St Swithin
St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain
Full forty days, it will remain
St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair
For forty days, t’will rain no more
St Swithin was a ninth century Anglo-Saxon saint. At the peak of his clerical career he was Bishop of Winchester and in the cathedral at Winchester is a modern shrine.
His day falls this week on 15 July. He is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican church. As he lay on his deathbed, St Swithin asked to be buried outside the Old Minster in Winchester, in a lowly grave where his body would be trodden and rained on. However more than a century later, on July 15, 971, Winchester monks removed his remains to an elaborate shrine inside the cathedral where pilgrims flocked, believing his bones to have miraculous healing properties.
But legend has it that St Swithin wasn’t happy about his body being moved. On the day of the removal, ferocious and violent rain storms arrived lasting 40 days and nights which apparently represented his displeasure. This story soon became folklore and now British people keep an eye on the weather on July 15.
In fact it has never rained consistently or not-rained consistently after 15 July since Meteorological records begun in 1862. But there is a grain of truth: The weather in the UK often sets into a pattern around now, which only begins to change from the end of August as autumn nears. It states on the Meteorological Office website: “The middle of July tends to be around the time that the jet stream settles into a relatively consistent pattern. If the jet stream lies north of the UK throughout the summer, continental high pressure is able to move in, bringing warmth and sunshine. If it sticks further south, Arctic air and Atlantic weather systems are likely to predominate, bringing colder, wetter weather.”
Bernhard Schunemann
9 July 2017
