St Swithun's day if thou dost rain For forty days it will remain St Swithun's day if thou be fair For forty days 'twill rain na mair
Because if it rains today it's due to rain every day until August 24th. And we'll have a Dark Ages bishop to blame. Perhaps. (anniversary: )
St Swithun was Bishop of Winchester between 852 and 862. He wasn't even a very noteworthy bishop, at least not until after his death. Swithun had requested to be buried outside the West Door of the Old Minster, and so he was, but a century later the cathedral authorities changed their minds and moved his bones inside the building instead. The ceremony was on 15th July 971, and legend tells that saintly anger caused it to rain for the next 40 days. Legend is almost certainly wrong. The ceremony may well have been interrupted by very heavy rain, but the 40 days thing is probably a much more recent bit of myth-making. Swithun's skeleton was no miracle worker, but by medieval times his shrine had become a site of popular pilgrimage second in importance only to Canterbury. (history: )
Visitors to Winchester Cathedral can still see St Swithun's shrine to this day. Or rather they can see a modern replica based on what the final version probably looked like before it was destroyed (in 1538). It's not in the original location, either. The old Minster was knocked down in 1093, and Swithun's remains had to be moved (again) into its new-build Norman neighbour. This time no stormy tempests ensued, but his legend grew all the same. The cathedral's retroquire (the paved area behind the High Altar) had to be extended in the 13th century to accommodate the number of spiritual tourists heading Wessex-ward, and a tiny arched gateway was provided so that pilgrims could crawl into a space beneath the saintly relics. Squeezing into Swithun's Holy Hole is, alas, no longer encouraged. (on-site visit: )
It's tempting to believe that the "40 days of rain" legend might be true. British summers are renowned for being relentlessly wet, aren't they, obviously, because it's been quite showery recently, you remember, QED. And there is a grain of truth to all this, and it's all to do with the jetstream. These high level westerly winds tend to get stuck into a groove around mid-July and then stay there for a while, so we often end up with 40-ish days of sort-of similar weather sometimes. If the jetstream's running to the north we get mostly settled anticyclonic conditions and lots of ice cream sales. And if the jetstream's to the south we get an endless stream of depressions dumping Atlantic showers onto our garden fetes and barbecues. Be very afraid, because we're in the latter state at the moment. (meteorology: )
But to get 40 consecutive days of rain, that's really something. Even if the probability of rain on any particular day were as high as 95%, and even if we were only interested in a fortnight, then there'd only be a (0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 = 0.49) fifty-fifty chance of a complete washout. In fact the probability of a rainy summer's day in the north Hampshire area is rather smaller than that - much closer to one third. And the probability of 40 consecutive days being wet (0.33 × ... × 0.33) works out at less than one in 12 million million million. It's never going to happen. (mathematics: )
So today is the 1038th anniversary of a dead bishop's bones being moved indoors, a man with no control whatsoever over long-term meteorological conditions. But we all like a good myth-based anniversary, so never mind. And keep your brolly handy. (reality: )
Is that the sound of rain I can hear? Damn.
St Swithun's day if thou dost rainBecause if it rains today it's due to rain every day until August 24th. And we'll have a Dark Ages bishop to blame. Perhaps. (anniversary: )Visitors to Winchester Cathedral can still see St Swithun's shrine to this day. Or rather they can see a modern replica based on what the final version probably looked like before it was destroyed (in 1538). It's not in the original location, either. The old Minster was knocked down in 1093, and Swithun's remains had to be moved (again) into its new-build Norman neighbour. This time no stormy tempests ensued, but his legend grew all the same. The cathedral's retroquire (the paved area behind the High Altar) had to be extended in the 13th century to accommodate the number of spiritual tourists heading Wessex-ward, and a tiny arched gateway was provided so that pilgrims could crawl into a space beneath the saintly relics. Squeezing into Swithun's Holy Hole is, alas, no longer encouraged. (on-site visit: )
But to get 40 consecutive days of rain, that's really something. Even if the probability of rain on any particular day were as high as 95%, and even if we were only interested in a fortnight, then there'd only be a (0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 × 0.95 = 0.49) fifty-fifty chance of a complete washout. In fact the probability of a rainy summer's day in the north Hampshire area is rather smaller than that - much closer to one third. And the probability of 40 consecutive days being wet (0.33 × ... × 0.33) works out at less than one in 12 million million million. It's never going to happen. (mathematics: )
