St Swithin’s Day

The best-known weather saying of the year holds that as it rains or is fair on St Swithin’s Day, so it will be for forty days after. Brand explained it with a story that Swithin, a humble bishop of Winchester, asked to be buried outside in the churchyard where rain from the eaves would fall on him, and that when the monks tried to move him into the cathedral it rained for forty days, so they left him and built a chapel over the grave. Chambers points out that the story rests on no good authority and that the facts run the other way. The saying is still repeated every 15 July.