Simon and Jude’s Rain

The feast of St Simon and St Jude was thought to be as rainy as St Swithin’s, and a character in the old play The Roaring Girl is sure it will rain upon Simon and Jude’s day. Hone noted from Holinshed that on the eve of the feast in 1536, when the king’s troops and the Yorkshire rebels were about to fight, so much rain fell that the battle could not take place. In the old Runic calendars the day was marked with a ship, because the two saints had been fishermen.