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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on the show,

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Speaker 3: we are going to be doing a holiday episode, but

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Speaker 3: not on the holiday itself. Today we are talking about

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Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's Day and its namesake, Saint Swithin.

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Speaker 2: That's right. We were originally going to put this episode

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Speaker 2: out on July fifteenth to correspond with Saint Swithin's Day,

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Speaker 2: but some stuff came up. I had to take a

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Speaker 2: week off, so we were had. We realized, well, we

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Speaker 2: could sit on this episode and just finish it and

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Speaker 2: record it later on the next time Saint Swiftin' Day

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Speaker 2: happens to fall on the Tuesday or Thursday, or we

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Speaker 2: could just simply push on and do it. Assuming that

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Speaker 2: most of you are going to forgive us for being

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Speaker 2: several weeks late to the punch on this perhaps obscure

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Speaker 2: Saints Day.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a holiday. I would bet most of

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Speaker 3: our American and international listeners will not be familiar with

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Speaker 3: UK listeners. I'm maybe more likely. I'm not exactly sure

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Speaker 3: how what consciousness of Saint Swithin is like today. But

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Speaker 3: I guess if anybody out there is going to be

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Speaker 3: wired in on Swithin it is It's probably like Catholics

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Speaker 3: in England. But I don't know. So why are we

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Speaker 3: talking about this? Why is this somewhat obscure medieval saint

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Speaker 3: and his holiday even on our radar. The main reason,

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Speaker 3: perhaps the only reason that I personally had any previous

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Speaker 3: consciousness of Saint Swithin and his feast day was from

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Speaker 3: a quite unlikely source, and that is the lyrics of

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Speaker 3: a song by the late great psychedelic rock pioneer Rocky Ericsson,

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Speaker 3: one of my personal favorite musical artists of all time.

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Speaker 3: The song in which this lyric appears is called the

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Speaker 3: Night of the Vampire, and it actually appears on multiple albums,

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Speaker 3: including The Evil One from nineteen eighty that's one of

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Speaker 3: my favorite rocky albums. Actually just got that on vinyl,

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Speaker 3: and my daughter has become obsessed with it, like she

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Speaker 3: asks for it by name one here, two Headed Dog.

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Speaker 3: She begs us to put it on. Oh man, wonderful.

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Speaker 2: I would play that in the car sometimes and my

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Speaker 2: kiddo would sometimes ask me to skip Bloody Hammer. They're

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Speaker 2: like I don't know about this song.

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Speaker 3: Well, it might be different once she recognizes what all

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Speaker 3: the lyrics are. I don't know, but right now she

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Speaker 3: just thinks he's a funny Halloween guy. He just a

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Speaker 3: Halloween guy.

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Speaker 2: That is also true.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but so she asks for Rocky but anyway, so

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Speaker 3: it's on the evil one though. My favorite version of

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Speaker 3: this song is actually the first track on Rocky's nineteen

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Speaker 3: eighty six compilation album Grimlins Have Pictures. The title of

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Speaker 3: that album, by the way, is taken from the lyrics

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Speaker 3: of his song Anthem, and the full line there is

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Speaker 3: Grimlins Have Pictures of the Anniversary of Christ.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that one's a real head scratcher. There are a

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Speaker 2: lot of there's a lot of the lyrics to Rocky

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Speaker 2: erics and songs will drift into head scratch your territory.

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Speaker 3: But they're wonderful. I mean, they will make you scratch

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Speaker 3: your head, but they'll also stay in your head, or

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Speaker 3: at least in my head. I you know, after I

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Speaker 3: listen to Rocky, even if I'm sort of in a

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Speaker 3: Rocky way, and I guess you know, there are periods

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Speaker 3: where I'm listening to him constantly and somewhere I listen less,

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Speaker 3: but and the ones when I listen less sometimes something

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Speaker 3: just comes like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere,

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Speaker 3: and my brain is thinking, you know, if it's raining

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Speaker 3: and you're running, don't slip in mud because if you do,

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Speaker 3: you'll slip in blood. That is also from Night of

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Speaker 3: the Vampire.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, his lyrics have a real stream of consciousness vibe

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Speaker 2: to them and amid them. Horror movie references will also

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Speaker 2: invoke words, ideas and connections that were, you know, unique

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Speaker 2: to his own mind and worldview. Might be difficult for

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Speaker 2: the rest of us to understand, but that's the tantalizing

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Speaker 2: part of that. It's like a puzzle and you're trying

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Speaker 2: to interpret it the interpreter. Where is he now?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Another one? Another good one. But anyway, So in

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Speaker 3: the middle of the song to the Vampire, which is,

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Speaker 3: as my kid would say, a Halloween guy song, it's

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Speaker 3: a song about vampires. It's a song about raining and running,

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Speaker 3: slipping in mud, slipping in blood. There is a bridge

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Speaker 3: to the song where Rocky sings me Castle Brand, Transylvania

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Speaker 3: on Saint Swithin's day. He was born, eyes stare through

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Speaker 3: the darkness with no form, maidens his bite harms. That's

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Speaker 3: a good slant rhyme, by the way, with you know

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Speaker 3: born form harm but on Saint Swithin's day he was born.

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Speaker 3: That's a strange connection to make. I want to come

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Speaker 3: back in a minute to figure out what's going on

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Speaker 3: with that now, if you're wondering, was it normal for

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Speaker 3: this guy to sing rock songs about vampires? Yes, as

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Speaker 3: we've established, he's a Halloween guy. Rocky's career had two

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Speaker 3: main stages. In the nineteen sixties, he sang and performed

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Speaker 3: with a Texas based garage psych band called the Thirteenth

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Speaker 3: Floor Elevators. I think one of the best psychedelic rock

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Speaker 3: bands of the sixties, really awesome. So he had a

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Speaker 3: period with them where they released a couple of great albums.

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Speaker 3: So one is The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.

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Speaker 3: Their second album is my favorite. It's called Easter Everywhere.

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Speaker 3: After that, he had a more difficult period where he

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Speaker 3: had some legal issues and where he was he had

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Speaker 3: a period of involuntary commitment at some statemental hospitals in Texas.

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Speaker 3: After his eventual release, instead of going back to psychedelic

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Speaker 3: sounds like he did with the thirteenth floor elevators. He

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Speaker 3: instead focused on other genres. He did folk, blues, and

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Speaker 3: particularly a kind of hard rock idea that he called

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Speaker 3: horror rock, which was fueled by his longtime obsession with

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Speaker 3: monster movies, especially old monster movies, like many of the

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Speaker 3: things we cover on Weird House Cinema. In fact, we've

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Speaker 3: done some very rocky centric movies on Weird House, like

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Speaker 3: Creature with the Adam Brain has its own rocky ericson song,

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Speaker 3: which is fabulous.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't necessarily picking really well known films or

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Speaker 2: the films that connected with him.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's one of the charms because sometimes you

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Speaker 2: might not even realize he's referring to a movie until

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Speaker 2: you dig a little deeper.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Rocky described this genre at one point by saying,

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Speaker 3: I'm trying to horrify them, demonize them, and possessionize them,

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Speaker 3: and he's doing it. So Night of the Vampire is

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Speaker 3: a core horror rock song. So I've been listening to

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Speaker 3: this song for years. I first got into this, I

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Speaker 3: think one summer when I was in college. So Saint

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Speaker 3: Swithin's has been also banging around in my head as

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Speaker 3: a phrase for that long. But I had never much

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Speaker 3: looked into it until Rob this summer you flagged it

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Speaker 3: on our show calendar saying, Hey, Saint Swithin's Day is

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Speaker 3: a real day. Let's figure out what's going on here?

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Speaker 3: And oh boy, that that was really music to my ears.

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Speaker 3: So we very much got into the spirit of Saint

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Speaker 3: Swithin and especially the question what does Saint Swithin have

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Speaker 3: to do with vampires? Well, I did some fairly extensive

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Speaker 3: digging on this question, and I've come to the conclusion

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Speaker 3: that there is no connection at all outside this song.

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Speaker 3: I can't find any records of a famous vampire from

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Speaker 3: movies or literature who was born on Saint Swithin's day,

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Speaker 3: nor any pre existing connection between the historical character of

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Speaker 3: Saint Swithin and any vampire lore. Though maybe we can

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Speaker 3: get halfway there by connecting Saint Swithin to some ambiguous

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Speaker 3: witches or hags or valkyrie. Is some other kind of

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Speaker 3: scary female creature.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.

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Speaker 3: However, the one real connection I could find is that

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Speaker 3: one person who was born on Saint Swithin's day was

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Speaker 3: Rocky Erickson himself born July fifteenth, nineteen forty seven. Rocky's

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Speaker 3: lyrics about movie monsters sometimes do shift back and forth

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Speaker 3: between third person and first person. I think there is

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Speaker 3: a good degree of when I'm talking about the monster,

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Speaker 3: I am talking about myself. You know, I'm a demon

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Speaker 3: and I love rock and roll. That's another one of

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Speaker 3: his songs, So I think that probably is the main connection.

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Speaker 3: That Saint Swithin's day is Rocky's birthday, and so the

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Speaker 3: Night of the Vampire is his night. It's you know,

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Speaker 3: the vampire is me to paraphrase Flaubert. However, to bring

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Speaker 3: things back to Saint Swithin. While again I can't find

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Speaker 3: any evidence of a vampire character born on Saint Swithin's

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Speaker 3: celebration day, I do think there's an interesting connection in

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Speaker 3: the lyrics of the song, and I already quoted this part.

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Speaker 3: In the first verse of Night of the Vampire, Rocky

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Speaker 3: offers the advice if it's raining and you're running, don't

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Speaker 3: slip in mud, because if you do, you'll slip in blood.

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Speaker 3: Tonight is the Night of the Vampire. So Rocky's head

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Speaker 3: was stuck on the idea of trying to escape a

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Speaker 3: vampire in a heavy rainstorm. And it turns out one

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Speaker 3: of the most famous things about Swithin is that his

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Speaker 3: Dayly fifteenth, is associated with a seasonal proverb for predicting

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Speaker 3: the weather, specifically for predicting rain patterns in Great Britain.

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Speaker 3: There are many versions of this saying, but here's one

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Speaker 3: I came across. Goes like this, Saint Swithin's day, If

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Speaker 3: thou dost rain for forty days, it will remain Saint

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Speaker 3: Swithin's day. If thou be fair for forty days, twill rain,

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Speaker 3: nay mayre. So that's sink in you. Basically, whatever you

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Speaker 3: get on Saint Swithin's day, you're going to get that

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Speaker 3: again for forty days.

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Speaker 2: When I've been reading this over in the notes, though,

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Speaker 2: I've gone ahead and read this in my head in

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Speaker 2: Rocky Erickson's voice as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, twill rain, namaire, Yeah, I can hear it. He

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Speaker 3: had a wonderful like a Texan accent to yowl.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: But again, according to this proverb, if it rains on

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Speaker 3: July fifteenth, it is going to keep raining for the

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Speaker 3: next forty days. If it's dry, it will be dry

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Speaker 3: the next forty days. So if that proverb actually holds true, true,

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Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's day is a good tool for planning your

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Speaker 3: upcoming vampire survival strategies. If it's raining on the fifteenth,

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Speaker 3: you should invest in some boots with grippy souls to

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Speaker 3: avoid slipping in mud and therefore slipping in blood. But

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Speaker 3: is there anything to this kind of weather predicting dogg

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Speaker 3: roll other than superstition and the fact that it rhymes?

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Speaker 3: It does rhyme. You gotta admit that, Rob, Yeah, And

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Speaker 3: what was the deal with this Saint Swithin guy? What

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Speaker 3: does he have to do with whether whether it rains

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Speaker 3: or not? These questions are what we'll be exploring for

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Speaker 3: the rest of today's episode.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, We'll leave it to you to ultimately decide how

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Speaker 2: closely aligned the lyrics of Rocky ericson are with this

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Speaker 2: historic individual and legendary English saint.

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Speaker 3: I guess we got to say this near the top

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Speaker 3: because we keep calling him Saint Swithin. Rob, did you

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Speaker 3: come across the fact that even though he is widely

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Speaker 3: known as Saint Swithin, he was never officially canonized by

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Speaker 3: the Catholic Church, So he's not actually a saint on paper,

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Speaker 3: only a street saint, a saint by reputation.

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Speaker 2: That's right, He's he was never canonized as a saint

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Speaker 2: by the Catholic Church, So yeah, he's a He's not

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Speaker 2: a saint saint, just a street saint.

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Speaker 3: As you say, Now, I think what we could start

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Speaker 3: off by doing is dividing the historical Saint Swithin from

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Speaker 3: the legendary Saint Swin. And I think that will be

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Speaker 3: a reasonably easy, uh division to make because from what

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Speaker 3: I can tell, Rob, I think you did more of

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Speaker 3: the historical research. But is it correct that very little

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Speaker 3: is known about the real historical Saint Swin and that

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Speaker 3: much of his biography, maybe almost all of his biography

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Speaker 3: is understood by historians to be legend, probably fabricated long

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Speaker 3: after his death.

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Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, most of we know very little about the

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Speaker 2: historic individual that then ends up being built out into

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Speaker 2: this saint of legend. Well, historians do agree that there

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Speaker 2: was definitely an historic Swithen. You know, sometimes you peel

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Speaker 2: away the layers of legend and you discover there's perhaps

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Speaker 2: nobody at the bottom, or there's just sort of a

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Speaker 2: hypothetical real person at the bottom of things. But there

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Speaker 2: was an individual by the name of Swithin. He would

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Speaker 2: have been born around eight hundred CE. He was consecrated

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Speaker 2: by Selnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, on October thirtieth, eight fifty two,

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Speaker 2: and he died on July Tewod eight sixty two. He

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Speaker 2: served as the Bishop of Winchester, England, and also served

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Speaker 2: as counselor to Kings Egbert and Athel Wolf of Wessex.

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Speaker 2: This is the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the

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Speaker 2: south of Great Britain. All that definitely true. No layers

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Speaker 2: of legend, you know, these are just some of the basics.

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Speaker 2: This is some of the basic information that we have

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Speaker 2: about him, and when it comes down to it, it's

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Speaker 2: like just the basics that we really have after his death,

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Speaker 2: or perhaps more accurately, after the popularity of an account

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Speaker 2: following his death. He was popularly venerated as a saint,

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Speaker 2: but again was never officially canonized as a saint by

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Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. And this will make you know, and

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Speaker 2: it all makes sense as we get into how he

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Speaker 2: becomes a saint and so forth. But as far as

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Speaker 2: other details about the real life of the historic Swiin, yeah,

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Speaker 2: we actually have very little to go on. There are

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Speaker 2: a few mentions of him from contemporary sources, and the

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Speaker 2: problem with saints in general, is that their lives are

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Speaker 2: often constructed long after their deaths by much later writers.

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Speaker 2: So I was turned to a couple of main sources here.

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Speaker 2: There's a two thousand and three book, The Cult of

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Speaker 2: Saint Swithin by Michael Lappage, and that's certainly a great

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Speaker 2: book to look to if you want to deeper dive

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Speaker 2: into the questions and mysteries and legends surrounding this individual.

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Speaker 2: I also referred to Winchester Cathedral historian Tom Watson's shorter

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Speaker 2: work an article by the same name, The Cult of

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Speaker 2: Saint Swiftin from two thousand and eight, and that one

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Speaker 2: also cites Lappage's work, going it out as as a

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Speaker 2: major work of modern scholarship about swiven All.

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Speaker 3: Right, so we know that the real Swithen died around

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Speaker 3: the middle of the ninth century. You said the year

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Speaker 3: eight sixty two CE. So when do the writings about

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Speaker 3: him first start to appear? When does his reputation begin

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Speaker 3: to boom?

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Speaker 2: The cult of Swiften doesn't really begin in earnest until

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Speaker 2: around nine thirty seven, So yeah, many decades after his death.

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Speaker 2: The first known writings of his miracles came out three

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Speaker 2: years after that, another history emerges twenty years after that

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Speaker 2: with new attributed miracles, and another comes out two hundred

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Speaker 2: and thirty years after his death.

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Speaker 3: So one of these cases where more detail is added

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Speaker 3: the longer time goes on. That's always the suspicious pattern.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but of course it makes sense when again

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Speaker 2: we're talking about legends and stories. We're not talking about

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Speaker 2: things that objectively actually happened. Yeah, we're talking about myth making.

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Speaker 2: And I mean that's part of of what's that's the

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Speaker 2: huge part of what's going on here. And as Watson explains,

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Speaker 2: and in this he was citing the work of Susan

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Speaker 2: Richard English Saint Coults, they didn't simply develop, they were developed.

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Speaker 2: It was a matter of branding and then eventually rebranding

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Speaker 2: and of advertising. Quote the most successful, that is, most

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Speaker 2: popular cults had shrines visited by many pilgrims. The popularity

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Speaker 2: of shrines also rose and fell. They were actively promoted

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Speaker 2: and across the entire medieval period, relaunched in response to competition.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, So the accretion of stories around a popular

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Speaker 3: saint wouldn't necessarily be driven just by organic folklore and

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Speaker 3: word of mouth and people adding on, you know, things

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Speaker 3: happening out amongst the people, that there could be a

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Speaker 3: kind of top down effort by people whose livelihoods or

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Speaker 3: whose missions were associated with this saint to beef up

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Speaker 3: the what was known about them and to make them

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Speaker 3: appear and come off a certain way.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I like this comparison to you know, any kind

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Speaker 2: of like branding and rebranding effort you have today. You

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Speaker 2: think of like any long lasting fast food chain, A

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Speaker 2: lot of things are going to be the same, maybe

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Speaker 2: like the central mascot and the logo, but things may shift,

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Speaker 2: and they're gonna shift in response to what the public

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Speaker 2: wants or things they want, or in response to what

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Speaker 2: more powerful entities decide that the people should want and

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Speaker 2: so forth.

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Speaker 3: Man, you ever get nostalgic for the architecture of taco

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Speaker 3: bells and pizza huts from the nineties and now they

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Speaker 3: just all look like banks.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the little things like that, or ancient McDonald's

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Speaker 2: playgrounds times when they had the full pantheon before it

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Speaker 2: went monotheistic. Seeah, I think there are a lot of

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Speaker 2: comparisons to be made here between these cults and enterprises

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Speaker 2: like that. So as these various authors point out the

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Speaker 2: formation of the Cult of Saint Swith itself came about

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Speaker 2: in nine thirty seven, evidently due to the pressure of

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Speaker 2: reform movements active in the church at the time, and

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Speaker 2: perhaps even more to the point, due to the efforts

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Speaker 2: of a youthful new king, King Edgar, who is attempting

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Speaker 2: to assert his power over the nation and making use

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Speaker 2: of the church as part of his strategy. So the

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Speaker 2: reform movement here was aimed at making English churches more

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Speaker 2: religiously rigorous and also more monastic, and entailed on Edgar's

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Speaker 2: part the forced removal of secular clerics. Secular clerics would

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Speaker 2: be clerics that they were not monks, they could even marry,

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Speaker 2: and so he's having them forcibly removed and replacing them

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Speaker 2: with monks. And Swiften just happened to be the right

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Speaker 2: local name to take up in this campaign for power,

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Speaker 2: even though it's ironic that the actual Swiften was a

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Speaker 2: secular cleric and was not a monk.

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Speaker 3: Wait does that mean Swiffen was married or do we

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Speaker 3: not know?

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Speaker 2: I don't As far as I could tell, he wasn't married,

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Speaker 2: or if he was married, we don't know anything of it.

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Speaker 2: But Yeah, he was not himself a monk, and you know,

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Speaker 2: there were these stories that said he was. You know,

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Speaker 2: there's just because we have all these legends, it's very

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Speaker 2: possible that he was a very pious and humble man.

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Speaker 2: We just don't know. We just have all these layers

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Speaker 2: of legends built upon it, and very little is known

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Speaker 2: about the historic Swian. But we can put together that

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Speaker 2: he was close to the ruling Anglo Saxon royal family.

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Speaker 2: He tutored the future King ethel Wolf, and this very

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Speaker 2: king promoted him to the Bishop of Winchester in eight

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Speaker 2: fifty two. We also know from you know, scant mentions

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Speaker 2: that he seemed to have been involved in the repair

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Speaker 2: of several churches, and if we were to believe a

341
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Speaker 2: tenth century poem, he also had a bridge built. These

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Speaker 2: are pretty far from miracles, but these are the actual

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Speaker 2: things that he probably had a hand in.

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Speaker 3: You know, a lot of medieval sources we've been looking

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Speaker 3: at recently really emphasized the church building or church repair

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Speaker 3: career of people. What this just came up in our

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Speaker 3: Cats episode. Yeah, we were talking about the mystical Cats

348
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Speaker 3: of Great Britain, where what like the guy who was

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Speaker 3: doing unspeakable cat crimes in order to get a message

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Speaker 3: from the other world about you know what, what have

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Speaker 3: I got to do to make things right? And the

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Speaker 3: King of cats comes and tells him you got to

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Speaker 3: build seven churches.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what a kind of public works are you

355
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Speaker 2: gonna build? I mean, basically, comes, you're gonna build a church,

356
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Speaker 2: You're gonna build a bridge, what else? You're not gonna

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Speaker 2: build a water treatment plant? So y might as well

358
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Speaker 2: build that church.

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Speaker 3: Okay, But so a known as a supporter of church

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Speaker 3: and and possibly also some secular infrastructure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but basically, you know, he this is a man

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Speaker 2: who had a career and we only know just a

363
00:19:46,160 --> 00:19:50,399
Speaker 2: few bullet points about his career, and as far as

364
00:19:50,440 --> 00:19:53,200
Speaker 2: we can tell, he was he was not considered saintly

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Speaker 2: during his own lifespan. You know, people I guess liked him,

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Speaker 2: and you know, being reasonable, there are probably some people

367
00:19:58,359 --> 00:20:01,080
Speaker 2: who didn't like him because he was a human being

368
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Speaker 2: in a position of some power. But and he also

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Speaker 2: wasn't considered saintly in the hundred years that fought or

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Speaker 2: so were roughly one hundred years that followed his death.

371
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Speaker 2: All of it was built up on after that.

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Speaker 3: Point Okay, so where's the first jumping off point. When

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Speaker 3: do we start getting stories?

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Speaker 2: Well, you know, they basically with the creation of the cult,

375
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Speaker 2: but certainly by the time we see the tenth century

376
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Speaker 2: work life of Saint Swithin. According to Lappage, this is

377
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Speaker 2: just like pure fiction, just he says, the creation of

378
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Speaker 2: a scholar who had few historical resources at his disposal.

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00:20:46,600 --> 00:20:49,920
Speaker 2: He stresses that there's there's a lot of conjecture. There's

380
00:20:49,960 --> 00:20:51,399
Speaker 2: you know, there are things you can point to in

381
00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:54,640
Speaker 2: these legends and say, well, okay, something in that could

382
00:20:54,640 --> 00:20:58,879
Speaker 2: have been true maybe, But one of the things that

383
00:20:58,960 --> 00:21:01,440
Speaker 2: factors into like a key story that we're going to

384
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:07,240
Speaker 2: be talking about concerning Swift and concerns his humble burial requests,

385
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Speaker 2: and according according to Lapage, like this is just complete

386
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Speaker 2: legend making here. So basically the idea and we'll tell

387
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:20,119
Speaker 2: the story a little more detail here shortly, but the

388
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Speaker 2: idea is that when he died, he's like, don't bury

389
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Speaker 2: me in a fancy tomb, bury me like out here

390
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Speaker 2: in the dirt, out in front of the church. I

391
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Speaker 2: want to be where people can walk over my grave.

392
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Speaker 3: Some of them phrase it in a more aggressive way,

393
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Speaker 3: and he's like, bury me in a nasty place, bury

394
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Speaker 3: me in a violent, gross, gross place.

395
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Speaker 2: Yeah, But the Lappage says that now he would have

396
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Speaker 2: been buried in a sarcophagus within a prominent tomb outside

397
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Speaker 2: of the old Minster Church, and then later he's moved

398
00:21:48,240 --> 00:21:50,800
Speaker 2: inside the church. And this has everything to do with

399
00:21:51,600 --> 00:21:54,480
Speaker 2: the creation of the of the saint, the cults of

400
00:21:54,520 --> 00:21:57,760
Speaker 2: the Saint around him, and then the church was eventually

401
00:21:57,840 --> 00:22:00,919
Speaker 2: expanded to encompass the grounds he was ariginally buried on.

402
00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:03,800
Speaker 2: And I think there's something kind of poetic to that.

403
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:08,200
Speaker 2: You know, here's an historic individual sort of consumed by

404
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:10,240
Speaker 2: the church or the workings of the church in the

405
00:22:10,320 --> 00:22:16,639
Speaker 2: hands of kingly authority, and the original historic individual becomes

406
00:22:16,720 --> 00:22:18,959
Speaker 2: kind of redundant via the waves of all of this

407
00:22:19,080 --> 00:22:21,160
Speaker 2: legend making interesting.

408
00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:25,400
Speaker 3: All right. So that is what we know about swithin,

409
00:22:25,720 --> 00:22:30,639
Speaker 3: the historic ninth century cleric of the Catholic Church. But

410
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:35,359
Speaker 3: what do we know about the character, the character that

411
00:22:35,520 --> 00:22:38,120
Speaker 3: blooms from the grave of this figure.

412
00:22:38,920 --> 00:22:40,480
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it I think is summed up

413
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Speaker 2: in that in this legend, this story that he says,

414
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Speaker 2: you know, bury me, bury me in the dirt, don't

415
00:22:46,720 --> 00:22:49,720
Speaker 2: bury me in the tomb. Give me a common nasty grave,

416
00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:52,640
Speaker 2: if you will, so that the rain's going to fall

417
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:55,600
Speaker 2: in my grave. Common people can visit my grave, walk

418
00:22:55,680 --> 00:22:59,679
Speaker 2: over it, and so forth. And the idea that the

419
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:01,959
Speaker 2: idea here is that they initially honor it, but then

420
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:05,440
Speaker 2: they reverse the decision a century later, and his remains

421
00:23:05,440 --> 00:23:07,879
Speaker 2: are moved into the new church building, and then forty

422
00:23:07,960 --> 00:23:09,920
Speaker 2: days of rain follow Ah.

423
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Speaker 3: Okay, so here's where we start getting the tie into

424
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Speaker 3: the rain. Now. I was trying to find more information

425
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Speaker 3: about the legends of Saint Swithin's life and his connection

426
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Speaker 3: to the weather proverb that I mentioned earlier, and I

427
00:23:23,720 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 3: came across an article from the journal Weather from the

428
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:31,480
Speaker 3: year nineteen forty seven by an author Anthony Klein. It's

429
00:23:31,480 --> 00:23:35,600
Speaker 3: called Saint Swithin's forty Days. Again, that's in the journal Weather.

430
00:23:36,760 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 3: So Klein the author here talks about how weatherlower tends

431
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:44,680
Speaker 3: to come and go over time, but he says that

432
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Speaker 3: the predictive proverb associated with Swithin's day has really stuck around.

433
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:53,080
Speaker 3: It has a tenacity, and he said, at the time

434
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:55,320
Speaker 3: of his writing many still believe it. This would have

435
00:23:55,359 --> 00:23:59,480
Speaker 3: been in the nineteen forties. He says of course, meteorologists

436
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,480
Speaker 3: have suppered tools to work with now in predicting the weather,

437
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 3: and yet quote still many harbor some minute and shadowy faith. However,

438
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:12,600
Speaker 3: despite the popularity and tenacity of the proverb, one thing

439
00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 3: that seems quite clear is that orst this is one

440
00:24:16,280 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 3: of these things like you can't rule out conclusively, but

441
00:24:19,440 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 3: it really does not seem to go back to Saint

442
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 3: Swithin himself. In fact, at the time of Klein's writing,

443
00:24:27,720 --> 00:24:32,000
Speaker 3: the earliest evidence he knew of knew of for the

444
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:35,359
Speaker 3: prediction that forty days of rain would follow if it

445
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 3: rained on Saint Swithin's day was dated to Ben Johnson

446
00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 3: around the year sixteen hundred, more than seven hundred years

447
00:24:42,640 --> 00:24:47,640
Speaker 3: after Saint Swithin's death. He quotes a version, so I'll

448
00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 3: read from Kline here quote. At the end of the century,

449
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 3: Poor Robin's Almanac included in its dog roll for July

450
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 3: these lines in this month is Saint Swithin's day, on

451
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:01,800
Speaker 3: which if that it rained, they a full forty days

452
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 3: after it will or more or less some rain distill.

453
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 3: Which is interesting because that's it's a similar rhyme pattern,

454
00:25:10,400 --> 00:25:12,600
Speaker 3: and it's like four lines and it has the same

455
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:14,840
Speaker 3: meaning as the rhyme I read earlier, but is totally

456
00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:15,600
Speaker 3: different words.

457
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a little more awkward. Yeah, it's construction, at

458
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:20,840
Speaker 2: least by our standards.

459
00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:24,919
Speaker 3: I agree the earlier one scanned a little better. After this,

460
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,159
Speaker 3: Klein talks about some other legends of Saint Swithin. So

461
00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:30,320
Speaker 3: I did want to go go abroad a little bit

462
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 3: and look at a few other legends about his life.

463
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:35,480
Speaker 3: There's one good one where there's an old lady carrying

464
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 3: a basket of eggs and then a klutzy guy passes

465
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 3: by her. I think maybe this is happening on a

466
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:43,879
Speaker 3: bridge or something. But a klutzy guy walks by the

467
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 3: lady with her eggs and he breaks all the eggs,

468
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,159
Speaker 3: and the old lady is distraught. She cries out for

469
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 3: her eggs, and then Saint Swyin comes along. He sees

470
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 3: the situation, he gives a quick blessing and her eggs

471
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 3: are repaired. Wow. Okay, so that's a miracle. But then

472
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, how are you actually supposed to picture that?

473
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,880
Speaker 3: Picture it happening? The eggs break and the goop comes out?

474
00:26:07,280 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 3: Does the group go back inside the eggs? Are you

475
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:12,920
Speaker 3: supposed to picture the goop slithering inside like one half

476
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:15,440
Speaker 3: of the shell, and then the eggs like close back

477
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:15,919
Speaker 3: over it.

478
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:18,720
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Oh ye, yeah, you're I think you're picturing it

479
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 2: like he's reversing the footage. Yeah, and I guess I'm

480
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 2: trying to imagine it more like a sleight of hand trick,

481
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 2: like he passes his palm over the cracked eggs, and

482
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:34,119
Speaker 2: then in his palm's wake he leaves behind uncracked.

483
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 3: Eggs, missing footage. Yeah, okay, reversing the footage versus just

484
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:38,639
Speaker 3: a hard cut.

485
00:26:39,040 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, according to Lappage, this one story, apparently,

486
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 2: this one swift and miracle may have been reported off

487
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 2: him during his lifetime, but it still wasn't written down

488
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 2: until one hundred and twenty years after his death. So

489
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:58,240
Speaker 2: he contends that it's it's very dubious, but he at

490
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 2: least he does acknowledge that it's possible this story was

491
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 2: told about him during his lifetime.

492
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:07,120
Speaker 3: It's one of the stories I see mentioned in multiple

493
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:09,640
Speaker 3: sources about Swinton, so it seems to be a popular

494
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:11,479
Speaker 3: one that he repaired broken eggs.

495
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,439
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it also seems humble enough, you know,

496
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,720
Speaker 2: for an individual who wasn't necessarily on the track for

497
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:23,240
Speaker 2: local sainthood just because he may have helped an old

498
00:27:23,320 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 2: lady with some broken eggs, you know, and we can

499
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 2: easily imagine what the real world version of that could

500
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 2: have been like, maybe he saw somebody with a broken

501
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 2: egg and he's like, hey, I've got some extra eggs,

502
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,199
Speaker 2: have some, you know, and this act kindness gets, you know,

503
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 2: magically translated into miracle.

504
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,159
Speaker 3: I was wondering if it could have anything to do

505
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:43,359
Speaker 3: with him as the repairer of broken churches, Yeah, because he,

506
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:47,399
Speaker 3: you know, did the restorations and repairs there anyway. So

507
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:52,040
Speaker 3: a one source that a lot of writers on this

508
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,400
Speaker 3: topic end up going back to is a nineteenth century

509
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:59,800
Speaker 3: Oxford professor of Anglo Saxon named John Earl, who wrote

510
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 3: an essay in the eighteen sixties called on the Life

511
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,679
Speaker 3: and Times of Swithin which you can find collected in

512
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 3: a book called Gloucester Fragments. That's where I was reading it.

513
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:16,080
Speaker 3: So Earl talks about how in the tenth and eleventh

514
00:28:16,119 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 3: century biographies of swithin quote, the historical part was very

515
00:28:21,359 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 3: very meager, being little more than a frame to support

516
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 3: the medallions of popular tradition and Earl claims that during

517
00:28:29,359 --> 00:28:31,879
Speaker 3: this period of history, a lot of the stories that

518
00:28:31,880 --> 00:28:36,760
Speaker 3: were told about Christian saints actually have analogues in stories

519
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 3: about pre Christian gods and heroes, So he argues that

520
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:45,760
Speaker 3: it's possible in some cases the deeds attributed to saints

521
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 3: and Christian figures like Swithin are actually pieces of older

522
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:55,920
Speaker 3: pagan folklore being transferred onto an acceptable Catholic host.

523
00:28:56,680 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's interesting. This reminds me. It's it's kind of

524
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 2: like the the darker version of perhaps the same thing,

525
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:10,560
Speaker 2: but with with urban legends. Sometimes you encounter this where

526
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 2: you'll have like urban legends, like generally scandalous things that

527
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,760
Speaker 2: are said about celebrities of old, and then they'll eventually

528
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 2: get passed on to new celebrities, often with the new

529
00:29:21,320 --> 00:29:25,000
Speaker 2: tale tellers maybe not even being not even realizing that

530
00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:27,880
Speaker 2: these same stories were told about previous rock stars or

531
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 2: actors or what have you. But you need a place

532
00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:32,400
Speaker 2: to hang them, thank you, to use this analogy of

533
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:34,120
Speaker 2: the medallions hanging on the framework.

534
00:29:34,520 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 3: Have we been hearing about how Bruno Mars bit the

535
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:37,400
Speaker 3: head off a bat?

536
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:40,320
Speaker 2: Not yet, but that's exactly the sort of thing you

537
00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 2: can you can imagine.

538
00:29:41,800 --> 00:29:43,680
Speaker 3: I guess, but that one really happened though.

539
00:29:43,920 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or some version of it, right yeah.

540
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 3: So yeah, not about Bruno Mars, I mean I actually did.

541
00:29:50,880 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 3: Sorry anyway, But from here, Earl goes on to tell

542
00:29:55,400 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 3: a pretty weird story from one of these Swithin legends

543
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 3: that I just want to to recount here, so he says,

544
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 3: quote among the stories narrated of Swyden is the following.

545
00:30:07,680 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 3: A certain nobleman was walking by the side of a

546
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,000
Speaker 3: river at noontide, and he became suddenly aware of three

547
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:18,400
Speaker 3: female figures of more than human stature, which rapidly and

548
00:30:18,560 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 3: furiously bore down upon him. He could not escape. They

549
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 3: seized him and maltreated him and left him as dead.

550
00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 3: He was brought to Swyen and presently restored. In this

551
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 3: narrative we may confidently recognize the three fates of Scandinavian mythology,

552
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 3: the past, the present and the future. They make their

553
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,920
Speaker 3: appearance again in the form of the three witches who

554
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 3: meet Macbeth and Banquo on the heath, the weird sisters

555
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 3: hand in hand posters of the sea and land. And

556
00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 3: then he also goes on to say a well known

557
00:30:51,960 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 3: chromlic on the verge of Dartmoor near Drustenden has three

558
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:59,480
Speaker 3: tall uprights. The name of the cromlic among the people

559
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 3: of the country is the Spinster's Rock. Still the same

560
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 3: three weird or fatal sisters. And here I looked up

561
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:11,680
Speaker 3: this monument by the way, Spinster's Rock near Dartmoor, which

562
00:31:11,720 --> 00:31:16,239
Speaker 3: is in southwest England. It's a neolithic chambered tomb or

563
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 3: the modern remains of which what's left of it are

564
00:31:20,440 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 3: actually a reconstruction now of three upright stones balancing a

565
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 3: large capstone between them. What we're looking at in this

566
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 3: picture of is a modern reconstruction after this thing collapsed,

567
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,840
Speaker 3: I believe during a storm in the eighteen sixties a storm. Yeah,

568
00:31:34,840 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 3: but I've got an illustration of the original monument from

569
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 3: eighteen forty eight for you to look at here, and

570
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:42,760
Speaker 3: it does look a little bit haunting. So yeah, three

571
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:47,160
Speaker 3: upright stones and a big multi ton capstone balance between them.

572
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,520
Speaker 3: Obviously has some wonderful associations with this kind of legend

573
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 3: of like three you know, three dangerous witches or weird sisters,

574
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 3: or figures of you know, female monstrous figures of some kind.

575
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:02,320
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what modern folklore scholars would make of

576
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 3: these connections that Earle is drawing. I think now there

577
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:08,480
Speaker 3: is a tendency to look back on some of the

578
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 3: folklore scholarship of the nineteenth and early twentieth century with

579
00:32:11,600 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 3: a little more critical of a lens. Like a lot

580
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 3: of the soldier scholarship was probably a little too enthusiastic

581
00:32:18,680 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 3: in finding parallels between different stories and practices and then

582
00:32:22,880 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 3: asserting with too little evidence that it was actually that,

583
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:28,720
Speaker 3: actually one of these is the direct ancestor of the other.

584
00:32:28,760 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 3: I mean, in some cases, of course it is, but

585
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:34,560
Speaker 3: in other cases we don't know. Though in this case

586
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 3: it seems interesting and Rob, I think you even did

587
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 3: you come across another version of a story like this

588
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:41,680
Speaker 3: about Swiften or the same story?

589
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:44,800
Speaker 2: I think it is the same story. So Lappage includes

590
00:32:46,120 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 2: a section here where I think he's including the actual

591
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 2: text from it. So this would have been from Lanford

592
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 2: of Fleury, who wrote a tenth or eleventh century work,

593
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:57,360
Speaker 2: The Life of Saint Swiften, which again is this is

594
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,160
Speaker 2: very much in the tradition of legendary Saint Swiftin this

595
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 2: is not historic at all. But yeah, this this bit

596
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:06,560
Speaker 2: where he tells the tale of a local man of

597
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:09,920
Speaker 2: Winchester who happens to be traveling along, takes a nap,

598
00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:13,840
Speaker 2: and when he wakes up he sees two grotesque female creatures.

599
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 2: These are two of the witches, two of the weird sisters. Quote,

600
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 2: not decked out in any finery, nor covered up with

601
00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 2: any clothing, but rather naked to their foul skin and

602
00:33:24,160 --> 00:33:28,560
Speaker 2: terrifying with their swarthy hair, blackened with faces like tosephany,

603
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 2: and armed with hellish wickedness and poison. And here in

604
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 2: name referring to one of the names of the furies,

605
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:38,720
Speaker 2: and this is referred to once more in the text

606
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 2: as well, saying like these are like two of the

607
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 2: three furies. But Lappage notes that when we get into

608
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 2: some of the terms used, yeah, these may be hags

609
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:54,880
Speaker 2: or witches. There's this word hag, hag sessen, and this

610
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 2: is sometimes Lappage notes associated with the word valkyrie. So

611
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 2: in a way you could think of these certainly as

612
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:04,959
Speaker 2: hags or witches, but also you could probably think of

613
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:07,520
Speaker 2: them as valkyries to a certain extent, or at least

614
00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 2: the stories that these are based on, like the original

615
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:14,759
Speaker 2: spirit of this medallion that's now hung on the frame

616
00:34:14,800 --> 00:34:17,440
Speaker 2: of Saint Swithin you know, may go back to stories

617
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 2: of the valkyries in Scandinavian traditions.

618
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 3: Okay, so in this case, the kind of connection that

619
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:28,840
Speaker 3: Earl is making to earlier pre Christian stories Lappage seems

620
00:34:28,840 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 3: to be at least partially endorsing. More modern scholar is

621
00:34:31,560 --> 00:34:33,720
Speaker 3: also saying that there seems to be some real connective

622
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 3: tissue here.

623
00:34:34,960 --> 00:34:38,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And the full story boy goes on along ways.

624
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 2: But basically, these two witches try to speak to this

625
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 2: man of Winchester, and he is frightened and he runs

626
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:47,239
Speaker 2: away from them, and they chase after him, and they

627
00:34:47,280 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 2: taunt him about how he's doomed and he's gonna die

628
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 2: when they catch him, and so he prays to God

629
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:55,359
Speaker 2: for protection. Meanwhile, the third sister, who is dressed all

630
00:34:55,360 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 2: in white, she calls out to the other two and

631
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,880
Speaker 2: she's like, stop chasing him. Loop around over here with me.

632
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:01,880
Speaker 2: I'm going to ambush him. I'm going to get him

633
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:05,240
Speaker 2: real good. And then thanks to God's interference, he attack

634
00:35:06,080 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 2: is like partially blocked and it only wounds like the

635
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:12,280
Speaker 2: man on one side of his body, but he's pretty wounded,

636
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:13,839
Speaker 2: so he has to be taken to the nearest church

637
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 2: where he is healed by none other than Bishop Swithen.

638
00:35:17,239 --> 00:35:19,279
Speaker 3: S with unto the rescue. He just treats him like

639
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:21,320
Speaker 3: a big egg. Yeah.

640
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:24,720
Speaker 2: By the way, on the subject of hags and witches

641
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:28,719
Speaker 2: in Saint Swithin, Sir Walter Scott in his eighteen fourteen

642
00:35:29,200 --> 00:35:33,080
Speaker 2: novel Waverley, has this fragment of a ballad that is

643
00:35:33,120 --> 00:35:38,040
Speaker 2: included that Scott put together for use in the fiction

644
00:35:38,160 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 2: here called Saint Swithin's Chair. And you can look this up.

645
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:46,120
Speaker 2: It's on your main poetry websites. But I just want

646
00:35:46,160 --> 00:35:48,280
Speaker 2: to read just a bit from it where he's taking

647
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,680
Speaker 2: this connection between Swithin and hags and like taking it

648
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,440
Speaker 2: in a darker direction. And he says he that dares

649
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:58,240
Speaker 2: sit on Saint Swithum's chair when the night hag wings

650
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 2: the troubled air questions three. When he speaks the spell,

651
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:06,719
Speaker 2: he may ask and she must tell. So in this,

652
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 2: you know, Scott would seem to be like taking these

653
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 2: ideas about about Swithen and like taking them to the

654
00:36:13,239 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 2: next darker step, not just one that not one that

655
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:18,879
Speaker 2: controls or has influence over the weather, or even one

656
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:23,600
Speaker 2: that can can can heal the damage rot by hags,

657
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 2: but perhaps one that can control the creatures of the

658
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:27,279
Speaker 2: night as well.

659
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 3: Wow. You know, to continue with with Earl's theme of

660
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 3: decorating the lives of Christian saints with material from other sources,

661
00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:48,640
Speaker 3: hanging the medallions on the frame, so to speak. Uh,

662
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 3: he mentions stories based on wonders of nature, and I

663
00:36:52,000 --> 00:36:54,359
Speaker 3: just wanted to throw this out there quick, because this

664
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 3: relates to something we just discussed in our Cats of

665
00:36:57,080 --> 00:37:03,120
Speaker 3: Cyprus episode. So he says, quote, any phenomenon, whether constant

666
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:07,800
Speaker 3: or casual, that had arrested popular attention was fit matter

667
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 3: for these amusing and edifying narratives. The ammonites of Whitby

668
00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 3: became coiled serpents of that Saint Hilda had charmed. Another

669
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:21,520
Speaker 3: geological curiosity became the beads of Saint Cuthbert, and to

670
00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:25,640
Speaker 3: Saint Patrick was attributed the absence of venomous serpents in Ireland.

671
00:37:26,280 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 3: But yeah, that first example, we were just talking about

672
00:37:29,200 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 3: the ammonites, the shells of these now extinct cephalopods, these

673
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:37,359
Speaker 3: sea creatures that died out in the KPg extinction. You know,

674
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:41,760
Speaker 3: we find these fossils everywhere, certainly in England. But yeah,

675
00:37:42,280 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 3: these are actually now the coiled serpents of Saint Hilda.

676
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,200
Speaker 3: I think we were talking about them as coiled serpents

677
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:48,240
Speaker 3: of something else.

678
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:49,720
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it was Hilda.

679
00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:52,640
Speaker 3: Oh it was Hilda. Okay, okay, but you people were

680
00:37:52,680 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 3: like trying to help out the connection by carving snake

681
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 3: faces into them. They're a little too cute.

682
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can look up images of these. Yeah.

683
00:38:00,680 --> 00:38:04,720
Speaker 3: Anyway, But coming back to Klein's discussion of the weather

684
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 3: related stories, so those are some other stories. You know,

685
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 3: he fixes broken eggs, he heals people who have been

686
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:14,120
Speaker 3: attacked by witches or weird sisters or valkyries or whatever.

687
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:17,759
Speaker 3: But another story from the legend of Saint Swithin which

688
00:38:17,760 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 3: actually connects thematically to the weather. So this is what

689
00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:23,240
Speaker 3: you were alluding to earlier.

690
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 2: Rob.

691
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,319
Speaker 3: The story goes that Saint Swiin was so humble and

692
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,759
Speaker 3: so pious that he asked that at the time of

693
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 3: his death his body be buried outside the church. And

694
00:38:33,880 --> 00:38:37,359
Speaker 3: I assume this is referring to Winchester Cathedral, or at

695
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 3: least the version of that cathedral that existed at the time.

696
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 3: The Winchester Cathedral that exists today was built centuries after

697
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:47,560
Speaker 3: Swidin's death, but so it was the earlier version of

698
00:38:47,600 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 3: that church. He wanted to be outside so that as

699
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 3: we were talking about, rain would fall upon his grave,

700
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 3: and so that the feet of people passing by the

701
00:38:55,120 --> 00:38:58,360
Speaker 3: church would trample on top of it. And the clergy

702
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,760
Speaker 3: initially honored his wishes. They put him where he asked.

703
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:05,080
Speaker 3: But about one hundred years after his death, some churchmen

704
00:39:05,239 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 3: got squeamish and they were like, Saint Swiin was really holy,

705
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 3: isn't it wrong that people should be walking around on

706
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,560
Speaker 3: top of his grave? So they made preparations to dig

707
00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 3: up his remains and move them on the date of

708
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 3: July fifteenth, But when the day came, a mighty storm

709
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 3: broke out, forcing the church to delay their plans. Only

710
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 3: the storm did not stop. It kept reigning for forty

711
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:34,799
Speaker 3: days and forty nights straight, and this was interpreted as

712
00:39:35,080 --> 00:39:38,279
Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's revenge from beyond the grave, or at least

713
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,759
Speaker 3: him issuing a stern warning to them do not disobey

714
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:46,360
Speaker 3: his wishes. So instead they just built a chapel over

715
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 3: his existing grave, and many miracles were performed there. It

716
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:55,479
Speaker 3: seems like still a violation of what he was asking for. Yeah,

717
00:39:55,560 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 3: I don't know, but client says this story is not

718
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 3: the origin of the weather prophecy. And this version of

719
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:06,759
Speaker 3: the story does not show up until the eighteenth century,

720
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 3: and it contradicts the claims of his earlier biographies, which

721
00:40:10,840 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 3: are again are probably also legendary, but were at least earlier.

722
00:40:15,719 --> 00:40:18,719
Speaker 3: These earlier biographies, you know, they they're the ones that

723
00:40:18,760 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 3: talk about the things I was bringing up earlier about

724
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 3: him being a real work beast when it came to

725
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:28,399
Speaker 3: infrastructure projects, restoring old churches, building new ones. Apparently he

726
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:32,239
Speaker 3: you know, he really impressed the King ethel Wolf by

727
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:35,000
Speaker 3: doing all this work, and ethel Wolf eventually granted the

728
00:40:35,080 --> 00:40:37,760
Speaker 3: church ten percent of its royal lands as a gift.

729
00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:42,080
Speaker 3: According to these stories, and also at Winchesters, it is

730
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 3: said that he had a stone bridge built over the

731
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:47,800
Speaker 3: river Itchin, and he was known for being deeply humble

732
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,480
Speaker 3: and even ascetic, Like he traveled through his diocese on foot,

733
00:40:51,960 --> 00:40:54,680
Speaker 3: and he threw banquets where only the poor and the

734
00:40:54,719 --> 00:40:57,239
Speaker 3: outcast were invited, the rich were not allowed in.

735
00:40:57,840 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 2: And like that's one of the details where I think

736
00:40:59,640 --> 00:41:02,320
Speaker 2: you can the argument and that could be true, absolutely

737
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:04,320
Speaker 2: could be true, it doesn't break anything else that we

738
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,360
Speaker 2: understand about the man or the time.

739
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:09,959
Speaker 3: According to these earlier stories, when he died, he left

740
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:13,360
Speaker 3: instructions that he was to be buried outside the church

741
00:41:13,480 --> 00:41:15,440
Speaker 3: in Oh, here's the source of what I was saying earlier,

742
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:19,760
Speaker 3: buried outside the church in quote, a vile and unworthy place.

743
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 3: And then this earlier biography also tells that in the

744
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:26,080
Speaker 3: year nine seventy one, more than one hundred years after

745
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 3: his death on July fifteenth, in fact, his remains were

746
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 3: actually successfully moved from their original resting place, from the

747
00:41:34,520 --> 00:41:37,880
Speaker 3: vile and unworthy place and taken to a new church.

748
00:41:38,280 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 3: And so this contradicts the forty days of rain revenge

749
00:41:41,160 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 3: story and really has nothing to do with weather. Now

750
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:47,480
Speaker 3: Here client actually brings it back to the figure of

751
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 3: John Earle, the Anglo Saxon professor I was talking about earlier, who,

752
00:41:52,080 --> 00:41:55,320
Speaker 3: he says, quote in the middle of last century, discovered

753
00:41:55,360 --> 00:42:01,239
Speaker 3: and translated a fragmentary chronicle concerning the transference. According to this,

754
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 3: Bishop Swien appeared in a dream to an aged smith

755
00:42:05,120 --> 00:42:08,800
Speaker 3: at Winchester, bidding him communicate to the monks the saints

756
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 3: wish that his bones should be brought within the church

757
00:42:12,520 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 3: asking for a sign to convince the monks of the

758
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:17,880
Speaker 3: authenticity of the message. He was told to pull an

759
00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 3: iron ring embedded in Swithin's stone coffin and it would

760
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:25,680
Speaker 3: come away. So it did, but the smith still hesitated

761
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 3: until Swyin had appeared to him three times. Then he obeyed.

762
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:34,279
Speaker 2: It's interesting that part of the confirmation here is dig

763
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:38,240
Speaker 2: up my grave and then pull on parts of my coffin.

764
00:42:38,800 --> 00:42:40,759
Speaker 2: So at that point you've aready done, like what a

765
00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 2: third of the work anyway, maybe half the work.

766
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 3: But he had to appear three times like this smith

767
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 3: took some convincing. But it's also the exact opposite of

768
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,360
Speaker 3: the earlier story. So in this version of the story,

769
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 3: the transfer of the remains was not contrary to Swithin's wishes.

770
00:42:57,480 --> 00:43:01,360
Speaker 3: It was his direct request. And then you've got additional

771
00:43:01,440 --> 00:43:06,320
Speaker 3: legendary explanations for the transfer. Let's see, there were stories

772
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 3: of like I think one of them goes basically like

773
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:13,680
Speaker 3: There were stories that went far and wide of miracles

774
00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 3: worked at the grave of Swithin. The blind came to

775
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 3: it and recovered their sight. There's a story of a

776
00:43:19,320 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 3: humped man losing his hump. So the king at the time,

777
00:43:23,120 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 3: King Edgar, heard of these wonder works, and he thus

778
00:43:26,239 --> 00:43:29,439
Speaker 3: ordered that Swiin's remains be moved from his grave into

779
00:43:29,520 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 3: a gold shrine covered in jewels. Seems to befitting of

780
00:43:33,239 --> 00:43:36,960
Speaker 3: such a humble man as Swithin, And there was a

781
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 3: great ceremony in the feast. And in this version of

782
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 3: the story there's like nothing at all about weather. So

783
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 3: what's the origin of the connection to whether? As of

784
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:50,320
Speaker 3: Klein's article, he says the answer is not really known,

785
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:55,440
Speaker 3: But of course Earl speculates that it may have to

786
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:59,799
Speaker 3: do with a pre existing tradition, possibly going back to

787
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 3: three Christian times. Throughout many different local European pagan mythologies

788
00:44:06,840 --> 00:44:11,239
Speaker 3: of weather predicting proverbs that were rooted in some kind

789
00:44:11,280 --> 00:44:15,880
Speaker 3: of local god or hero. There are other local saints

790
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:20,360
Speaker 3: around the world associated with weather prediction heuristics. For example,

791
00:44:20,840 --> 00:44:24,719
Speaker 3: the legend of Saint Medard's Day June eighth, known in

792
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:30,040
Speaker 3: France so Madard or Medardas was a Christian bishop who

793
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 3: lived in the fifth through the sixth century in modern

794
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 3: day France, and the legend about him goes that one

795
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 3: day when Madarda's child he was out walking in the

796
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 3: country with a bunch of other people. They were out

797
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:45,359
Speaker 3: and it was nice weather. But then a terrible thunderstorm

798
00:44:45,400 --> 00:44:48,240
Speaker 3: broke out, and the people all around him were soaked

799
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 3: in the rain. But Madard himself was bone dry because

800
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 3: he was sheltered from above by a giant eagle that

801
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,000
Speaker 3: hovered over his head with wings unfolded for the entire

802
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:03,400
Speaker 3: of his journey home. So an eagle umbrella.

803
00:45:03,400 --> 00:45:06,560
Speaker 2: All right, all right, one that hovers, yes.

804
00:45:07,160 --> 00:45:10,240
Speaker 3: And so in France there was a weather prediction proverb

805
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 3: or weather prophecy about Saint Medard's day that is almost

806
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:18,440
Speaker 3: identical to the Swien proverb. It's basically, if it rains

807
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 3: on Saint Madard's day, there will be forty more days

808
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 3: of rain. If it's dry, the next forty days will

809
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 3: be dry. And then Earl has a footnote where he

810
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:28,720
Speaker 3: also mentions a couple of other figures like this. Apparently

811
00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 3: there's a weather predicting proverb for a Saint Prote in

812
00:45:32,880 --> 00:45:38,600
Speaker 3: France prot Ais. And then he also says quote, the

813
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,360
Speaker 3: reigning saint in Flanders is a Saint a Godoliev And

814
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:47,000
Speaker 3: in Germany there are three reigning saints or Saints days.

815
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 3: One of the days is that of the Seven Sleepers.

816
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:53,439
Speaker 3: I think we've talked about the Seven Sleepers on the show,

817
00:45:53,440 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 3: haven't we.

818
00:45:54,200 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 2: I believe so I'm a little foggy off the top

819
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:58,720
Speaker 2: of my head who they were while they were sleeping,

820
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:01,520
Speaker 2: But I do believe we've talked about them.

821
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:04,680
Speaker 3: I think the story is they were early Christian saints

822
00:46:04,680 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 3: in the Roman Empire who went into a cave to

823
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 3: escape persecution by the Romans, and then they fell asleep,

824
00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:12,920
Speaker 3: and then they woke up. I don't know. It's a

825
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,040
Speaker 3: kind of a rip van Winkle thing. They woke up

826
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:16,160
Speaker 3: many many years later.

827
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,040
Speaker 2: We talked about them in our episode on time travel

828
00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 2: fiction and what are some of the arguments for early

829
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:29,800
Speaker 2: precursors to science fiction time travel stories. It's, in my opinion,

830
00:46:29,920 --> 00:46:32,279
Speaker 2: a pretty cool episode, So I would recommend folks go

831
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:34,440
Speaker 2: back and listen to it. Yeah, because it's like the

832
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:37,359
Speaker 2: idea of time travel, like where not only where does

833
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:39,880
Speaker 2: it come from, but how far back were we thinking

834
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:42,799
Speaker 2: about things like it? How far back did we think

835
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:47,399
Speaker 2: about time in the same way, Because nowadays, with via

836
00:46:47,480 --> 00:46:50,839
Speaker 2: time travel fiction, we think about this sort of thing

837
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 2: all the time. If I could go back and change this.

838
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 2: If I could go into the future and see what

839
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 2: this will look like.

840
00:46:57,640 --> 00:46:59,440
Speaker 3: I have fun memories of that episode.

841
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now you can actually go back in time

842
00:47:02,600 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 2: and listen to it. That's the thing about vodcasts.

843
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:19,480
Speaker 3: So there's another quick literary connection I wanted to discuss

844
00:47:19,520 --> 00:47:22,280
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting. This one I came across

845
00:47:22,400 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 3: in a post by the Royal Meteorological Society of Great Britain.

846
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:32,359
Speaker 3: The post is called behind the Folklore Saint Swithin's Day?

847
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 3: Does rain today really mean a ruined summer? This is

848
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:39,920
Speaker 3: from July fifteenth, twenty nineteen. This post includes a quote

849
00:47:40,200 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 3: from a poem called Trivia or the Art of Walking

850
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:48,560
Speaker 3: the Streets of London, by the British writer John Gay,

851
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:53,319
Speaker 3: published in seventeen sixteen. I knew nothing of this work beforehand,

852
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:55,560
Speaker 3: but I looked it up and it had some very

853
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 3: funny parts. It's a satirical poem giving advice about how

854
00:47:59,800 --> 00:48:03,879
Speaker 3: to walks around the city, including everything from what to where,

855
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 3: to strategies for avoiding common dangers and obstacles in the streets.

856
00:48:08,719 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 3: You know, how not to get a chamber pot port

857
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:14,440
Speaker 3: on your head or whatever. And here's one couplet from

858
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 3: it when suffocating mists obscure the morn let thy worst

859
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:21,960
Speaker 3: wig long used to storms be worn.

860
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:23,200
Speaker 2: And it rhymes too.

861
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:28,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just good advice. Yeah, But there is a

862
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:32,800
Speaker 3: passage that directly addresses the weather predicting proverb of Saint Swithin,

863
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:36,800
Speaker 3: and also one that is about the Festival of Saint

864
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:39,920
Speaker 3: Paul as well. So there are multiple weather predicting proverbs.

865
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 3: So John Gay's poem goes like this, all superstition from

866
00:48:45,239 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 3: thy breast, repel let, credulous boys and prattling nurses tell

867
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:53,759
Speaker 3: how if the Festival of Paul be clear, plenty from

868
00:48:53,960 --> 00:48:57,840
Speaker 3: liberal horn shall strow the ear. When the dark skies

869
00:48:57,880 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 3: dissolve in snow or rain, the labor hind shall yoke

870
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 3: the steer in vain. But if the threatening winds in

871
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:09,240
Speaker 3: tempest roar, then war shall bathe her wasteful sword and gore.

872
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 3: And then here's the relevant part with Swithen, This is

873
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:16,520
Speaker 3: the other half here. How if on Swithin's feast, the

874
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 3: welkin lowers, I was like, what, I had to look

875
00:49:19,520 --> 00:49:22,560
Speaker 3: that up, so that meaning dark clouds gather. Basically, welkin

876
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 3: is the sky lowers, I think means like lowers like

877
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,880
Speaker 3: it grows dark, if the sky grows dark, If on

878
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 3: Swithin's feast, the welkin lowers, and every penthouse streams with

879
00:49:34,239 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 3: hasty showers twice twenty days, shall clouds their fleeces drain

880
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 3: and wash the pavements with incessant rain? Let not such

881
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:47,720
Speaker 3: vulgar tails debase thy mind nor Paul nor swithen rules

882
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:51,480
Speaker 3: the clouds and wind, oh sad to end on that

883
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,960
Speaker 3: kind of rhyme that doesn't really work anymore, Mind and

884
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 3: mind and wind? I wonder did did mind sound like wind?

885
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:02,160
Speaker 3: Or did wind sound like mind?

886
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:05,799
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's always the question, right, are you

887
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 2: gonna Are you gonna actually try and make something like

888
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:11,360
Speaker 2: this rhyme when you pronounce it and potentially sound foolish.

889
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 3: But so, even in seventeen sixteen, this guy's well aware

890
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:18,439
Speaker 3: of this proverb as like a common saying, but he's saying,

891
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 3: pay no attention, it's hogwash. In fact, I couldn't find

892
00:50:22,120 --> 00:50:25,160
Speaker 3: any older sources where people are saying this is a good. Yeah,

893
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,719
Speaker 3: this is good, it really works. Every source I was

894
00:50:28,719 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 3: finding on it was just people hundreds of years ago

895
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:33,440
Speaker 3: saying this is stupid. It doesn't make any sense.

896
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, because all you have to do is observe and

897
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:37,479
Speaker 2: you don't need It's not one of these things where

898
00:50:37,480 --> 00:50:39,440
Speaker 2: you can just say, well, if you have the benefit

899
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,399
Speaker 2: of long term record keeping, like no, it's like if

900
00:50:42,400 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 2: you've just tried it out more than once or even once,

901
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 2: you'd realize, you know, that didn't work, that actually wasn't

902
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:48,880
Speaker 2: helpful advice.

903
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:51,120
Speaker 3: That's right. So here we come to the question does

904
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:53,960
Speaker 3: it actually predict the weather? The short answer is no.

905
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:56,840
Speaker 3: It is not a reliable guide and you can easily

906
00:50:56,840 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 3: find lots of cases where it's wrong. In fact, if

907
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:03,240
Speaker 3: you're strict about it, it is always wrong. The Royal

908
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 3: Meteorological Society post points out quote since records began, not

909
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 3: a single forty day drought has occurred anywhere in the

910
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,359
Speaker 3: UK during the summer months, and there has not been

911
00:51:14,440 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 3: one instance at any time of the year of forty

912
00:51:18,480 --> 00:51:22,800
Speaker 3: consecutive days of rainfall sunshine on Saint Swithin's day in Miami,

913
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 3: Maywell auger forty days of unbroken sunshine, But in Blackpool

914
00:51:26,680 --> 00:51:30,279
Speaker 3: it most assuredly does not. So the if you're very

915
00:51:30,360 --> 00:51:33,600
Speaker 3: strict about interpreting it, this never ever has happened, and

916
00:51:33,760 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 3: never will happen. I mean maybe in a million years,

917
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 3: but never happens.

918
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:40,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, once they build the dome or something.

919
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:44,359
Speaker 3: You know. Now, if you're not as strict in interpreting it,

920
00:51:44,440 --> 00:51:47,680
Speaker 3: if you take it more as an indicator of general trends,

921
00:51:48,239 --> 00:51:50,800
Speaker 3: it often does hold true, though you can still find

922
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 3: lots of years where it does not.

923
00:51:53,040 --> 00:51:53,160
Speaker 1: So.

924
00:51:53,280 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 3: John Earl investigated this in the eighteen hundreds. In his

925
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 3: piece on it, he's like looking at almanacs, and he says,

926
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:03,239
Speaker 3: quote in z Owns Everyday Book for July fifteenth, some

927
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 3: observations are quoted, tending to prove that though it will

928
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:10,839
Speaker 3: not bear rigid examination, yet it is not totally unfounded.

929
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,840
Speaker 3: Among other instances, these occur. In eighteen oh seven, it

930
00:52:14,920 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 3: proved wrong. A rainy July fifteenth was followed by a

931
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:20,759
Speaker 3: dry time. In eighteen oh eight, it was wet, and

932
00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 3: the rule came partially true. In eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen.

933
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:28,120
Speaker 3: July fifteenth was dry and followed by dry weather. Of

934
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:30,960
Speaker 3: the series eighteen oh seven to eighteen nineteen, it was

935
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 3: generally true enough, but in the wet summer of eighteen sixteen,

936
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:38,760
Speaker 3: though the adage was literally verified. Yet the heaviest wet

937
00:52:38,880 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 3: fell before the fifteenth and Earl has a friend who

938
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 3: studies meteorology who tells him that, you know, really, the

939
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:50,280
Speaker 3: only way people can believe this prognostication has predictive value

940
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:54,800
Speaker 3: is by quote attention being given to the instances wherein

941
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:57,959
Speaker 3: it fell true and neglect of the cases in which

942
00:52:58,000 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 3: the reverse occurred.

943
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 2: Ah, isn't that always the case?

944
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:05,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, this would be once again our old friend confirmation bias,

945
00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 3: where you count the hits and you ignore the misses.

946
00:53:09,200 --> 00:53:11,800
Speaker 3: And you know, I think a lot of even outside

947
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:16,160
Speaker 3: of weather prediction, just a lot of common sayings and

948
00:53:16,320 --> 00:53:20,920
Speaker 3: proverbs are regarded as wisdom in part on the basis

949
00:53:20,960 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 3: of confirmation bias. They're not actually true in all cases,

950
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:29,840
Speaker 3: or sometimes even in most cases, but because we're already

951
00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 3: familiar with a proverb propounding a rule or a pattern,

952
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:38,200
Speaker 3: we notice events that conform to the rule and associate

953
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:41,720
Speaker 3: them with the rule, and we tend to ignore events

954
00:53:41,760 --> 00:53:44,240
Speaker 3: that contradict the rule, or at least we don't mentally

955
00:53:44,280 --> 00:53:47,239
Speaker 3: associate them with the saying. So I was just thinking

956
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:49,560
Speaker 3: of common sayings. One that came to mind for me

957
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 3: is absence makes the heart grow fonder, seems very true, right,

958
00:53:54,160 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 3: seems very true?

959
00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:56,080
Speaker 2: Why people keep saying it?

960
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:59,319
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, being away from something or someone makes you

961
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,320
Speaker 3: yearn for them thing or that person. But there's also

962
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:06,319
Speaker 3: a counter saying, out of sight out of mind. This

963
00:54:06,440 --> 00:54:09,920
Speaker 3: also seems true, even though it basically means exactly the opposite.

964
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:13,719
Speaker 3: And I think the reality is that sometimes absence makes

965
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:16,319
Speaker 3: the heart grow fonder, and sometimes it doesn't. And in

966
00:54:16,400 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 3: the cases where it does, it seems like it proves

967
00:54:19,280 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 3: the saying true, and in cases where it doesn't, it

968
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 3: just doesn't occur to us to count it against the proverb.

969
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,799
Speaker 3: So maybe instead it just counts as confirmation of an

970
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,800
Speaker 3: opposing proverb. Oh, out of sight, out of mind confirmed?

971
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 3: So like both are true even though they contradict.

972
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:38,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, it's you're summoning a saying to make sense

973
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 2: of things that are happening in your life, or maybe

974
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:43,000
Speaker 2: even serve as kind of a predictive model of what

975
00:54:43,160 --> 00:54:48,440
Speaker 2: might happen, you know, feeding the the the ever turning

976
00:54:48,480 --> 00:54:52,399
Speaker 2: gears of the mind with these things. So yeah, it's

977
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:54,920
Speaker 2: only important to you to whatever extent it backs up

978
00:54:55,680 --> 00:54:57,399
Speaker 2: your existing machinations.

979
00:54:57,560 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think sayings like this are often they're

980
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:06,399
Speaker 3: not really useful for predictive power, what they're actually used

981
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:12,320
Speaker 3: for is a mental classification system for events in our lives.

982
00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:15,560
Speaker 3: They're more kind of like a filing system for our

983
00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 3: own mental biography. You know, I can remember this event

984
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:23,359
Speaker 3: that happened here under the kind of salience tag of

985
00:55:23,440 --> 00:55:26,600
Speaker 3: absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this other event

986
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 3: I can remember under the salience tag of out of sight,

987
00:55:29,719 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 3: out of mind. Yeah. But anyway, back to the weather. So,

988
00:55:33,719 --> 00:55:36,720
Speaker 3: while it's certainly not true all of the time, maybe

989
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:40,480
Speaker 3: not even most of the time, when taken as a

990
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:43,840
Speaker 3: predictor of trends on average, I think you could argue

991
00:55:43,840 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 3: the swin proverb has a little bit of truth to it.

992
00:55:47,440 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 3: And there is interestingly actually a mechanism, a scientific mechanism

993
00:55:51,520 --> 00:55:55,279
Speaker 3: we can point to that would explain why it sometimes

994
00:55:55,280 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 3: has a little truth to it, and that is the

995
00:55:57,880 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 3: jet stream.

996
00:55:58,880 --> 00:55:59,280
Speaker 2: Ah.

997
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:02,600
Speaker 3: This is a point made by that post by the

998
00:56:02,680 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 3: Royal Meteorological Society. So the post concludes, quote the middle

999
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,040
Speaker 3: of July tends to be around the time that the

1000
00:56:10,120 --> 00:56:14,000
Speaker 3: jet stream settles into a relatively consistent pattern. If the

1001
00:56:14,080 --> 00:56:17,000
Speaker 3: jet stream lies north of the UK throughout the summer,

1002
00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:20,840
Speaker 3: continental high pressure is able to move in bringing warmth

1003
00:56:20,880 --> 00:56:24,560
Speaker 3: and sunshine. If it sticks further south, Arctic air and

1004
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:29,960
Speaker 3: Atlantic weather systems are likely to predominate, bringing colder, wetter weather.

1005
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:33,920
Speaker 3: So to explain that a little bit more so, the

1006
00:56:34,040 --> 00:56:37,239
Speaker 3: jet stream is this fast moving current of air in

1007
00:56:37,280 --> 00:56:41,320
Speaker 3: the upper atmosphere above like nine thousand meters that typically

1008
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:45,000
Speaker 3: flows from west to east. There are four main jet

1009
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 3: streams on Earth. You've got two at the boundary of

1010
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:50,879
Speaker 3: each polar region in the North Pole and the South Pole,

1011
00:56:51,280 --> 00:56:55,080
Speaker 3: and then you've got two subtropical jet streams. The specific

1012
00:56:55,160 --> 00:56:58,560
Speaker 3: current that has the most influence on European weather is

1013
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:03,520
Speaker 3: the northern polar jet stream. Jet Streams are formed because

1014
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:08,120
Speaker 3: of the temperature difference between two big masses of air,

1015
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:11,760
Speaker 3: in this case, the cold polar air and the warmer

1016
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:14,520
Speaker 3: air of the northern mid latitude. So you've got warmer

1017
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:18,360
Speaker 3: air at lower latitudes colder air at higher latitudes, and

1018
00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:22,200
Speaker 3: there's a boundary point where they meet, and this boundary

1019
00:57:22,240 --> 00:57:27,440
Speaker 3: point creates strong horizontal pressure gradients in the upper atmosphere.

1020
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:31,160
Speaker 3: In short, big differences in pressure between over here and

1021
00:57:31,200 --> 00:57:34,400
Speaker 3: over there. And these big differences in pressure mean there's

1022
00:57:34,440 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 3: a lot of moving air in the upper atmosphere. The

1023
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:41,840
Speaker 3: moving air at this boundary gets deflected to the right

1024
00:57:42,040 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 3: in the northern hemisphere because of our old friend, the

1025
00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:48,600
Speaker 3: Coriolis effect. Because the Earth is spinning west to east,

1026
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:53,720
Speaker 3: it deflects these movements to the right, which creates this powerful,

1027
00:57:54,160 --> 00:57:58,200
Speaker 3: fast moving river of air flowing west to east in

1028
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:01,280
Speaker 3: the upper atmosphere and is going fast at speeds of

1029
00:58:01,400 --> 00:58:05,640
Speaker 3: several hundred miles per hour. And this is the northern

1030
00:58:05,640 --> 00:58:08,880
Speaker 3: Polar jet stream. It often tends to flow right over

1031
00:58:09,080 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 3: or right around the British Isles. So the position of

1032
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:19,000
Speaker 3: this jet stream is largely determinative of Europe's weather. If

1033
00:58:19,040 --> 00:58:22,080
Speaker 3: the jet stream is flowing in a relatively straight line

1034
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:27,480
Speaker 3: across roughly the same latitude, it can mean somewhat erratic weather, actually,

1035
00:58:27,520 --> 00:58:30,440
Speaker 3: because what that means is it will be pulling regular

1036
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 3: storms in from the Atlantic on a repeating basis, and

1037
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:39,120
Speaker 3: then they'll be punctuated by periods of calm in between. However,

1038
00:58:39,240 --> 00:58:41,480
Speaker 3: if it's a more squiggly line, think of like a

1039
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:44,320
Speaker 3: meandering river, kind of looping up and down. If it's

1040
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:47,560
Speaker 3: shaped more like that, which it sometimes is, Britain's weather

1041
00:58:48,120 --> 00:58:52,200
Speaker 3: will depend more on which side of the squiggly line

1042
00:58:52,240 --> 00:58:56,280
Speaker 3: it ends up lassoed into. So if it is trapped

1043
00:58:56,360 --> 00:58:59,520
Speaker 3: in part of a bend reaching up from the south,

1044
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 3: this will tend to mean warm, dry weather, kind of

1045
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:06,280
Speaker 3: a more Mediterranean weather system. And if it is part

1046
00:59:06,280 --> 00:59:09,520
Speaker 3: of a bend curling down from the north, this will

1047
00:59:09,600 --> 00:59:13,720
Speaker 3: usually mean Britain gets cool, rainy weather driven by the

1048
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:16,919
Speaker 3: polar air mass coming in from the sea. And these

1049
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:21,800
Speaker 3: wavy patterns can sometimes park over an area like Britain

1050
00:59:22,200 --> 00:59:26,040
Speaker 3: for several weeks at a time, leading to somewhat stable

1051
00:59:26,160 --> 00:59:30,960
Speaker 3: patterns which, while not exactly conforming to Swien's forty days prediction,

1052
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 3: they can approximate it. So there is a little bit

1053
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 3: of something going on here based in real weather patterns.

1054
00:59:37,880 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can imagine somebody setting out in

1055
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:43,760
Speaker 2: the weeks following July fifteenth. It's raining, they're wearing their

1056
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:48,520
Speaker 2: old wig, and yeah, it's conforming to the legend enough

1057
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:50,640
Speaker 2: that they might summon the legend in their mind as

1058
00:59:50,680 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 2: they look up at the rainy sky.

1059
00:59:52,400 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 3: Right, And that could well be because at that time

1060
00:59:55,880 --> 00:59:58,560
Speaker 3: Britain is trapped in one of these polar troughs where

1061
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:01,000
Speaker 3: the jet stream loops down under it, so they're getting

1062
01:00:01,000 --> 01:00:03,520
Speaker 3: a lot of northern air coming in, bringing in the

1063
01:00:03,600 --> 01:00:05,800
Speaker 3: you know, cool wet stuff off the sea.

1064
01:00:07,080 --> 01:00:08,920
Speaker 2: And you know, it's one of those things where I

1065
01:00:08,960 --> 01:00:11,160
Speaker 2: mean not to analyze it too deeply, because I think

1066
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:14,760
Speaker 2: in many cases we're probably dealing with a very casual

1067
01:00:14,840 --> 01:00:19,040
Speaker 2: association with a legend like that. But still little things

1068
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 2: like that can make it seem like there's something or

1069
01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 2: somebody in control, like there is some level of control

1070
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:30,160
Speaker 2: in a life and in a world that that seems

1071
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:33,240
Speaker 2: chaotic at times and can be quite scary in its

1072
01:00:33,280 --> 01:00:36,640
Speaker 2: unpredictable nature. But if you can sort of even just

1073
01:00:36,720 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 2: casually think, oh, it's just like that legend, then then

1074
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:43,920
Speaker 2: it feels like there's some there's some bumpers on the lane,

1075
01:00:43,960 --> 01:00:44,160
Speaker 2: you know.

1076
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:48,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally. So this RMS post they end with

1077
01:00:48,760 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 3: a revised version of the Swithin poem that's even clunkier.

1078
01:00:52,200 --> 01:00:55,320
Speaker 3: Not even trying really to scan at this point, but

1079
01:00:55,440 --> 01:00:58,080
Speaker 3: this is what they come up with. They say, Saint

1080
01:00:58,080 --> 01:01:02,560
Speaker 3: Swithin's day, if thou dost rain for forty days relatively unsettled,

1081
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:05,720
Speaker 3: there's a fair chance it will remain. That sounds almost

1082
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 3: kind of Yoda issue. And then Saint Swithin's Day, if

1083
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:12,919
Speaker 3: that'll be fair for forty days, a northerly jetstream might

1084
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:16,880
Speaker 3: result in some fairly decent spells, but then again it

1085
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:17,280
Speaker 3: might not.

1086
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:20,520
Speaker 2: You know who could have made this work Rocky ericson

1087
01:01:20,760 --> 01:01:21,439
Speaker 2: Oh my God.

1088
01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:25,560
Speaker 3: Yes, he could cram so many words into a line.

1089
01:01:25,440 --> 01:01:27,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, yeah, you think of the lyrics to

1090
01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:31,920
Speaker 2: if you have ghosts that. Yeah, this could totally work

1091
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:32,880
Speaker 2: within the context of.

1092
01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:35,320
Speaker 3: That objects move without wind blowing from the newspaper to

1093
01:01:35,360 --> 01:01:35,680
Speaker 3: the door.

1094
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:37,240
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1095
01:01:37,320 --> 01:01:39,920
Speaker 3: Okay, well that's all I've got on Swithin, Saint Swithin's

1096
01:01:39,960 --> 01:01:40,760
Speaker 3: Day and the weather.

1097
01:01:41,400 --> 01:01:43,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, to bring it back to Rocky Erickson,

1098
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:48,320
Speaker 2: if definitely check out his music if you were at

1099
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:50,600
Speaker 2: all interested in anything we've said about him. The thing

1100
01:01:50,640 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 2: is you've probably heard his music before and you just

1101
01:01:52,680 --> 01:01:57,520
Speaker 2: hadn't realized it. I was watching The Weindnsday Show about

1102
01:01:57,520 --> 01:02:00,560
Speaker 2: Wednsday Adams on Netflix with the family recently, and in

1103
01:02:00,560 --> 01:02:03,760
Speaker 2: season two there's an episode where they drop Rocky Erics

1104
01:02:03,800 --> 01:02:07,200
Speaker 2: Since I walked with the Zombie's that's it's a pretty

1105
01:02:07,200 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 2: well known track of his. Even if you're not aware

1106
01:02:09,520 --> 01:02:12,440
Speaker 2: of Rocky ericson like that, one's been used in a

1107
01:02:12,480 --> 01:02:14,560
Speaker 2: number of things, and like a number of his songs,

1108
01:02:14,600 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 2: he's kind of a I think he's one of those

1109
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:19,120
Speaker 2: artists that is often kind of a musician's musician, you know.

1110
01:02:19,240 --> 01:02:21,880
Speaker 2: So his his songs have been covered a lot by

1111
01:02:21,920 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 2: folks that were inspired by his music.

1112
01:02:25,160 --> 01:02:28,560
Speaker 3: I say his best known song is probably the one

1113
01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:31,120
Speaker 3: he did with the thirteenth thirteenth Floor Elevators. So the

1114
01:02:31,160 --> 01:02:33,320
Speaker 3: first track off their first album called You're going to

1115
01:02:33,360 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 3: Miss Me. A lot of people have heard that one.

1116
01:02:35,320 --> 01:02:37,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a that's a really good one, and

1117
01:02:38,440 --> 01:02:40,520
Speaker 2: I think it was that the Tit also the title

1118
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:41,640
Speaker 2: of the documentary about him.

1119
01:02:41,720 --> 01:02:42,600
Speaker 3: Yes, yes it was.

1120
01:02:43,160 --> 01:02:46,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, solid track, but not as I mean, not as

1121
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:48,800
Speaker 2: rockin and not and certainly not horror team like the

1122
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:50,919
Speaker 2: later many of the later songs were.

1123
01:02:51,960 --> 01:02:54,680
Speaker 3: I'm tempted to talk about May ninth, nineteen seventy six,

1124
01:02:54,760 --> 01:02:57,360
Speaker 3: when I looked up and nothing significant happened that day.

1125
01:03:00,160 --> 01:03:01,680
Speaker 2: We're going to go and close it out here, but

1126
01:03:01,720 --> 01:03:03,680
Speaker 2: we just like to remind everyone that's stuff to blow

1127
01:03:03,720 --> 01:03:06,360
Speaker 2: your mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with

1128
01:03:06,440 --> 01:03:09,240
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we do

1129
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:11,479
Speaker 2: a short form episode and on Fridays we set aside

1130
01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:13,520
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

1131
01:03:13,560 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. Wherever you get the podcast, where

1132
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:21,560
Speaker 2: we just asked that you subscribe, rate, and review. We

1133
01:03:21,600 --> 01:03:24,760
Speaker 2: don't always really hammer this home, but these are things

1134
01:03:24,760 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 2: that really help us out. Make sure you've subscribed, rate,

1135
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 2: and review the show. It helps ensure that we continue

1136
01:03:30,560 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 2: to put these episodes out for your listening pleasure.

1137
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1138
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:38,760
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1139
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:41,360
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1140
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:43,439
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1141
01:03:43,920 --> 01:03:46,520
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1142
01:03:46,560 --> 01:03:55,160
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1143
01:03:55,680 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1144
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:01,479
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1145
01:04:01,640 --> 01:04:17,120
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.