Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on the show,
Speaker 3: we are going to be doing a holiday episode, but
Speaker 3: not on the holiday itself. Today we are talking about
Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's Day and its namesake, Saint Swithin.
Speaker 2: That's right. We were originally going to put this episode
Speaker 2: out on July fifteenth to correspond with Saint Swithin's Day,
Speaker 2: but some stuff came up. I had to take a
Speaker 2: week off, so we were had. We realized, well, we
Speaker 2: could sit on this episode and just finish it and
Speaker 2: record it later on the next time Saint Swiftin' Day
Speaker 2: happens to fall on the Tuesday or Thursday, or we
Speaker 2: could just simply push on and do it. Assuming that
Speaker 2: most of you are going to forgive us for being
Speaker 2: several weeks late to the punch on this perhaps obscure
Speaker 2: Saints Day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a holiday. I would bet most of
Speaker 3: our American and international listeners will not be familiar with
Speaker 3: UK listeners. I'm maybe more likely. I'm not exactly sure
Speaker 3: how what consciousness of Saint Swithin is like today. But
Speaker 3: I guess if anybody out there is going to be
Speaker 3: wired in on Swithin it is It's probably like Catholics
Speaker 3: in England. But I don't know. So why are we
Speaker 3: talking about this? Why is this somewhat obscure medieval saint
Speaker 3: and his holiday even on our radar. The main reason,
Speaker 3: perhaps the only reason that I personally had any previous
Speaker 3: consciousness of Saint Swithin and his feast day was from
Speaker 3: a quite unlikely source, and that is the lyrics of
Speaker 3: a song by the late great psychedelic rock pioneer Rocky Ericsson,
Speaker 3: one of my personal favorite musical artists of all time.
Speaker 3: The song in which this lyric appears is called the
Speaker 3: Night of the Vampire, and it actually appears on multiple albums,
Speaker 3: including The Evil One from nineteen eighty that's one of
Speaker 3: my favorite rocky albums. Actually just got that on vinyl,
Speaker 3: and my daughter has become obsessed with it, like she
Speaker 3: asks for it by name one here, two Headed Dog.
Speaker 3: She begs us to put it on. Oh man, wonderful.
Speaker 2: I would play that in the car sometimes and my
Speaker 2: kiddo would sometimes ask me to skip Bloody Hammer. They're
Speaker 2: like I don't know about this song.
Speaker 3: Well, it might be different once she recognizes what all
Speaker 3: the lyrics are. I don't know, but right now she
Speaker 3: just thinks he's a funny Halloween guy. He just a
Speaker 3: Halloween guy.
Speaker 2: That is also true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but so she asks for Rocky but anyway, so
Speaker 3: it's on the evil one though. My favorite version of
Speaker 3: this song is actually the first track on Rocky's nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six compilation album Grimlins Have Pictures. The title of
Speaker 3: that album, by the way, is taken from the lyrics
Speaker 3: of his song Anthem, and the full line there is
Speaker 3: Grimlins Have Pictures of the Anniversary of Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one's a real head scratcher. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of there's a lot of the lyrics to Rocky
Speaker 2: erics and songs will drift into head scratch your territory.
Speaker 3: But they're wonderful. I mean, they will make you scratch
Speaker 3: your head, but they'll also stay in your head, or
Speaker 3: at least in my head. I you know, after I
Speaker 3: listen to Rocky, even if I'm sort of in a
Speaker 3: Rocky way, and I guess you know, there are periods
Speaker 3: where I'm listening to him constantly and somewhere I listen less,
Speaker 3: but and the ones when I listen less sometimes something
Speaker 3: just comes like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere,
Speaker 3: and my brain is thinking, you know, if it's raining
Speaker 3: and you're running, don't slip in mud because if you do,
Speaker 3: you'll slip in blood. That is also from Night of
Speaker 3: the Vampire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his lyrics have a real stream of consciousness vibe
Speaker 2: to them and amid them. Horror movie references will also
Speaker 2: invoke words, ideas and connections that were, you know, unique
Speaker 2: to his own mind and worldview. Might be difficult for
Speaker 2: the rest of us to understand, but that's the tantalizing
Speaker 2: part of that. It's like a puzzle and you're trying
Speaker 2: to interpret it the interpreter. Where is he now?
Speaker 3: Oh? Another one? Another good one. But anyway, So in
Speaker 3: the middle of the song to the Vampire, which is,
Speaker 3: as my kid would say, a Halloween guy song, it's
Speaker 3: a song about vampires. It's a song about raining and running,
Speaker 3: slipping in mud, slipping in blood. There is a bridge
Speaker 3: to the song where Rocky sings me Castle Brand, Transylvania
Speaker 3: on Saint Swithin's day. He was born, eyes stare through
Speaker 3: the darkness with no form, maidens his bite harms. That's
Speaker 3: a good slant rhyme, by the way, with you know
Speaker 3: born form harm but on Saint Swithin's day he was born.
Speaker 3: That's a strange connection to make. I want to come
Speaker 3: back in a minute to figure out what's going on
Speaker 3: with that now, if you're wondering, was it normal for
Speaker 3: this guy to sing rock songs about vampires? Yes, as
Speaker 3: we've established, he's a Halloween guy. Rocky's career had two
Speaker 3: main stages. In the nineteen sixties, he sang and performed
Speaker 3: with a Texas based garage psych band called the Thirteenth
Speaker 3: Floor Elevators. I think one of the best psychedelic rock
Speaker 3: bands of the sixties, really awesome. So he had a
Speaker 3: period with them where they released a couple of great albums.
Speaker 3: So one is The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.
Speaker 3: Their second album is my favorite. It's called Easter Everywhere.
Speaker 3: After that, he had a more difficult period where he
Speaker 3: had some legal issues and where he was he had
Speaker 3: a period of involuntary commitment at some statemental hospitals in Texas.
Speaker 3: After his eventual release, instead of going back to psychedelic
Speaker 3: sounds like he did with the thirteenth floor elevators. He
Speaker 3: instead focused on other genres. He did folk, blues, and
Speaker 3: particularly a kind of hard rock idea that he called
Speaker 3: horror rock, which was fueled by his longtime obsession with
Speaker 3: monster movies, especially old monster movies, like many of the
Speaker 3: things we cover on Weird House Cinema. In fact, we've
Speaker 3: done some very rocky centric movies on Weird House, like
Speaker 3: Creature with the Adam Brain has its own rocky ericson song,
Speaker 3: which is fabulous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't necessarily picking really well known films or
Speaker 2: the films that connected with him.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's one of the charms because sometimes you
Speaker 2: might not even realize he's referring to a movie until
Speaker 2: you dig a little deeper.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Rocky described this genre at one point by saying,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to horrify them, demonize them, and possessionize them,
Speaker 3: and he's doing it. So Night of the Vampire is
Speaker 3: a core horror rock song. So I've been listening to
Speaker 3: this song for years. I first got into this, I
Speaker 3: think one summer when I was in college. So Saint
Speaker 3: Swithin's has been also banging around in my head as
Speaker 3: a phrase for that long. But I had never much
Speaker 3: looked into it until Rob this summer you flagged it
Speaker 3: on our show calendar saying, Hey, Saint Swithin's Day is
Speaker 3: a real day. Let's figure out what's going on here?
Speaker 3: And oh boy, that that was really music to my ears.
Speaker 3: So we very much got into the spirit of Saint
Speaker 3: Swithin and especially the question what does Saint Swithin have
Speaker 3: to do with vampires? Well, I did some fairly extensive
Speaker 3: digging on this question, and I've come to the conclusion
Speaker 3: that there is no connection at all outside this song.
Speaker 3: I can't find any records of a famous vampire from
Speaker 3: movies or literature who was born on Saint Swithin's day,
Speaker 3: nor any pre existing connection between the historical character of
Speaker 3: Saint Swithin and any vampire lore. Though maybe we can
Speaker 3: get halfway there by connecting Saint Swithin to some ambiguous
Speaker 3: witches or hags or valkyrie. Is some other kind of
Speaker 3: scary female creature.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: However, the one real connection I could find is that
Speaker 3: one person who was born on Saint Swithin's day was
Speaker 3: Rocky Erickson himself born July fifteenth, nineteen forty seven. Rocky's
Speaker 3: lyrics about movie monsters sometimes do shift back and forth
Speaker 3: between third person and first person. I think there is
Speaker 3: a good degree of when I'm talking about the monster,
Speaker 3: I am talking about myself. You know, I'm a demon
Speaker 3: and I love rock and roll. That's another one of
Speaker 3: his songs, So I think that probably is the main connection.
Speaker 3: That Saint Swithin's day is Rocky's birthday, and so the
Speaker 3: Night of the Vampire is his night. It's you know,
Speaker 3: the vampire is me to paraphrase Flaubert. However, to bring
Speaker 3: things back to Saint Swithin. While again I can't find
Speaker 3: any evidence of a vampire character born on Saint Swithin's
Speaker 3: celebration day, I do think there's an interesting connection in
Speaker 3: the lyrics of the song, and I already quoted this part.
Speaker 3: In the first verse of Night of the Vampire, Rocky
Speaker 3: offers the advice if it's raining and you're running, don't
Speaker 3: slip in mud, because if you do, you'll slip in blood.
Speaker 3: Tonight is the Night of the Vampire. So Rocky's head
Speaker 3: was stuck on the idea of trying to escape a
Speaker 3: vampire in a heavy rainstorm. And it turns out one
Speaker 3: of the most famous things about Swithin is that his
Speaker 3: Dayly fifteenth, is associated with a seasonal proverb for predicting
Speaker 3: the weather, specifically for predicting rain patterns in Great Britain.
Speaker 3: There are many versions of this saying, but here's one
Speaker 3: I came across. Goes like this, Saint Swithin's day, If
Speaker 3: thou dost rain for forty days, it will remain Saint
Speaker 3: Swithin's day. If thou be fair for forty days, twill rain,
Speaker 3: nay mayre. So that's sink in you. Basically, whatever you
Speaker 3: get on Saint Swithin's day, you're going to get that
Speaker 3: again for forty days.
Speaker 2: When I've been reading this over in the notes, though,
Speaker 2: I've gone ahead and read this in my head in
Speaker 2: Rocky Erickson's voice as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twill rain, namaire, Yeah, I can hear it. He
Speaker 3: had a wonderful like a Texan accent to yowl.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But again, according to this proverb, if it rains on
Speaker 3: July fifteenth, it is going to keep raining for the
Speaker 3: next forty days. If it's dry, it will be dry
Speaker 3: the next forty days. So if that proverb actually holds true, true,
Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's day is a good tool for planning your
Speaker 3: upcoming vampire survival strategies. If it's raining on the fifteenth,
Speaker 3: you should invest in some boots with grippy souls to
Speaker 3: avoid slipping in mud and therefore slipping in blood. But
Speaker 3: is there anything to this kind of weather predicting dogg
Speaker 3: roll other than superstition and the fact that it rhymes?
Speaker 3: It does rhyme. You gotta admit that, Rob, Yeah, And
Speaker 3: what was the deal with this Saint Swithin guy? What
Speaker 3: does he have to do with whether whether it rains
Speaker 3: or not? These questions are what we'll be exploring for
Speaker 3: the rest of today's episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, We'll leave it to you to ultimately decide how
Speaker 2: closely aligned the lyrics of Rocky ericson are with this
Speaker 2: historic individual and legendary English saint.
Speaker 3: I guess we got to say this near the top
Speaker 3: because we keep calling him Saint Swithin. Rob, did you
Speaker 3: come across the fact that even though he is widely
Speaker 3: known as Saint Swithin, he was never officially canonized by
Speaker 3: the Catholic Church, So he's not actually a saint on paper,
Speaker 3: only a street saint, a saint by reputation.
Speaker 2: That's right, He's he was never canonized as a saint
Speaker 2: by the Catholic Church, So yeah, he's a He's not
Speaker 2: a saint saint, just a street saint.
Speaker 3: As you say, Now, I think what we could start
Speaker 3: off by doing is dividing the historical Saint Swithin from
Speaker 3: the legendary Saint Swin. And I think that will be
Speaker 3: a reasonably easy, uh division to make because from what
Speaker 3: I can tell, Rob, I think you did more of
Speaker 3: the historical research. But is it correct that very little
Speaker 3: is known about the real historical Saint Swin and that
Speaker 3: much of his biography, maybe almost all of his biography
Speaker 3: is understood by historians to be legend, probably fabricated long
Speaker 3: after his death.
Speaker 2: Correct, Yeah, most of we know very little about the
Speaker 2: historic individual that then ends up being built out into
Speaker 2: this saint of legend. Well, historians do agree that there
Speaker 2: was definitely an historic Swithen. You know, sometimes you peel
Speaker 2: away the layers of legend and you discover there's perhaps
Speaker 2: nobody at the bottom, or there's just sort of a
Speaker 2: hypothetical real person at the bottom of things. But there
Speaker 2: was an individual by the name of Swithin. He would
Speaker 2: have been born around eight hundred CE. He was consecrated
Speaker 2: by Selnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, on October thirtieth, eight fifty two,
Speaker 2: and he died on July Tewod eight sixty two. He
Speaker 2: served as the Bishop of Winchester, England, and also served
Speaker 2: as counselor to Kings Egbert and Athel Wolf of Wessex.
Speaker 2: This is the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the
Speaker 2: south of Great Britain. All that definitely true. No layers
Speaker 2: of legend, you know, these are just some of the basics.
Speaker 2: This is some of the basic information that we have
Speaker 2: about him, and when it comes down to it, it's
Speaker 2: like just the basics that we really have after his death,
Speaker 2: or perhaps more accurately, after the popularity of an account
Speaker 2: following his death. He was popularly venerated as a saint,
Speaker 2: but again was never officially canonized as a saint by
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. And this will make you know, and
Speaker 2: it all makes sense as we get into how he
Speaker 2: becomes a saint and so forth. But as far as
Speaker 2: other details about the real life of the historic Swiin, yeah,
Speaker 2: we actually have very little to go on. There are
Speaker 2: a few mentions of him from contemporary sources, and the
Speaker 2: problem with saints in general, is that their lives are
Speaker 2: often constructed long after their deaths by much later writers.
Speaker 2: So I was turned to a couple of main sources here.
Speaker 2: There's a two thousand and three book, The Cult of
Speaker 2: Saint Swithin by Michael Lappage, and that's certainly a great
Speaker 2: book to look to if you want to deeper dive
Speaker 2: into the questions and mysteries and legends surrounding this individual.
Speaker 2: I also referred to Winchester Cathedral historian Tom Watson's shorter
Speaker 2: work an article by the same name, The Cult of
Speaker 2: Saint Swiftin from two thousand and eight, and that one
Speaker 2: also cites Lappage's work, going it out as as a
Speaker 2: major work of modern scholarship about swiven All.
Speaker 3: Right, so we know that the real Swithen died around
Speaker 3: the middle of the ninth century. You said the year
Speaker 3: eight sixty two CE. So when do the writings about
Speaker 3: him first start to appear? When does his reputation begin
Speaker 3: to boom?
Speaker 2: The cult of Swiften doesn't really begin in earnest until
Speaker 2: around nine thirty seven, So yeah, many decades after his death.
Speaker 2: The first known writings of his miracles came out three
Speaker 2: years after that, another history emerges twenty years after that
Speaker 2: with new attributed miracles, and another comes out two hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty years after his death.
Speaker 3: So one of these cases where more detail is added
Speaker 3: the longer time goes on. That's always the suspicious pattern.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but of course it makes sense when again
Speaker 2: we're talking about legends and stories. We're not talking about
Speaker 2: things that objectively actually happened. Yeah, we're talking about myth making.
Speaker 2: And I mean that's part of of what's that's the
Speaker 2: huge part of what's going on here. And as Watson explains,
Speaker 2: and in this he was citing the work of Susan
Speaker 2: Richard English Saint Coults, they didn't simply develop, they were developed.
Speaker 2: It was a matter of branding and then eventually rebranding
Speaker 2: and of advertising. Quote the most successful, that is, most
Speaker 2: popular cults had shrines visited by many pilgrims. The popularity
Speaker 2: of shrines also rose and fell. They were actively promoted
Speaker 2: and across the entire medieval period, relaunched in response to competition.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So the accretion of stories around a popular
Speaker 3: saint wouldn't necessarily be driven just by organic folklore and
Speaker 3: word of mouth and people adding on, you know, things
Speaker 3: happening out amongst the people, that there could be a
Speaker 3: kind of top down effort by people whose livelihoods or
Speaker 3: whose missions were associated with this saint to beef up
Speaker 3: the what was known about them and to make them
Speaker 3: appear and come off a certain way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I like this comparison to you know, any kind
Speaker 2: of like branding and rebranding effort you have today. You
Speaker 2: think of like any long lasting fast food chain, A
Speaker 2: lot of things are going to be the same, maybe
Speaker 2: like the central mascot and the logo, but things may shift,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna shift in response to what the public
Speaker 2: wants or things they want, or in response to what
Speaker 2: more powerful entities decide that the people should want and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Man, you ever get nostalgic for the architecture of taco
Speaker 3: bells and pizza huts from the nineties and now they
Speaker 3: just all look like banks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the little things like that, or ancient McDonald's
Speaker 2: playgrounds times when they had the full pantheon before it
Speaker 2: went monotheistic. Seeah, I think there are a lot of
Speaker 2: comparisons to be made here between these cults and enterprises
Speaker 2: like that. So as these various authors point out the
Speaker 2: formation of the Cult of Saint Swith itself came about
Speaker 2: in nine thirty seven, evidently due to the pressure of
Speaker 2: reform movements active in the church at the time, and
Speaker 2: perhaps even more to the point, due to the efforts
Speaker 2: of a youthful new king, King Edgar, who is attempting
Speaker 2: to assert his power over the nation and making use
Speaker 2: of the church as part of his strategy. So the
Speaker 2: reform movement here was aimed at making English churches more
Speaker 2: religiously rigorous and also more monastic, and entailed on Edgar's
Speaker 2: part the forced removal of secular clerics. Secular clerics would
Speaker 2: be clerics that they were not monks, they could even marry,
Speaker 2: and so he's having them forcibly removed and replacing them
Speaker 2: with monks. And Swiften just happened to be the right
Speaker 2: local name to take up in this campaign for power,
Speaker 2: even though it's ironic that the actual Swiften was a
Speaker 2: secular cleric and was not a monk.
Speaker 3: Wait does that mean Swiffen was married or do we
Speaker 3: not know?
Speaker 2: I don't As far as I could tell, he wasn't married,
Speaker 2: or if he was married, we don't know anything of it.
Speaker 2: But Yeah, he was not himself a monk, and you know,
Speaker 2: there were these stories that said he was. You know,
Speaker 2: there's just because we have all these legends, it's very
Speaker 2: possible that he was a very pious and humble man.
Speaker 2: We just don't know. We just have all these layers
Speaker 2: of legends built upon it, and very little is known
Speaker 2: about the historic Swian. But we can put together that
Speaker 2: he was close to the ruling Anglo Saxon royal family.
Speaker 2: He tutored the future King ethel Wolf, and this very
Speaker 2: king promoted him to the Bishop of Winchester in eight
Speaker 2: fifty two. We also know from you know, scant mentions
Speaker 2: that he seemed to have been involved in the repair
Speaker 2: of several churches, and if we were to believe a
Speaker 2: tenth century poem, he also had a bridge built. These
Speaker 2: are pretty far from miracles, but these are the actual
Speaker 2: things that he probably had a hand in.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of medieval sources we've been looking
Speaker 3: at recently really emphasized the church building or church repair
Speaker 3: career of people. What this just came up in our
Speaker 3: Cats episode. Yeah, we were talking about the mystical Cats
Speaker 3: of Great Britain, where what like the guy who was
Speaker 3: doing unspeakable cat crimes in order to get a message
Speaker 3: from the other world about you know what, what have
Speaker 3: I got to do to make things right? And the
Speaker 3: King of cats comes and tells him you got to
Speaker 3: build seven churches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, what a kind of public works are you
Speaker 2: gonna build? I mean, basically, comes, you're gonna build a church,
Speaker 2: You're gonna build a bridge, what else? You're not gonna
Speaker 2: build a water treatment plant? So y might as well
Speaker 2: build that church.
Speaker 3: Okay, But so a known as a supporter of church
Speaker 3: and and possibly also some secular infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but basically, you know, he this is a man
Speaker 2: who had a career and we only know just a
Speaker 2: few bullet points about his career, and as far as
Speaker 2: we can tell, he was he was not considered saintly
Speaker 2: during his own lifespan. You know, people I guess liked him,
Speaker 2: and you know, being reasonable, there are probably some people
Speaker 2: who didn't like him because he was a human being
Speaker 2: in a position of some power. But and he also
Speaker 2: wasn't considered saintly in the hundred years that fought or
Speaker 2: so were roughly one hundred years that followed his death.
Speaker 2: All of it was built up on after that.
Speaker 3: Point Okay, so where's the first jumping off point. When
Speaker 3: do we start getting stories?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, they basically with the creation of the cult,
Speaker 2: but certainly by the time we see the tenth century
Speaker 2: work life of Saint Swithin. According to Lappage, this is
Speaker 2: just like pure fiction, just he says, the creation of
Speaker 2: a scholar who had few historical resources at his disposal.
Speaker 2: He stresses that there's there's a lot of conjecture. There's
Speaker 2: you know, there are things you can point to in
Speaker 2: these legends and say, well, okay, something in that could
Speaker 2: have been true maybe, But one of the things that
Speaker 2: factors into like a key story that we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about concerning Swift and concerns his humble burial requests,
Speaker 2: and according according to Lapage, like this is just complete
Speaker 2: legend making here. So basically the idea and we'll tell
Speaker 2: the story a little more detail here shortly, but the
Speaker 2: idea is that when he died, he's like, don't bury
Speaker 2: me in a fancy tomb, bury me like out here
Speaker 2: in the dirt, out in front of the church. I
Speaker 2: want to be where people can walk over my grave.
Speaker 3: Some of them phrase it in a more aggressive way,
Speaker 3: and he's like, bury me in a nasty place, bury
Speaker 3: me in a violent, gross, gross place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the Lappage says that now he would have
Speaker 2: been buried in a sarcophagus within a prominent tomb outside
Speaker 2: of the old Minster Church, and then later he's moved
Speaker 2: inside the church. And this has everything to do with
Speaker 2: the creation of the of the saint, the cults of
Speaker 2: the Saint around him, and then the church was eventually
Speaker 2: expanded to encompass the grounds he was ariginally buried on.
Speaker 2: And I think there's something kind of poetic to that.
Speaker 2: You know, here's an historic individual sort of consumed by
Speaker 2: the church or the workings of the church in the
Speaker 2: hands of kingly authority, and the original historic individual becomes
Speaker 2: kind of redundant via the waves of all of this
Speaker 2: legend making interesting.
Speaker 3: All right. So that is what we know about swithin,
Speaker 3: the historic ninth century cleric of the Catholic Church. But
Speaker 3: what do we know about the character, the character that
Speaker 3: blooms from the grave of this figure.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of it I think is summed up
Speaker 2: in that in this legend, this story that he says,
Speaker 2: you know, bury me, bury me in the dirt, don't
Speaker 2: bury me in the tomb. Give me a common nasty grave,
Speaker 2: if you will, so that the rain's going to fall
Speaker 2: in my grave. Common people can visit my grave, walk
Speaker 2: over it, and so forth. And the idea that the
Speaker 2: idea here is that they initially honor it, but then
Speaker 2: they reverse the decision a century later, and his remains
Speaker 2: are moved into the new church building, and then forty
Speaker 2: days of rain follow Ah.
Speaker 3: Okay, so here's where we start getting the tie into
Speaker 3: the rain. Now. I was trying to find more information
Speaker 3: about the legends of Saint Swithin's life and his connection
Speaker 3: to the weather proverb that I mentioned earlier, and I
Speaker 3: came across an article from the journal Weather from the
Speaker 3: year nineteen forty seven by an author Anthony Klein. It's
Speaker 3: called Saint Swithin's forty Days. Again, that's in the journal Weather.
Speaker 3: So Klein the author here talks about how weatherlower tends
Speaker 3: to come and go over time, but he says that
Speaker 3: the predictive proverb associated with Swithin's day has really stuck around.
Speaker 3: It has a tenacity, and he said, at the time
Speaker 3: of his writing many still believe it. This would have
Speaker 3: been in the nineteen forties. He says of course, meteorologists
Speaker 3: have suppered tools to work with now in predicting the weather,
Speaker 3: and yet quote still many harbor some minute and shadowy faith. However,
Speaker 3: despite the popularity and tenacity of the proverb, one thing
Speaker 3: that seems quite clear is that orst this is one
Speaker 3: of these things like you can't rule out conclusively, but
Speaker 3: it really does not seem to go back to Saint
Speaker 3: Swithin himself. In fact, at the time of Klein's writing,
Speaker 3: the earliest evidence he knew of knew of for the
Speaker 3: prediction that forty days of rain would follow if it
Speaker 3: rained on Saint Swithin's day was dated to Ben Johnson
Speaker 3: around the year sixteen hundred, more than seven hundred years
Speaker 3: after Saint Swithin's death. He quotes a version, so I'll
Speaker 3: read from Kline here quote. At the end of the century,
Speaker 3: Poor Robin's Almanac included in its dog roll for July
Speaker 3: these lines in this month is Saint Swithin's day, on
Speaker 3: which if that it rained, they a full forty days
Speaker 3: after it will or more or less some rain distill.
Speaker 3: Which is interesting because that's it's a similar rhyme pattern,
Speaker 3: and it's like four lines and it has the same
Speaker 3: meaning as the rhyme I read earlier, but is totally
Speaker 3: different words.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a little more awkward. Yeah, it's construction, at
Speaker 2: least by our standards.
Speaker 3: I agree the earlier one scanned a little better. After this,
Speaker 3: Klein talks about some other legends of Saint Swithin. So
Speaker 3: I did want to go go abroad a little bit
Speaker 3: and look at a few other legends about his life.
Speaker 3: There's one good one where there's an old lady carrying
Speaker 3: a basket of eggs and then a klutzy guy passes
Speaker 3: by her. I think maybe this is happening on a
Speaker 3: bridge or something. But a klutzy guy walks by the
Speaker 3: lady with her eggs and he breaks all the eggs,
Speaker 3: and the old lady is distraught. She cries out for
Speaker 3: her eggs, and then Saint Swyin comes along. He sees
Speaker 3: the situation, he gives a quick blessing and her eggs
Speaker 3: are repaired. Wow. Okay, so that's a miracle. But then
Speaker 3: I'm thinking, how are you actually supposed to picture that?
Speaker 3: Picture it happening? The eggs break and the goop comes out?
Speaker 3: Does the group go back inside the eggs? Are you
Speaker 3: supposed to picture the goop slithering inside like one half
Speaker 3: of the shell, and then the eggs like close back
Speaker 3: over it.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Oh ye, yeah, you're I think you're picturing it
Speaker 2: like he's reversing the footage. Yeah, and I guess I'm
Speaker 2: trying to imagine it more like a sleight of hand trick,
Speaker 2: like he passes his palm over the cracked eggs, and
Speaker 2: then in his palm's wake he leaves behind uncracked.
Speaker 3: Eggs, missing footage. Yeah, okay, reversing the footage versus just
Speaker 3: a hard cut.
Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, according to Lappage, this one story, apparently,
Speaker 2: this one swift and miracle may have been reported off
Speaker 2: him during his lifetime, but it still wasn't written down
Speaker 2: until one hundred and twenty years after his death. So
Speaker 2: he contends that it's it's very dubious, but he at
Speaker 2: least he does acknowledge that it's possible this story was
Speaker 2: told about him during his lifetime.
Speaker 3: It's one of the stories I see mentioned in multiple
Speaker 3: sources about Swinton, so it seems to be a popular
Speaker 3: one that he repaired broken eggs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it also seems humble enough, you know,
Speaker 2: for an individual who wasn't necessarily on the track for
Speaker 2: local sainthood just because he may have helped an old
Speaker 2: lady with some broken eggs, you know, and we can
Speaker 2: easily imagine what the real world version of that could
Speaker 2: have been like, maybe he saw somebody with a broken
Speaker 2: egg and he's like, hey, I've got some extra eggs,
Speaker 2: have some, you know, and this act kindness gets, you know,
Speaker 2: magically translated into miracle.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if it could have anything to do
Speaker 3: with him as the repairer of broken churches, Yeah, because he,
Speaker 3: you know, did the restorations and repairs there anyway. So
Speaker 3: a one source that a lot of writers on this
Speaker 3: topic end up going back to is a nineteenth century
Speaker 3: Oxford professor of Anglo Saxon named John Earl, who wrote
Speaker 3: an essay in the eighteen sixties called on the Life
Speaker 3: and Times of Swithin which you can find collected in
Speaker 3: a book called Gloucester Fragments. That's where I was reading it.
Speaker 3: So Earl talks about how in the tenth and eleventh
Speaker 3: century biographies of swithin quote, the historical part was very
Speaker 3: very meager, being little more than a frame to support
Speaker 3: the medallions of popular tradition and Earl claims that during
Speaker 3: this period of history, a lot of the stories that
Speaker 3: were told about Christian saints actually have analogues in stories
Speaker 3: about pre Christian gods and heroes, So he argues that
Speaker 3: it's possible in some cases the deeds attributed to saints
Speaker 3: and Christian figures like Swithin are actually pieces of older
Speaker 3: pagan folklore being transferred onto an acceptable Catholic host.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's interesting. This reminds me. It's it's kind of
Speaker 2: like the the darker version of perhaps the same thing,
Speaker 2: but with with urban legends. Sometimes you encounter this where
Speaker 2: you'll have like urban legends, like generally scandalous things that
Speaker 2: are said about celebrities of old, and then they'll eventually
Speaker 2: get passed on to new celebrities, often with the new
Speaker 2: tale tellers maybe not even being not even realizing that
Speaker 2: these same stories were told about previous rock stars or
Speaker 2: actors or what have you. But you need a place
Speaker 2: to hang them, thank you, to use this analogy of
Speaker 2: the medallions hanging on the framework.
Speaker 3: Have we been hearing about how Bruno Mars bit the
Speaker 3: head off a bat?
Speaker 2: Not yet, but that's exactly the sort of thing you
Speaker 2: can you can imagine.
Speaker 3: I guess, but that one really happened though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, or some version of it, right yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, not about Bruno Mars, I mean I actually did.
Speaker 3: Sorry anyway, But from here, Earl goes on to tell
Speaker 3: a pretty weird story from one of these Swithin legends
Speaker 3: that I just want to to recount here, so he says,
Speaker 3: quote among the stories narrated of Swyden is the following.
Speaker 3: A certain nobleman was walking by the side of a
Speaker 3: river at noontide, and he became suddenly aware of three
Speaker 3: female figures of more than human stature, which rapidly and
Speaker 3: furiously bore down upon him. He could not escape. They
Speaker 3: seized him and maltreated him and left him as dead.
Speaker 3: He was brought to Swyen and presently restored. In this
Speaker 3: narrative we may confidently recognize the three fates of Scandinavian mythology,
Speaker 3: the past, the present and the future. They make their
Speaker 3: appearance again in the form of the three witches who
Speaker 3: meet Macbeth and Banquo on the heath, the weird sisters
Speaker 3: hand in hand posters of the sea and land. And
Speaker 3: then he also goes on to say a well known
Speaker 3: chromlic on the verge of Dartmoor near Drustenden has three
Speaker 3: tall uprights. The name of the cromlic among the people
Speaker 3: of the country is the Spinster's Rock. Still the same
Speaker 3: three weird or fatal sisters. And here I looked up
Speaker 3: this monument by the way, Spinster's Rock near Dartmoor, which
Speaker 3: is in southwest England. It's a neolithic chambered tomb or
Speaker 3: the modern remains of which what's left of it are
Speaker 3: actually a reconstruction now of three upright stones balancing a
Speaker 3: large capstone between them. What we're looking at in this
Speaker 3: picture of is a modern reconstruction after this thing collapsed,
Speaker 3: I believe during a storm in the eighteen sixties a storm. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I've got an illustration of the original monument from
Speaker 3: eighteen forty eight for you to look at here, and
Speaker 3: it does look a little bit haunting. So yeah, three
Speaker 3: upright stones and a big multi ton capstone balance between them.
Speaker 3: Obviously has some wonderful associations with this kind of legend
Speaker 3: of like three you know, three dangerous witches or weird sisters,
Speaker 3: or figures of you know, female monstrous figures of some kind.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure what modern folklore scholars would make of
Speaker 3: these connections that Earle is drawing. I think now there
Speaker 3: is a tendency to look back on some of the
Speaker 3: folklore scholarship of the nineteenth and early twentieth century with
Speaker 3: a little more critical of a lens. Like a lot
Speaker 3: of the soldier scholarship was probably a little too enthusiastic
Speaker 3: in finding parallels between different stories and practices and then
Speaker 3: asserting with too little evidence that it was actually that,
Speaker 3: actually one of these is the direct ancestor of the other.
Speaker 3: I mean, in some cases, of course it is, but
Speaker 3: in other cases we don't know. Though in this case
Speaker 3: it seems interesting and Rob, I think you even did
Speaker 3: you come across another version of a story like this
Speaker 3: about Swiften or the same story?
Speaker 2: I think it is the same story. So Lappage includes
Speaker 2: a section here where I think he's including the actual
Speaker 2: text from it. So this would have been from Lanford
Speaker 2: of Fleury, who wrote a tenth or eleventh century work,
Speaker 2: The Life of Saint Swiften, which again is this is
Speaker 2: very much in the tradition of legendary Saint Swiftin this
Speaker 2: is not historic at all. But yeah, this this bit
Speaker 2: where he tells the tale of a local man of
Speaker 2: Winchester who happens to be traveling along, takes a nap,
Speaker 2: and when he wakes up he sees two grotesque female creatures.
Speaker 2: These are two of the witches, two of the weird sisters. Quote,
Speaker 2: not decked out in any finery, nor covered up with
Speaker 2: any clothing, but rather naked to their foul skin and
Speaker 2: terrifying with their swarthy hair, blackened with faces like tosephany,
Speaker 2: and armed with hellish wickedness and poison. And here in
Speaker 2: name referring to one of the names of the furies,
Speaker 2: and this is referred to once more in the text
Speaker 2: as well, saying like these are like two of the
Speaker 2: three furies. But Lappage notes that when we get into
Speaker 2: some of the terms used, yeah, these may be hags
Speaker 2: or witches. There's this word hag, hag sessen, and this
Speaker 2: is sometimes Lappage notes associated with the word valkyrie. So
Speaker 2: in a way you could think of these certainly as
Speaker 2: hags or witches, but also you could probably think of
Speaker 2: them as valkyries to a certain extent, or at least
Speaker 2: the stories that these are based on, like the original
Speaker 2: spirit of this medallion that's now hung on the frame
Speaker 2: of Saint Swithin you know, may go back to stories
Speaker 2: of the valkyries in Scandinavian traditions.
Speaker 3: Okay, so in this case, the kind of connection that
Speaker 3: Earl is making to earlier pre Christian stories Lappage seems
Speaker 3: to be at least partially endorsing. More modern scholar is
Speaker 3: also saying that there seems to be some real connective
Speaker 3: tissue here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And the full story boy goes on along ways.
Speaker 2: But basically, these two witches try to speak to this
Speaker 2: man of Winchester, and he is frightened and he runs
Speaker 2: away from them, and they chase after him, and they
Speaker 2: taunt him about how he's doomed and he's gonna die
Speaker 2: when they catch him, and so he prays to God
Speaker 2: for protection. Meanwhile, the third sister, who is dressed all
Speaker 2: in white, she calls out to the other two and
Speaker 2: she's like, stop chasing him. Loop around over here with me.
Speaker 2: I'm going to ambush him. I'm going to get him
Speaker 2: real good. And then thanks to God's interference, he attack
Speaker 2: is like partially blocked and it only wounds like the
Speaker 2: man on one side of his body, but he's pretty wounded,
Speaker 2: so he has to be taken to the nearest church
Speaker 2: where he is healed by none other than Bishop Swithen.
Speaker 3: S with unto the rescue. He just treats him like
Speaker 3: a big egg. Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the way, on the subject of hags and witches
Speaker 2: in Saint Swithin, Sir Walter Scott in his eighteen fourteen
Speaker 2: novel Waverley, has this fragment of a ballad that is
Speaker 2: included that Scott put together for use in the fiction
Speaker 2: here called Saint Swithin's Chair. And you can look this up.
Speaker 2: It's on your main poetry websites. But I just want
Speaker 2: to read just a bit from it where he's taking
Speaker 2: this connection between Swithin and hags and like taking it
Speaker 2: in a darker direction. And he says he that dares
Speaker 2: sit on Saint Swithum's chair when the night hag wings
Speaker 2: the troubled air questions three. When he speaks the spell,
Speaker 2: he may ask and she must tell. So in this,
Speaker 2: you know, Scott would seem to be like taking these
Speaker 2: ideas about about Swithen and like taking them to the
Speaker 2: next darker step, not just one that not one that
Speaker 2: controls or has influence over the weather, or even one
Speaker 2: that can can can heal the damage rot by hags,
Speaker 2: but perhaps one that can control the creatures of the
Speaker 2: night as well.
Speaker 3: Wow. You know, to continue with with Earl's theme of
Speaker 3: decorating the lives of Christian saints with material from other sources,
Speaker 3: hanging the medallions on the frame, so to speak. Uh,
Speaker 3: he mentions stories based on wonders of nature, and I
Speaker 3: just wanted to throw this out there quick, because this
Speaker 3: relates to something we just discussed in our Cats of
Speaker 3: Cyprus episode. So he says, quote, any phenomenon, whether constant
Speaker 3: or casual, that had arrested popular attention was fit matter
Speaker 3: for these amusing and edifying narratives. The ammonites of Whitby
Speaker 3: became coiled serpents of that Saint Hilda had charmed. Another
Speaker 3: geological curiosity became the beads of Saint Cuthbert, and to
Speaker 3: Saint Patrick was attributed the absence of venomous serpents in Ireland.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that first example, we were just talking about
Speaker 3: the ammonites, the shells of these now extinct cephalopods, these
Speaker 3: sea creatures that died out in the KPg extinction. You know,
Speaker 3: we find these fossils everywhere, certainly in England. But yeah,
Speaker 3: these are actually now the coiled serpents of Saint Hilda.
Speaker 3: I think we were talking about them as coiled serpents
Speaker 3: of something else.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it was Hilda.
Speaker 3: Oh it was Hilda. Okay, okay, but you people were
Speaker 3: like trying to help out the connection by carving snake
Speaker 3: faces into them. They're a little too cute.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can look up images of these. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, But coming back to Klein's discussion of the weather
Speaker 3: related stories, so those are some other stories. You know,
Speaker 3: he fixes broken eggs, he heals people who have been
Speaker 3: attacked by witches or weird sisters or valkyries or whatever.
Speaker 3: But another story from the legend of Saint Swithin which
Speaker 3: actually connects thematically to the weather. So this is what
Speaker 3: you were alluding to earlier.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 3: The story goes that Saint Swiin was so humble and
Speaker 3: so pious that he asked that at the time of
Speaker 3: his death his body be buried outside the church. And
Speaker 3: I assume this is referring to Winchester Cathedral, or at
Speaker 3: least the version of that cathedral that existed at the time.
Speaker 3: The Winchester Cathedral that exists today was built centuries after
Speaker 3: Swidin's death, but so it was the earlier version of
Speaker 3: that church. He wanted to be outside so that as
Speaker 3: we were talking about, rain would fall upon his grave,
Speaker 3: and so that the feet of people passing by the
Speaker 3: church would trample on top of it. And the clergy
Speaker 3: initially honored his wishes. They put him where he asked.
Speaker 3: But about one hundred years after his death, some churchmen
Speaker 3: got squeamish and they were like, Saint Swiin was really holy,
Speaker 3: isn't it wrong that people should be walking around on
Speaker 3: top of his grave? So they made preparations to dig
Speaker 3: up his remains and move them on the date of
Speaker 3: July fifteenth, But when the day came, a mighty storm
Speaker 3: broke out, forcing the church to delay their plans. Only
Speaker 3: the storm did not stop. It kept reigning for forty
Speaker 3: days and forty nights straight, and this was interpreted as
Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's revenge from beyond the grave, or at least
Speaker 3: him issuing a stern warning to them do not disobey
Speaker 3: his wishes. So instead they just built a chapel over
Speaker 3: his existing grave, and many miracles were performed there. It
Speaker 3: seems like still a violation of what he was asking for. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but client says this story is not
Speaker 3: the origin of the weather prophecy. And this version of
Speaker 3: the story does not show up until the eighteenth century,
Speaker 3: and it contradicts the claims of his earlier biographies, which
Speaker 3: are again are probably also legendary, but were at least earlier.
Speaker 3: These earlier biographies, you know, they they're the ones that
Speaker 3: talk about the things I was bringing up earlier about
Speaker 3: him being a real work beast when it came to
Speaker 3: infrastructure projects, restoring old churches, building new ones. Apparently he
Speaker 3: you know, he really impressed the King ethel Wolf by
Speaker 3: doing all this work, and ethel Wolf eventually granted the
Speaker 3: church ten percent of its royal lands as a gift.
Speaker 3: According to these stories, and also at Winchesters, it is
Speaker 3: said that he had a stone bridge built over the
Speaker 3: river Itchin, and he was known for being deeply humble
Speaker 3: and even ascetic, Like he traveled through his diocese on foot,
Speaker 3: and he threw banquets where only the poor and the
Speaker 3: outcast were invited, the rich were not allowed in.
Speaker 2: And like that's one of the details where I think
Speaker 2: you can the argument and that could be true, absolutely
Speaker 2: could be true, it doesn't break anything else that we
Speaker 2: understand about the man or the time.
Speaker 3: According to these earlier stories, when he died, he left
Speaker 3: instructions that he was to be buried outside the church
Speaker 3: in Oh, here's the source of what I was saying earlier,
Speaker 3: buried outside the church in quote, a vile and unworthy place.
Speaker 3: And then this earlier biography also tells that in the
Speaker 3: year nine seventy one, more than one hundred years after
Speaker 3: his death on July fifteenth, in fact, his remains were
Speaker 3: actually successfully moved from their original resting place, from the
Speaker 3: vile and unworthy place and taken to a new church.
Speaker 3: And so this contradicts the forty days of rain revenge
Speaker 3: story and really has nothing to do with weather. Now
Speaker 3: Here client actually brings it back to the figure of
Speaker 3: John Earle, the Anglo Saxon professor I was talking about earlier, who,
Speaker 3: he says, quote in the middle of last century, discovered
Speaker 3: and translated a fragmentary chronicle concerning the transference. According to this,
Speaker 3: Bishop Swien appeared in a dream to an aged smith
Speaker 3: at Winchester, bidding him communicate to the monks the saints
Speaker 3: wish that his bones should be brought within the church
Speaker 3: asking for a sign to convince the monks of the
Speaker 3: authenticity of the message. He was told to pull an
Speaker 3: iron ring embedded in Swithin's stone coffin and it would
Speaker 3: come away. So it did, but the smith still hesitated
Speaker 3: until Swyin had appeared to him three times. Then he obeyed.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that part of the confirmation here is dig
Speaker 2: up my grave and then pull on parts of my coffin.
Speaker 2: So at that point you've aready done, like what a
Speaker 2: third of the work anyway, maybe half the work.
Speaker 3: But he had to appear three times like this smith
Speaker 3: took some convincing. But it's also the exact opposite of
Speaker 3: the earlier story. So in this version of the story,
Speaker 3: the transfer of the remains was not contrary to Swithin's wishes.
Speaker 3: It was his direct request. And then you've got additional
Speaker 3: legendary explanations for the transfer. Let's see, there were stories
Speaker 3: of like I think one of them goes basically like
Speaker 3: There were stories that went far and wide of miracles
Speaker 3: worked at the grave of Swithin. The blind came to
Speaker 3: it and recovered their sight. There's a story of a
Speaker 3: humped man losing his hump. So the king at the time,
Speaker 3: King Edgar, heard of these wonder works, and he thus
Speaker 3: ordered that Swiin's remains be moved from his grave into
Speaker 3: a gold shrine covered in jewels. Seems to befitting of
Speaker 3: such a humble man as Swithin, And there was a
Speaker 3: great ceremony in the feast. And in this version of
Speaker 3: the story there's like nothing at all about weather. So
Speaker 3: what's the origin of the connection to whether? As of
Speaker 3: Klein's article, he says the answer is not really known,
Speaker 3: But of course Earl speculates that it may have to
Speaker 3: do with a pre existing tradition, possibly going back to
Speaker 3: three Christian times. Throughout many different local European pagan mythologies
Speaker 3: of weather predicting proverbs that were rooted in some kind
Speaker 3: of local god or hero. There are other local saints
Speaker 3: around the world associated with weather prediction heuristics. For example,
Speaker 3: the legend of Saint Medard's Day June eighth, known in
Speaker 3: France so Madard or Medardas was a Christian bishop who
Speaker 3: lived in the fifth through the sixth century in modern
Speaker 3: day France, and the legend about him goes that one
Speaker 3: day when Madarda's child he was out walking in the
Speaker 3: country with a bunch of other people. They were out
Speaker 3: and it was nice weather. But then a terrible thunderstorm
Speaker 3: broke out, and the people all around him were soaked
Speaker 3: in the rain. But Madard himself was bone dry because
Speaker 3: he was sheltered from above by a giant eagle that
Speaker 3: hovered over his head with wings unfolded for the entire
Speaker 3: of his journey home. So an eagle umbrella.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, one that hovers, yes.
Speaker 3: And so in France there was a weather prediction proverb
Speaker 3: or weather prophecy about Saint Medard's day that is almost
Speaker 3: identical to the Swien proverb. It's basically, if it rains
Speaker 3: on Saint Madard's day, there will be forty more days
Speaker 3: of rain. If it's dry, the next forty days will
Speaker 3: be dry. And then Earl has a footnote where he
Speaker 3: also mentions a couple of other figures like this. Apparently
Speaker 3: there's a weather predicting proverb for a Saint Prote in
Speaker 3: France prot Ais. And then he also says quote, the
Speaker 3: reigning saint in Flanders is a Saint a Godoliev And
Speaker 3: in Germany there are three reigning saints or Saints days.
Speaker 3: One of the days is that of the Seven Sleepers.
Speaker 3: I think we've talked about the Seven Sleepers on the show,
Speaker 3: haven't we.
Speaker 2: I believe so I'm a little foggy off the top
Speaker 2: of my head who they were while they were sleeping,
Speaker 2: But I do believe we've talked about them.
Speaker 3: I think the story is they were early Christian saints
Speaker 3: in the Roman Empire who went into a cave to
Speaker 3: escape persecution by the Romans, and then they fell asleep,
Speaker 3: and then they woke up. I don't know. It's a
Speaker 3: kind of a rip van Winkle thing. They woke up
Speaker 3: many many years later.
Speaker 2: We talked about them in our episode on time travel
Speaker 2: fiction and what are some of the arguments for early
Speaker 2: precursors to science fiction time travel stories. It's, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: a pretty cool episode, So I would recommend folks go
Speaker 2: back and listen to it. Yeah, because it's like the
Speaker 2: idea of time travel, like where not only where does
Speaker 2: it come from, but how far back were we thinking
Speaker 2: about things like it? How far back did we think
Speaker 2: about time in the same way, Because nowadays, with via
Speaker 2: time travel fiction, we think about this sort of thing
Speaker 2: all the time. If I could go back and change this.
Speaker 2: If I could go into the future and see what
Speaker 2: this will look like.
Speaker 3: I have fun memories of that episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now you can actually go back in time
Speaker 2: and listen to it. That's the thing about vodcasts.
Speaker 3: So there's another quick literary connection I wanted to discuss
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting. This one I came across
Speaker 3: in a post by the Royal Meteorological Society of Great Britain.
Speaker 3: The post is called behind the Folklore Saint Swithin's Day?
Speaker 3: Does rain today really mean a ruined summer? This is
Speaker 3: from July fifteenth, twenty nineteen. This post includes a quote
Speaker 3: from a poem called Trivia or the Art of Walking
Speaker 3: the Streets of London, by the British writer John Gay,
Speaker 3: published in seventeen sixteen. I knew nothing of this work beforehand,
Speaker 3: but I looked it up and it had some very
Speaker 3: funny parts. It's a satirical poem giving advice about how
Speaker 3: to walks around the city, including everything from what to where,
Speaker 3: to strategies for avoiding common dangers and obstacles in the streets.
Speaker 3: You know, how not to get a chamber pot port
Speaker 3: on your head or whatever. And here's one couplet from
Speaker 3: it when suffocating mists obscure the morn let thy worst
Speaker 3: wig long used to storms be worn.
Speaker 2: And it rhymes too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just good advice. Yeah, But there is a
Speaker 3: passage that directly addresses the weather predicting proverb of Saint Swithin,
Speaker 3: and also one that is about the Festival of Saint
Speaker 3: Paul as well. So there are multiple weather predicting proverbs.
Speaker 3: So John Gay's poem goes like this, all superstition from
Speaker 3: thy breast, repel let, credulous boys and prattling nurses tell
Speaker 3: how if the Festival of Paul be clear, plenty from
Speaker 3: liberal horn shall strow the ear. When the dark skies
Speaker 3: dissolve in snow or rain, the labor hind shall yoke
Speaker 3: the steer in vain. But if the threatening winds in
Speaker 3: tempest roar, then war shall bathe her wasteful sword and gore.
Speaker 3: And then here's the relevant part with Swithen, This is
Speaker 3: the other half here. How if on Swithin's feast, the
Speaker 3: welkin lowers, I was like, what, I had to look
Speaker 3: that up, so that meaning dark clouds gather. Basically, welkin
Speaker 3: is the sky lowers, I think means like lowers like
Speaker 3: it grows dark, if the sky grows dark, If on
Speaker 3: Swithin's feast, the welkin lowers, and every penthouse streams with
Speaker 3: hasty showers twice twenty days, shall clouds their fleeces drain
Speaker 3: and wash the pavements with incessant rain? Let not such
Speaker 3: vulgar tails debase thy mind nor Paul nor swithen rules
Speaker 3: the clouds and wind, oh sad to end on that
Speaker 3: kind of rhyme that doesn't really work anymore, Mind and
Speaker 3: mind and wind? I wonder did did mind sound like wind?
Speaker 3: Or did wind sound like mind?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's always the question, right, are you
Speaker 2: gonna Are you gonna actually try and make something like
Speaker 2: this rhyme when you pronounce it and potentially sound foolish.
Speaker 3: But so, even in seventeen sixteen, this guy's well aware
Speaker 3: of this proverb as like a common saying, but he's saying,
Speaker 3: pay no attention, it's hogwash. In fact, I couldn't find
Speaker 3: any older sources where people are saying this is a good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is good, it really works. Every source I was
Speaker 3: finding on it was just people hundreds of years ago
Speaker 3: saying this is stupid. It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because all you have to do is observe and
Speaker 2: you don't need It's not one of these things where
Speaker 2: you can just say, well, if you have the benefit
Speaker 2: of long term record keeping, like no, it's like if
Speaker 2: you've just tried it out more than once or even once,
Speaker 2: you'd realize, you know, that didn't work, that actually wasn't
Speaker 2: helpful advice.
Speaker 3: That's right. So here we come to the question does
Speaker 3: it actually predict the weather? The short answer is no.
Speaker 3: It is not a reliable guide and you can easily
Speaker 3: find lots of cases where it's wrong. In fact, if
Speaker 3: you're strict about it, it is always wrong. The Royal
Speaker 3: Meteorological Society post points out quote since records began, not
Speaker 3: a single forty day drought has occurred anywhere in the
Speaker 3: UK during the summer months, and there has not been
Speaker 3: one instance at any time of the year of forty
Speaker 3: consecutive days of rainfall sunshine on Saint Swithin's day in Miami,
Speaker 3: Maywell auger forty days of unbroken sunshine, But in Blackpool
Speaker 3: it most assuredly does not. So the if you're very
Speaker 3: strict about interpreting it, this never ever has happened, and
Speaker 3: never will happen. I mean maybe in a million years,
Speaker 3: but never happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, once they build the dome or something.
Speaker 3: You know. Now, if you're not as strict in interpreting it,
Speaker 3: if you take it more as an indicator of general trends,
Speaker 3: it often does hold true, though you can still find
Speaker 3: lots of years where it does not.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: John Earl investigated this in the eighteen hundreds. In his
Speaker 3: piece on it, he's like looking at almanacs, and he says,
Speaker 3: quote in z Owns Everyday Book for July fifteenth, some
Speaker 3: observations are quoted, tending to prove that though it will
Speaker 3: not bear rigid examination, yet it is not totally unfounded.
Speaker 3: Among other instances, these occur. In eighteen oh seven, it
Speaker 3: proved wrong. A rainy July fifteenth was followed by a
Speaker 3: dry time. In eighteen oh eight, it was wet, and
Speaker 3: the rule came partially true. In eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 3: July fifteenth was dry and followed by dry weather. Of
Speaker 3: the series eighteen oh seven to eighteen nineteen, it was
Speaker 3: generally true enough, but in the wet summer of eighteen sixteen,
Speaker 3: though the adage was literally verified. Yet the heaviest wet
Speaker 3: fell before the fifteenth and Earl has a friend who
Speaker 3: studies meteorology who tells him that, you know, really, the
Speaker 3: only way people can believe this prognostication has predictive value
Speaker 3: is by quote attention being given to the instances wherein
Speaker 3: it fell true and neglect of the cases in which
Speaker 3: the reverse occurred.
Speaker 2: Ah, isn't that always the case?
Speaker 3: Yeah, this would be once again our old friend confirmation bias,
Speaker 3: where you count the hits and you ignore the misses.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think a lot of even outside
Speaker 3: of weather prediction, just a lot of common sayings and
Speaker 3: proverbs are regarded as wisdom in part on the basis
Speaker 3: of confirmation bias. They're not actually true in all cases,
Speaker 3: or sometimes even in most cases, but because we're already
Speaker 3: familiar with a proverb propounding a rule or a pattern,
Speaker 3: we notice events that conform to the rule and associate
Speaker 3: them with the rule, and we tend to ignore events
Speaker 3: that contradict the rule, or at least we don't mentally
Speaker 3: associate them with the saying. So I was just thinking
Speaker 3: of common sayings. One that came to mind for me
Speaker 3: is absence makes the heart grow fonder, seems very true, right,
Speaker 3: seems very true?
Speaker 2: Why people keep saying it?
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, being away from something or someone makes you
Speaker 3: yearn for them thing or that person. But there's also
Speaker 3: a counter saying, out of sight out of mind. This
Speaker 3: also seems true, even though it basically means exactly the opposite.
Speaker 3: And I think the reality is that sometimes absence makes
Speaker 3: the heart grow fonder, and sometimes it doesn't. And in
Speaker 3: the cases where it does, it seems like it proves
Speaker 3: the saying true, and in cases where it doesn't, it
Speaker 3: just doesn't occur to us to count it against the proverb.
Speaker 3: So maybe instead it just counts as confirmation of an
Speaker 3: opposing proverb. Oh, out of sight, out of mind confirmed?
Speaker 3: So like both are true even though they contradict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, it's you're summoning a saying to make sense
Speaker 2: of things that are happening in your life, or maybe
Speaker 2: even serve as kind of a predictive model of what
Speaker 2: might happen, you know, feeding the the the ever turning
Speaker 2: gears of the mind with these things. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: only important to you to whatever extent it backs up
Speaker 2: your existing machinations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think sayings like this are often they're
Speaker 3: not really useful for predictive power, what they're actually used
Speaker 3: for is a mental classification system for events in our lives.
Speaker 3: They're more kind of like a filing system for our
Speaker 3: own mental biography. You know, I can remember this event
Speaker 3: that happened here under the kind of salience tag of
Speaker 3: absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this other event
Speaker 3: I can remember under the salience tag of out of sight,
Speaker 3: out of mind. Yeah. But anyway, back to the weather. So,
Speaker 3: while it's certainly not true all of the time, maybe
Speaker 3: not even most of the time, when taken as a
Speaker 3: predictor of trends on average, I think you could argue
Speaker 3: the swin proverb has a little bit of truth to it.
Speaker 3: And there is interestingly actually a mechanism, a scientific mechanism
Speaker 3: we can point to that would explain why it sometimes
Speaker 3: has a little truth to it, and that is the
Speaker 3: jet stream.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: This is a point made by that post by the
Speaker 3: Royal Meteorological Society. So the post concludes, quote the middle
Speaker 3: of July tends to be around the time that the
Speaker 3: jet stream settles into a relatively consistent pattern. If the
Speaker 3: jet stream lies north of the UK throughout the summer,
Speaker 3: continental high pressure is able to move in bringing warmth
Speaker 3: and sunshine. If it sticks further south, Arctic air and
Speaker 3: Atlantic weather systems are likely to predominate, bringing colder, wetter weather.
Speaker 3: So to explain that a little bit more so, the
Speaker 3: jet stream is this fast moving current of air in
Speaker 3: the upper atmosphere above like nine thousand meters that typically
Speaker 3: flows from west to east. There are four main jet
Speaker 3: streams on Earth. You've got two at the boundary of
Speaker 3: each polar region in the North Pole and the South Pole,
Speaker 3: and then you've got two subtropical jet streams. The specific
Speaker 3: current that has the most influence on European weather is
Speaker 3: the northern polar jet stream. Jet Streams are formed because
Speaker 3: of the temperature difference between two big masses of air,
Speaker 3: in this case, the cold polar air and the warmer
Speaker 3: air of the northern mid latitude. So you've got warmer
Speaker 3: air at lower latitudes colder air at higher latitudes, and
Speaker 3: there's a boundary point where they meet, and this boundary
Speaker 3: point creates strong horizontal pressure gradients in the upper atmosphere.
Speaker 3: In short, big differences in pressure between over here and
Speaker 3: over there. And these big differences in pressure mean there's
Speaker 3: a lot of moving air in the upper atmosphere. The
Speaker 3: moving air at this boundary gets deflected to the right
Speaker 3: in the northern hemisphere because of our old friend, the
Speaker 3: Coriolis effect. Because the Earth is spinning west to east,
Speaker 3: it deflects these movements to the right, which creates this powerful,
Speaker 3: fast moving river of air flowing west to east in
Speaker 3: the upper atmosphere and is going fast at speeds of
Speaker 3: several hundred miles per hour. And this is the northern
Speaker 3: Polar jet stream. It often tends to flow right over
Speaker 3: or right around the British Isles. So the position of
Speaker 3: this jet stream is largely determinative of Europe's weather. If
Speaker 3: the jet stream is flowing in a relatively straight line
Speaker 3: across roughly the same latitude, it can mean somewhat erratic weather, actually,
Speaker 3: because what that means is it will be pulling regular
Speaker 3: storms in from the Atlantic on a repeating basis, and
Speaker 3: then they'll be punctuated by periods of calm in between. However,
Speaker 3: if it's a more squiggly line, think of like a
Speaker 3: meandering river, kind of looping up and down. If it's
Speaker 3: shaped more like that, which it sometimes is, Britain's weather
Speaker 3: will depend more on which side of the squiggly line
Speaker 3: it ends up lassoed into. So if it is trapped
Speaker 3: in part of a bend reaching up from the south,
Speaker 3: this will tend to mean warm, dry weather, kind of
Speaker 3: a more Mediterranean weather system. And if it is part
Speaker 3: of a bend curling down from the north, this will
Speaker 3: usually mean Britain gets cool, rainy weather driven by the
Speaker 3: polar air mass coming in from the sea. And these
Speaker 3: wavy patterns can sometimes park over an area like Britain
Speaker 3: for several weeks at a time, leading to somewhat stable
Speaker 3: patterns which, while not exactly conforming to Swien's forty days prediction,
Speaker 3: they can approximate it. So there is a little bit
Speaker 3: of something going on here based in real weather patterns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can imagine somebody setting out in
Speaker 2: the weeks following July fifteenth. It's raining, they're wearing their
Speaker 2: old wig, and yeah, it's conforming to the legend enough
Speaker 2: that they might summon the legend in their mind as
Speaker 2: they look up at the rainy sky.
Speaker 3: Right, And that could well be because at that time
Speaker 3: Britain is trapped in one of these polar troughs where
Speaker 3: the jet stream loops down under it, so they're getting
Speaker 3: a lot of northern air coming in, bringing in the
Speaker 3: you know, cool wet stuff off the sea.
Speaker 2: And you know, it's one of those things where I
Speaker 2: mean not to analyze it too deeply, because I think
Speaker 2: in many cases we're probably dealing with a very casual
Speaker 2: association with a legend like that. But still little things
Speaker 2: like that can make it seem like there's something or
Speaker 2: somebody in control, like there is some level of control
Speaker 2: in a life and in a world that that seems
Speaker 2: chaotic at times and can be quite scary in its
Speaker 2: unpredictable nature. But if you can sort of even just
Speaker 2: casually think, oh, it's just like that legend, then then
Speaker 2: it feels like there's some there's some bumpers on the lane,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally. So this RMS post they end with
Speaker 3: a revised version of the Swithin poem that's even clunkier.
Speaker 3: Not even trying really to scan at this point, but
Speaker 3: this is what they come up with. They say, Saint
Speaker 3: Swithin's day, if thou dost rain for forty days relatively unsettled,
Speaker 3: there's a fair chance it will remain. That sounds almost
Speaker 3: kind of Yoda issue. And then Saint Swithin's Day, if
Speaker 3: that'll be fair for forty days, a northerly jetstream might
Speaker 3: result in some fairly decent spells, but then again it
Speaker 3: might not.
Speaker 2: You know who could have made this work Rocky ericson
Speaker 2: Oh my God.
Speaker 3: Yes, he could cram so many words into a line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, yeah, you think of the lyrics to
Speaker 2: if you have ghosts that. Yeah, this could totally work
Speaker 2: within the context of.
Speaker 3: That objects move without wind blowing from the newspaper to
Speaker 3: the door.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, well that's all I've got on Swithin, Saint Swithin's
Speaker 3: Day and the weather.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, to bring it back to Rocky Erickson,
Speaker 2: if definitely check out his music if you were at
Speaker 2: all interested in anything we've said about him. The thing
Speaker 2: is you've probably heard his music before and you just
Speaker 2: hadn't realized it. I was watching The Weindnsday Show about
Speaker 2: Wednsday Adams on Netflix with the family recently, and in
Speaker 2: season two there's an episode where they drop Rocky Erics
Speaker 2: Since I walked with the Zombie's that's it's a pretty
Speaker 2: well known track of his. Even if you're not aware
Speaker 2: of Rocky ericson like that, one's been used in a
Speaker 2: number of things, and like a number of his songs,
Speaker 2: he's kind of a I think he's one of those
Speaker 2: artists that is often kind of a musician's musician, you know.
Speaker 2: So his his songs have been covered a lot by
Speaker 2: folks that were inspired by his music.
Speaker 3: I say his best known song is probably the one
Speaker 3: he did with the thirteenth thirteenth Floor Elevators. So the
Speaker 3: first track off their first album called You're going to
Speaker 3: Miss Me. A lot of people have heard that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a that's a really good one, and
Speaker 2: I think it was that the Tit also the title
Speaker 2: of the documentary about him.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, solid track, but not as I mean, not as
Speaker 2: rockin and not and certainly not horror team like the
Speaker 2: later many of the later songs were.
Speaker 3: I'm tempted to talk about May ninth, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: when I looked up and nothing significant happened that day.
Speaker 2: We're going to go and close it out here, but
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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