Happy St. Swithin's Day - Did it rain today?

Nothing remains of St Swithin's shrine which was destroyed during King Henry VIII's Reformation, but there's a memorial to him at Winchester Cathedral.

I want my children to grow up knowing about things like St. Swithin’s day, which is July 15, and on that day you say this 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.

Perhaps in Wales it often happened that St. Swithen’s day was a predictor of weather for the rest of the summer, and it is also reminiscent of our American tradition of Groundhogs day on February 2. But a keen observer of the Roman liturgical calendar will remember that Groundhogs day falls on Candlemas Day (also known as the Presentation of Our Lord), and with that day comes the Scottish Poem:

If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,

Half the winter's to come and mair.

If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,

Half o' winter's gane at Yule.

While it is a little silly to expect that the weather on one day every year predicts the weather for the following days, the sacramental sense that these rhymes embody is one that I would like to recover. St. Swithin was a Saxon saint canonized by popular acclaim when people began to seek his intercession after his death, and has been honored as a saint since the 9^th century. He is not even on the liturgical calendar, but the traditional rhyme remembering his shows a deep Catholic sensibility. And this is a sensibility we can form in ourselves by marking the feast days of the year.