Groan!

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Yesterday was the feast of St. Swithin’s, the day on which, if the prophecy is correct, it will rain for another forty days if it rains today.

Well, in our part of the world it did rain. In shedloads; so we know now what to expect!

St Swithin, or more correctly St. Swithun, was a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester about which little is known. He apparently asked to be buried out of doors (‘Where it might be subject to the feet of passers-by and the raindrops pouring from on high’) and this wish was originally respected though he was later moved to a tomb within Winchester Cathedral which became a place of pilgrimage. Various miracles were ascribed to him, including one in which he is supposed to have restored a basket of eggs that had been maliciously broken. Part of the saint’s body still rests in Winchester Cathedral. Canterbury Cathedral is said to have his head and Peterborough Abbey one of his arms.

The legend about the rain is supposed to derive from the saint’s acute displeasure at having his body moved to a tomb within the Cathedral, though there are other theories that it derives from pagan auguries at the same time or that it is a function of the weather at this time of year.

Either way, the legend that if it rains on this day we will have rain for another forty days is fixed in our folklore -

St. Swithun’s Day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain.
St. Swithun’s Day if thou be fair
For forty days ‘twill rain no more.

And, judging from the cold, blustery winds that beset us yesterday and the amount of rain they brought with them, we are in for another forty days of the same.

It’s what we call an English summer!
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Requiescat In Pace?

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Rest in peace. That is what we are supposed to do when we finally shed this mortal coil. But not necessarily if you are a saint.

Saints are constantly being prayed to for assistance for all sorts of problems and situations. Some of them are sometimes exposed to the public gaze, and some of them even get to be paraded around towns now and again. Yet others, if their bodies remain incorrupt as saints bodies are supposed to, even get to have a medical exam.

Take Saint Rose of Viterbo, the 13th century virgin who at the age of just three raised her aunt from the dead before going on for a short reclusive life of holiness and penance. The saint, who lies in the monastery of Viterbo near Rome and is paraded around the town each year, has recently been X-rayed to discover whether or not she died of tuberculosis as originally thought.

Researchers found, however, that the saint, whose feast day is 4 September, was most likely killed by a blood clot in the heart; Cantrell’s syndrome, causing defects in the heart and surrounding tissues. You’d have thought that this would have been the end of the matter, but researchers say that at some point in the future they might be able to analyse her heart with ‘more modern technologies’.

Requiescat in pace is what I say.
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