CHAPTER III. WEATHER LORE

 “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.”--_Shakespeare._

There is a certain class of so-called signs, that from long use have
become so embedded in the every-day life of the people as to pass
current with some as mere whimsical fancies, with others as possessing
a real significance. At any rate, they crop out everywhere in the
course of common conversation. Most of them have been handed down from
former generations, while not a few exhale the strong aroma of the
native soil itself.

Of this class of familiar signs or omens, affecting only the smaller
and more casual happenings one may encounter from day to day, or
from hour to hour, those only will be noticed which seem based on
actual superstition. Many current weather proverbs accord so exactly
with the observations of science as to exclude them from any such
classification. They are simply the homely records of a simple folk,
drawn from long experience of nature in all her moods. As even the
prophecies of the Weather Bureau itself often fail of fulfilment, it
is not to be wondered at if weather proverbs sometimes prove no better
guide, especially when we consider that “all signs fail in a dry time.”

The following are a few examples selected from among some hundreds:--
When a cat races playfully about the house, it is a sign that the wind
will rise.

It is a sign of rain if the cat washes her head behind her ears; of bad
weather when Puss sits with her tail to the fire.

Spiders crawling on the wall denote rain.

If a dog is seen eating green grass it is a sign of coming wet weather.
Hang up a snake skin for rain.

If the grass should be thickly dotted in the morning with cobwebs
of the ground spider, glistening with dew, expect rain. Some say it
portends the exact opposite. This puts us in mind of Cato’s quaint
saying that “two auguries cannot confront each other without laughing.”

If the kettle should boil dry, it is a sure sign of rain. Very
earnestly said a certain respectable, middle-aged housewife to me:
“Why, sir, sometimes you put twice as much water in the kettle without
its boiling away.”

If the cattle go under trees when the weather looks threatening, there
will be a shower. If they continue feeding, it will probably be a
steady downpour.

A threatened storm will not begin, or the wind go down, until the
turning of the tide to flood. Not only the people living along shore,
but all sailors believe this.

Closely related to the above is the belief that a sick person will not
die until ebb tide. When that goes out, the life goes with it. I have
often heard this said in some seaports in Maine.

These popular notions, concerning the influence of the tides, be it
said, have come down to us from a remote antiquity. The Pythagorean
philosopher, indeed, stoutly affirmed that the ebbing and flowing of
the sea was nothing less than the respiration of the world itself,
which was supposed to be a living monster, alternately drawing in
water, instead of air, and heaving it out again.

Again, an old salt, who had perhaps heard of Galileo’s theory, once
tried to illustrate to me the movement of the tides by comparing it to
that of a man turning over in bed, and dragging the bedclothes with
him, his notion being that as the world turned round, the waters of the
ocean were acted upon in a like manner.

To resume the catalogue:--

A bee was never caught in the rain--that is, if the bee scents rain,
it keeps near the hive. If, on the contrary, it flies far, the day
will be fair. The ancients believed this industrious little creature
possessed of almost human intelligence.

When the squirrels lay in a greater store of nuts than usual, expect a
cold winter.

If the November goose-bone be thick, so will the winter weather be
unusually severe. This prediction appears as regularly as the return of
the seasons.

Many meteors falling presage much snow.

    “If it rains before seven,
    It will clear before eleven.”

    “You can tell before two.
    What it’s going to do.”

There will be as many snow-storms in a winter as there are days
remaining in the month after the first fall of snow.

Children are told, of the falling snow, that the old woman, up in the
sky, is shaking her feather-bed.

High tides on the coast of Maine are considered a sign of rain.
When the muskrat builds his nest higher than usual, it is a sign of a
wet spring, as this means high water in the ponds and streams.

    “A winter fog
    Will kill a dog,”

which is as much as to say that a thaw, with its usual accompaniments
of fog and rain, is invariably productive of much sickness.
Winter thunder is to old folks death, and to young folks plunder.

    “Sound, travelling far and wide,
    A stormy day will betide.”

Do business with men when the wind is northwest--that signifies that a
clear sky and bracing air are most conducive to alertness and energy;
yet Hamlet says: “I am but mad north-northwest; when the wind is
southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

That was certainly a pretty conceit, no matter if it has been lost
sight of, that the sun always dances upon Easter morning.
One of the oldest of weather rhymes runs in this wise:--

    “Evening gray and morning red,
    Brings down rain on the traveller’s head;
    Evening red and morning gray,
    Sends the traveller on his way.”

Science having finally accepted what vulgar philosophy so long
maintained, namely that the moon exerts an undoubted influence upon
the tides of the sea, all the various popular beliefs concerning her
influence upon the weather that have been wafted to us over, we know
not how many centuries, find ready credence. If the mysterious luminary
could perform one miracle, why not others? Thus reasoned the ignorant
multitude.

The popular fallacy that the moon is made of “greene cheese,” as sung
by Heywood, and repeated by that mad wag Butler, in “Hudibras,” may be
considered obsolete, we suppose, but in our youth we have often heard
this said, and, it is to be feared, half believed it.

Cutting the hair on the waxing of the moon, under the delusion that it
will then grow better, is another such.

As preposterous as it may seem, our worthy ancestors, or some of them
at least, firmly believed that the Man in the Moon was veritable flesh
and blood.

In “Curious Myths,” Mr. Baring-Gould refers the genesis of this belief
to the Book of Numbers.

An old Scotch rhyme runs thus:--

    “A Saturday’s change and a Sunday’s prime,
    Was nivver gude mune in nae man’s time.”

If the horns of the new moon are but slightly tipped downward, moderate
rains may be looked for; if much tipped, expect a downpour. On the
other hand, if the horns are evenly balanced, it is a sure sign of dry
weather. Some one says in “Adam Bede,” “There’s no likelihood of a drop
now an’ the moon lies like a boat there.” The popular notion throughout
New England is that when the new moon is turned downward, it cannot
hold water. Hence the familiar sayings of a wet or a dry moon.

If the Stormy Petrel (Mother Cary’s Chicken) is seen following in
the wake of a ship at sea, all sailors know that a storm is brewing,
and that it is time to make all snug on board. As touching this
superstition, I find the following entry in the Rev. Richard Mather’s
_Journal_: “This day, and two days before, we saw following ye ship a
little bird, like a swallow, called a Petterill, which they say doth
follow ships against foule weather.”

Therefore, in honest Jack’s eyes, to shoot one of these little
wanderers of the deep, not only would invite calamity, but would
instantly bring down a storm of indignation on the offender’s head. And
why, indeed, should this state of mind in poor Jack be wondered at,
when he hears so much about kraaken, mermaids, sea-serpents, and the
like chimera, and when those who walk the quarter-deck readily lend
themselves to the fostering of his delusions?

A mare’s tail in the morning is another sure presage of foul weather.
This consists in a long, low-hanging streak of murky vapor, stretching
across a wide space in the heavens, and looking for all the world like
the trailing smoke of some ocean steamer, as is sometimes seen long
before the steamer heaves in sight. The mare’s tail is really the black
signal of the advancing storm, drawn with a smutty hand across the fair
face of the heavens. Hence the legend,--

    “Mackerel sky and mare’s tails
    Make lofty ships carry low sails.”

If the hedgehog comes out of his hole on Candlemas Day,[4] and sees his
shadow, he goes back to sleep again, knowing that the winter is only
half over. Hence the familiar prediction:--

    “If Candlemas day is fair and clear,
    There’ll be two winters in the year.”

The same thing is said of the bear, in Germany, as of the hedgehog or
woodchuck.

The Germans say that the badger peeps out of his hole on Candlemas Day,
and if he finds snow on the ground, he walks abroad; but if the sun is
shining, he draws back into his hole again. At any rate, the habits of
this predatory little beast are considered next to infallible by most
country-folk in New England.

A similar prediction carries this form: On Candlemas Day just so far as
the sun shines in, just so far will the snow blow in.

    “As far as the sun shines in on Candlemas Day
    So far will the snow blow in before May:
    As far as the snow blows in on Candlemas Day
    So far will the sun shine in before May.”

From these time-honored prophecies is deduced the familiar warning:--

    “Just half your wood and half your hay
    Should be remaining on Candlemas Day.”

An old Californian predicted a dry season for the year 1899, because
he had noticed that the rattlesnakes would not bite of late, a never
failing sign of drought which few, we fancy, would feel inclined to put
to the test.

An unusually cold winter is indicated by the greater thickness of apple
skins, corn husks, and the like.

The direction from which the wind is blowing usually indicates what the
weather will be for the day,--wet or dry, hot or cold,--but here is a
rhymed prediction which puts all such prophecies to shame:--

    “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;
      If the sun should set in gray,
      The next will be a rainy day.”

This falls more strictly in line with many of the so-called signs
which, like the old woman’s indigo, if good would either sink or
swim, she really didn’t know which; or like the predictions of the old
almanac makers, who so shrewdly foretold rain in April, and snow in
December.