If the grass grows in Janiveer

A saying still heard in the north of England in Ellis’s day warned against a mild start to the year: if the grass grows in January, it grows the worse for it all the year. The same notes give a prophecy from the Shepherd’s Kalender of 1709, that if New Year’s morning opened with dusky red clouds there would be strife among great men and many robberies that year. The Book of Knowledge of 1703 read the same red morning as the sign of an angry year, with much war and great tempests.