The Myths and Fables of To-Day. Drake Samuel Adams

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.3

      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

3

Chap. 15, 32 v.

4

Candlemas Day (2 February) is observed as a festival day by the Roman Catholics, and still holds a place in the calendar of the Episcopal Church. It is kept in memory of the purification of the Virgin, who presented the infant Jesus in the Temple. A number of candles were lighted, it is said in memory of Simeon’s song (Luke ii, 32), “A light to lighten the Gentiles.” Hence the name of Candlemas. Edward VI. forbade the practice of lighting the churches in 1548.