial direction. CALM WEATHER. Nae weather's ill, An the wind bide still. In Devonshire, there is a rhyme on the prognostications of weather from winds and other circumstances, which one could suppose to have been the composition of some unhappy scion of the house of Megrim. A Glasgow friend says it would answer for Greenock The west wind always brings wet weather; The east wind wet and cold together; The south wind surely brings us rain; The north wind blows it back again; If the sun in red should set, The next day surely will be wet; The next will be a rainy day. After all, let us console ourselves with the quaint distiches of old Tusser (Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry) :Though winds do rage, as winds were wood [i. e. mad], And cause spring-tides to raise great flood, And lofty ships leave anchor in mud, And trees, at spring, do yield forth bud, THE RAINBOW. A rainbow in the morning is the shepherd's warning; 'A rainbow can only occur when the clouds containing or depositing the rain are opposite to the sun; and in the evening the rainbow is in the east, and in the morning in the west; and as our heavy rains in this climate are usually brought by the westerly wind, a rainbow in the west indicates that the bad weather is on the road, by the wind to us; whereas the rainbow in the east proves that the rain in these clouds is passing from us.'-Salmonia, by Sir Humphry Davy. APPEARANCES IN EVENING AND MORNING. The following simple couplet is prevalent throughout the whole of Scotland, and, with slight variations, is also common in England : The evening red, and the morning gray, The version common in pastoral Yarrow is If the evening's red, and the morning gray, If the evening's gray, and the morning red, Of the antiquity of one part of the remark there is interesting evidence. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red,' &c.-Matthew's Gospel, xvi. 2. In France there is a corresponding proverb Le rouge soir et blanc matin Sont réjouir le pélerin. The corresponding English proverb is— The evening red, and morning gray, The same prognostics are acknowledged in Germany— That is Evening red, and weather fine, RAINY SEASON. Mony rains, mony rowans, Yewns being light grain. The rowans are the fruit of the mountain-ash, which never are ripe till harvest. It is a common observation that an abundance of them generally follows a wet season. VALUE OF RAIN IN THE LATTER PART OF THE YEAR. "Tween Martinmas and Yule, WEATHER AUGURED FROM BIRDS. There is in some districts a belief that the weather of the day is foretold by the two most conspicuous members of the crow family: if the raven cries first in the morning, it will be a good day; if the rook, the reverse. The corbie says unto the craw, DOUBTFULNESS OF ALL WEATHER WISDOM. Perhaps, after all, the most sensible of the meteorological rhymes is the following, which may be given as a windup: To talk of the weather, it's nothing but folly, For when it's rain on the hill, it may be sun in the valley. *Foreign Quarterly Review, xxxii. 376. RHYMES UPON NATURAL OBJECTS. THIS is a pleasing class of rhymes. Most of them have evidently taken their rise in the imaginations of the young, during that familiar acquaintance with natural objects which it is one of the most precious privileges of youth in rural situations to enjoy. A few of them may be said to rise to genuine poetry. RAIN. Youngsters are often heard in a Scottish village apostrophising rain as follows:: Rain, rain, Gang to Spain, And never come back again. The child's address to rain in Northumberland is Rain, rain, go away, Come again another day; When I brew, and when I bake, I'll gie you a little cake. 'It was the practice among the children of Greece, when the sun happened to be obscured by a cloud, to exclaim, "Ežex' & pix' nas!" Come forth, beloved sun!" Strattis makes allusion to this custom in a fragment of his Phonissæ : Then the god listened to the shouting boys, When they exclaimed, "Come forth, beloved sun!" It is fortunate that our English boys have no such passion for sunshine; otherwise, as Phoebus Apollo hides his face for months together in this blessed climate, we should be in a worse plight than Dionysos among the frogs of Acheron, when his passion for Euripides led him to pay a visit to Persephone. In some parts of the country, however, the children have a rude distich which they frequently bawl in chorus, when in summer-time their sports are interrupted by a long-continued shower : Rain, rain, go to Spain; Fair weather, come again.' -St John's Manners of the Ancient Greeks, 1843. SUNNY SHOWERS. There is an East Lothian rhyme upon a sunny shower, which, I must confess, is melody to my ears. It is shouted by boys when their sport is interrupted by that peculiar phenomenon : Sunny sunny shower Come on for half an hour; Gar a' the sheep clap ; Gar ilka wife in Lammermuir Look in her kail-pat. The presumed reason for looking in the kail-pot must be readily understood by many. The rain generally drives down some particles of soot from a wide chimney of the old cottage fashion of Scotland. The pot, simmering on the fire with its lid half-raised, is of course apt to receive a few of these, which it is the duty of the good dame to look for and remove. THE RAINBOW. Our boys, when they see heaven's coloured arch displayed, cry in chorus Or, Rainbow, rainbow, rin away hame, Rainbow, rainbow, Rin away hame; Come again at Martinmas, SNOW. When snow is seen falling for the first time in the season, the youngsters account for it in the following poetical way: The men o' the East Are pyking their geese, And sending their feathers here away, here away! HAIL. Rain, rain, rattle-stanes, Dinna rain on me; But rain on Johnnie Groat's house, Far o'er the sea. Sung during a hail shower. |