Devon / Westcountry weather lore #1

Winter winds at Torquay - February 2007 - MDS [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"THE ancients observed with profound attention the natural phenomena of their time, the study of which helped them to make fairly accurate forecasts of the weather, and taught them to begin farm work and domestic affairs at the most favourable moment. They walked as it were hand in hand with nature, learning to interpret her subtle operations by marvellous intuition.

The flight of birds, the voices and actions of animals, the development of vegetation, all lent their aid to predict atmospheric changes.

Then the following traditions and proverbs were popular, and have been handed down from the earliest times.

If Christmas Day on Monday be,
A great winter that year you'll see.
And full of winds both loud and shrill ;
But in summer, truth to tell,
High winds there shall be, and strong,
Full of tempests lasting long ;
While battles they shall multiply,
And great plenty of beasts shall die.
They that be born that day, I ween,
They shall be strong each one, and keen
He shall be found that stealeth aught
Though thou be sick, thou diest not."

Hewett 1900

Tom, Jane and Jack the Tinker, Part 7

[Part 7] '...The miners satisfied themselves that it was Jane, sure enough, and quietly beat a retreat. Soon was St Ives in a state of excitement, and all Jane's cousins, believing from the accounts given by the miners that Jane was well off, resolved to pay her a visit. These visits worked much confusion in Tom's castle and family. He and his wife quarrel, but the tinkeard is the never-failing friend. All this part of the story is an uninteresting account of fair-weather friends.

Jack the Tinkeard taught Tom how to till his ground in a proper manner. He had hitherto contented himself with gathering wild herbs, -- such as nettles, wild beet, mallows, elecampane, various kinds of lentils, and chick or cat-peas. Jack now planted a garden for his friends,--the first in Cornwall,--and they grew all kinds of good vegetables. The tinkeard also taught Jane to make malt and to brew beer; hitherto they had been content with barley-wort, which was often sour. Jack would take the children and collect bitter herbs to make the beer keep, such as the alehoof (ground ivy), mugwort, bannell (the broom), agrimony, centuary, woodsage, bettony, and pellitory. Jane's beer was now amongst the choicest of drinks, and her St Ives cousins could never have enough of it. Tom delighted in it, and often drank enough to bewilder his senses..." [cont...]

Hunt 1903

Hunt, 1903, miner, Jane, St Ives, Cousin, Tom, castle, Tinker, Jack, Plough, Nettle, Wild Beet, Mallow, Elecampane, Vetch, Chickpeas, Garden, Vegtables, beer,