Bad news, everyone!

Any festival fan familiar with the folklore around St Swithun will be feeling an ominous sense of gloom today.

Today – 15 July – is St. Swithun’s Day when tradition says that whatever the weather is like on St. Swithun’s Day, it will continue so for the next forty days. The Elizabethans even been helpfully put it into rhyme:

‘St. Swithin’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St. Swithin’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair.’

St. Swithun was a Saxon Bishop of Winchester, renowned for charitable gifts and building churches. According to legend, his dying wish was that he could be buried outdoors, where he could be rained on. And when he died, that’s what happened – for nine years. But then, the monks of Winchester attempted to remove his remains to a  shrine inside the cathedral on 15 July 971. According to legend there was a heavy rain storm either during the ceremony or on its anniversary.

This led to the tale  that if it rains on St Swithin’s Day, it will rain for the next 40 days in succession, and a fine 15th July will be followed by 40 days of fine weather.

Well, I’m in Winchester right now, looking at the cathedral through a mist of heavy rain squalls and stormy blasts. We’re clearly buggered for the rest of the festival season then…