Saint Swithin's Revenge

could just simply push on and do it. Assuming that most of you are going to forgive us for being several weeks late to the punch on this perhaps obscure Saints Day.

and his holiday even on our radar. The main reason, perhaps the only reason that I personally had any previous consciousness of Saint Swithin and his feast day was from a quite unlikely source, and that is the lyrics of a song by the late great psychedelic rock pioneer Rocky Ericsson, one of my personal favorite musical artists of all time.

The song in which this lyric appears is called the Night of the Vampire, and it actually appears on multiple albums, including The Evil One from nineteen eighty that's one of my favorite rocky albums. Actually just got that on vinyl, and my daughter has become obsessed with it, like she asks for it by name one here, two Headed Dog. She begs us to put it on. Oh man, wonderful.

at least in my head. I you know, after I listen to Rocky, even if I'm sort of in a Rocky way, and I guess you know, there are periods where I'm listening to him constantly and somewhere I listen less, but and the ones when I listen less sometimes something just comes like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere, and my brain is thinking, you know, if it's raining and you're running, don't slip in mud because if you do, you'll slip in blood. That is also from Night of the Vampire.

the darkness with no form, maidens his bite harms. That's a good slant rhyme, by the way, with you know born form harm but on Saint Swithin's day he was born. That's a strange connection to make. I want to come back in a minute to figure out what's going on with that now, if you're wondering, was it normal for this guy to sing rock songs about vampires? Yes, as we've established, he's a Halloween guy. Rocky's career had two

main stages. In the nineteen sixties, he sang and performed with a Texas based garage psych band called the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. I think one of the best psychedelic rock bands of the sixties, really awesome. So he had a period with them where they released a couple of great albums. So one is The Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Their second album is my favorite. It's called Easter Everywhere.

After that, he had a more difficult period where he had some legal issues and where he was he had a period of involuntary commitment at some statemental hospitals in Texas. After his eventual release, instead of going back to psychedelic sounds like he did with the thirteenth floor elevators. He

instead focused on other genres. He did folk, blues, and particularly a kind of hard rock idea that he called horror rock, which was fueled by his longtime obsession with monster movies, especially old monster movies, like many of the things we cover on Weird House Cinema. In fact, we've done some very rocky centric movies on Weird House, like Creature with the Adam Brain has its own rocky ericson song, which is fabulous.

a phrase for that long. But I had never much looked into it until Rob this summer you flagged it on our show calendar saying, Hey, Saint Swithin's Day is a real day. Let's figure out what's going on here? And oh boy, that that was really music to my ears. So we very much got into the spirit of Saint Swithin and especially the question what does Saint Swithin have

to do with vampires? Well, I did some fairly extensive digging on this question, and I've come to the conclusion that there is no connection at all outside this song. I can't find any records of a famous vampire from movies or literature who was born on Saint Swithin's day, nor any pre existing connection between the historical character of Saint Swithin and any vampire lore. Though maybe we can get halfway there by connecting Saint Swithin to some ambiguous

witches or hags or valkyrie. Is some other kind of scary female creature.

and I love rock and roll. That's another one of his songs, So I think that probably is the main connection. That Saint Swithin's day is Rocky's birthday, and so the Night of the Vampire is his night. It's you know, the vampire is me to paraphrase Flaubert. However, to bring

things back to Saint Swithin. While again I can't find any evidence of a vampire character born on Saint Swithin's celebration day, I do think there's an interesting connection in the lyrics of the song, and I already quoted this part. In the first verse of Night of the Vampire, Rocky offers the advice if it's raining and you're running, don't slip in mud, because if you do, you'll slip in blood. Tonight is the Night of the Vampire. So Rocky's head was stuck on the idea of trying to escape a

vampire in a heavy rainstorm. And it turns out one of the most famous things about Swithin is that his Dayly fifteenth, is associated with a seasonal proverb for predicting the weather, specifically for predicting rain patterns in Great Britain. There are many versions of this saying, but here's one I came across. Goes like this, Saint Swithin's day, If thou dost rain for forty days, it will remain Saint Swithin's day. If thou be fair for forty days, twill rain,

nay mayre. So that's sink in you. Basically, whatever you get on Saint Swithin's day, you're going to get that again for forty days.

avoid slipping in mud and therefore slipping in blood. But is there anything to this kind of weather predicting dogg roll other than superstition and the fact that it rhymes? It does rhyme. You gotta admit that, Rob, Yeah, And what was the deal with this Saint Swithin guy? What does he have to do with whether whether it rains or not? These questions are what we'll be exploring for the rest of today's episode.

the historical research. But is it correct that very little is known about the real historical Saint Swin and that much of his biography, maybe almost all of his biography is understood by historians to be legend, probably fabricated long after his death.

have been born around eight hundred CE. He was consecrated by Selnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury, on October thirtieth, eight fifty two, and he died on July Tewod eight sixty two. He served as the Bishop of Winchester, England, and also served as counselor to Kings Egbert and Athel Wolf of Wessex. This is the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the south of Great Britain. All that definitely true. No layers of legend, you know, these are just some of the basics.

This is some of the basic information that we have about him, and when it comes down to it, it's like just the basics that we really have after his death, or perhaps more accurately, after the popularity of an account following his death. He was popularly venerated as a saint, but again was never officially canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. And this will make you know, and it all makes sense as we get into how he

becomes a saint and so forth. But as far as other details about the real life of the historic Swiin, yeah, we actually have very little to go on. There are a few mentions of him from contemporary sources, and the problem with saints in general, is that their lives are often constructed long after their deaths by much later writers. So I was turned to a couple of main sources here.

There's a two thousand and three book, The Cult of Saint Swithin by Michael Lappage, and that's certainly a great book to look to if you want to deeper dive into the questions and mysteries and legends surrounding this individual.

I also referred to Winchester Cathedral historian Tom Watson's shorter work an article by the same name, The Cult of Saint Swiftin from two thousand and eight, and that one also cites Lappage's work, going it out as as a major work of modern scholarship about swiven All.

and of advertising. Quote the most successful, that is, most popular cults had shrines visited by many pilgrims. The popularity of shrines also rose and fell. They were actively promoted and across the entire medieval period, relaunched in response to competition.

like that. So as these various authors point out the formation of the Cult of Saint Swith itself came about in nine thirty seven, evidently due to the pressure of reform movements active in the church at the time, and perhaps even more to the point, due to the efforts of a youthful new king, King Edgar, who is attempting to assert his power over the nation and making use

of the church as part of his strategy. So the reform movement here was aimed at making English churches more religiously rigorous and also more monastic, and entailed on Edgar's part the forced removal of secular clerics. Secular clerics would be clerics that they were not monks, they could even marry, and so he's having them forcibly removed and replacing them

with monks. And Swiften just happened to be the right local name to take up in this campaign for power, even though it's ironic that the actual Swiften was a secular cleric and was not a monk.

about the historic Swian. But we can put together that he was close to the ruling Anglo Saxon royal family. He tutored the future King ethel Wolf, and this very king promoted him to the Bishop of Winchester in eight fifty two. We also know from you know, scant mentions that he seemed to have been involved in the repair of several churches, and if we were to believe a

tenth century poem, he also had a bridge built. These are pretty far from miracles, but these are the actual things that he probably had a hand in.

in a position of some power. But and he also wasn't considered saintly in the hundred years that fought or so were roughly one hundred years that followed his death. All of it was built up on after that.

He stresses that there's there's a lot of conjecture. There's you know, there are things you can point to in these legends and say, well, okay, something in that could have been true maybe, But one of the things that factors into like a key story that we're going to be talking about concerning Swift and concerns his humble burial requests, and according according to Lapage, like this is just complete

legend making here. So basically the idea and we'll tell the story a little more detail here shortly, but the idea is that when he died, he's like, don't bury me in a fancy tomb, bury me like out here in the dirt, out in front of the church. I want to be where people can walk over my grave.

You know, here's an historic individual sort of consumed by the church or the workings of the church in the hands of kingly authority, and the original historic individual becomes kind of redundant via the waves of all of this legend making interesting.

over it, and so forth. And the idea that the idea here is that they initially honor it, but then they reverse the decision a century later, and his remains are moved into the new church building, and then forty days of rain follow Ah.

So Klein the author here talks about how weatherlower tends to come and go over time, but he says that the predictive proverb associated with Swithin's day has really stuck around. It has a tenacity, and he said, at the time of his writing many still believe it. This would have been in the nineteen forties. He says of course, meteorologists have suppered tools to work with now in predicting the weather,

and yet quote still many harbor some minute and shadowy faith. However, despite the popularity and tenacity of the proverb, one thing that seems quite clear is that orst this is one of these things like you can't rule out conclusively, but it really does not seem to go back to Saint

Swithin himself. In fact, at the time of Klein's writing, the earliest evidence he knew of knew of for the prediction that forty days of rain would follow if it rained on Saint Swithin's day was dated to Ben Johnson around the year sixteen hundred, more than seven hundred years after Saint Swithin's death. He quotes a version, so I'll

read from Kline here quote. At the end of the century, Poor Robin's Almanac included in its dog roll for July these lines in this month is Saint Swithin's day, on which if that it rained, they a full forty days after it will or more or less some rain distill. Which is interesting because that's it's a similar rhyme pattern, and it's like four lines and it has the same meaning as the rhyme I read earlier, but is totally different words.

and the old lady is distraught. She cries out for her eggs, and then Saint Swyin comes along. He sees the situation, he gives a quick blessing and her eggs are repaired. Wow. Okay, so that's a miracle. But then I'm thinking, how are you actually supposed to picture that? Picture it happening? The eggs break and the goop comes out? Does the group go back inside the eggs? Are you supposed to picture the goop slithering inside like one half of the shell, and then the eggs like close back over it.

So Earl talks about how in the tenth and eleventh century biographies of swithin quote, the historical part was very very meager, being little more than a frame to support the medallions of popular tradition and Earl claims that during this period of history, a lot of the stories that were told about Christian saints actually have analogues in stories about pre Christian gods and heroes, So he argues that it's possible in some cases the deeds attributed to saints

and Christian figures like Swithin are actually pieces of older pagan folklore being transferred onto an acceptable Catholic host.

actors or what have you. But you need a place to hang them, thank you, to use this analogy of the medallions hanging on the framework.

furiously bore down upon him. He could not escape. They seized him and maltreated him and left him as dead. He was brought to Swyen and presently restored. In this narrative we may confidently recognize the three fates of Scandinavian mythology, the past, the present and the future. They make their appearance again in the form of the three witches who meet Macbeth and Banquo on the heath, the weird sisters

hand in hand posters of the sea and land. And then he also goes on to say a well known chromlic on the verge of Dartmoor near Drustenden has three tall uprights. The name of the cromlic among the people of the country is the Spinster's Rock. Still the same three weird or fatal sisters. And here I looked up this monument by the way, Spinster's Rock near Dartmoor, which

is in southwest England. It's a neolithic chambered tomb or the modern remains of which what's left of it are actually a reconstruction now of three upright stones balancing a large capstone between them. What we're looking at in this picture of is a modern reconstruction after this thing collapsed, I believe during a storm in the eighteen sixties a storm. Yeah, but I've got an illustration of the original monument from eighteen forty eight for you to look at here, and

it does look a little bit haunting. So yeah, three upright stones and a big multi ton capstone balance between them. Obviously has some wonderful associations with this kind of legend of like three you know, three dangerous witches or weird sisters, or figures of you know, female monstrous figures of some kind. I'm not sure what modern folklore scholars would make of

these connections that Earle is drawing. I think now there is a tendency to look back on some of the folklore scholarship of the nineteenth and early twentieth century with a little more critical of a lens. Like a lot of the soldier scholarship was probably a little too enthusiastic in finding parallels between different stories and practices and then asserting with too little evidence that it was actually that, actually one of these is the direct ancestor of the other.

I mean, in some cases, of course it is, but in other cases we don't know. Though in this case it seems interesting and Rob, I think you even did you come across another version of a story like this about Swiften or the same story?

is not historic at all. But yeah, this this bit where he tells the tale of a local man of Winchester who happens to be traveling along, takes a nap, and when he wakes up he sees two grotesque female creatures. These are two of the witches, two of the weird sisters. Quote, not decked out in any finery, nor covered up with any clothing, but rather naked to their foul skin and terrifying with their swarthy hair, blackened with faces like tosephany,

and armed with hellish wickedness and poison. And here in name referring to one of the names of the furies, and this is referred to once more in the text as well, saying like these are like two of the three furies. But Lappage notes that when we get into some of the terms used, yeah, these may be hags or witches. There's this word hag, hag sessen, and this

is sometimes Lappage notes associated with the word valkyrie. So in a way you could think of these certainly as hags or witches, but also you could probably think of them as valkyries to a certain extent, or at least the stories that these are based on, like the original spirit of this medallion that's now hung on the frame of Saint Swithin you know, may go back to stories of the valkyries in Scandinavian traditions.

I'm going to ambush him. I'm going to get him real good. And then thanks to God's interference, he attack is like partially blocked and it only wounds like the man on one side of his body, but he's pretty wounded, so he has to be taken to the nearest church where he is healed by none other than Bishop Swithen.

in a darker direction. And he says he that dares sit on Saint Swithum's chair when the night hag wings the troubled air questions three. When he speaks the spell,

he may ask and she must tell. So in this, you know, Scott would seem to be like taking these ideas about about Swithen and like taking them to the next darker step, not just one that not one that controls or has influence over the weather, or even one that can can can heal the damage rot by hags, but perhaps one that can control the creatures of the night as well.

for these amusing and edifying narratives. The ammonites of Whitby became coiled serpents of that Saint Hilda had charmed. Another geological curiosity became the beads of Saint Cuthbert, and to Saint Patrick was attributed the absence of venomous serpents in Ireland. But yeah, that first example, we were just talking about the ammonites, the shells of these now extinct cephalopods, these sea creatures that died out in the KPg extinction. You know,

we find these fossils everywhere, certainly in England. But yeah, these are actually now the coiled serpents of Saint Hilda. I think we were talking about them as coiled serpents of something else.

that church. He wanted to be outside so that as we were talking about, rain would fall upon his grave, and so that the feet of people passing by the church would trample on top of it. And the clergy initially honored his wishes. They put him where he asked. But about one hundred years after his death, some churchmen got squeamish and they were like, Saint Swiin was really holy, isn't it wrong that people should be walking around on

top of his grave? So they made preparations to dig up his remains and move them on the date of July fifteenth, But when the day came, a mighty storm broke out, forcing the church to delay their plans. Only the storm did not stop. It kept reigning for forty days and forty nights straight, and this was interpreted as Saint Swithin's revenge from beyond the grave, or at least him issuing a stern warning to them do not disobey his wishes. So instead they just built a chapel over

his existing grave, and many miracles were performed there. It seems like still a violation of what he was asking for. Yeah, I don't know, but client says this story is not the origin of the weather prophecy. And this version of the story does not show up until the eighteenth century, and it contradicts the claims of his earlier biographies, which are again are probably also legendary, but were at least earlier.

These earlier biographies, you know, they they're the ones that talk about the things I was bringing up earlier about him being a real work beast when it came to infrastructure projects, restoring old churches, building new ones. Apparently he you know, he really impressed the King ethel Wolf by doing all this work, and ethel Wolf eventually granted the church ten percent of its royal lands as a gift.

According to these stories, and also at Winchesters, it is said that he had a stone bridge built over the river Itchin, and he was known for being deeply humble and even ascetic, Like he traveled through his diocese on foot, and he threw banquets where only the poor and the outcast were invited, the rich were not allowed in.

And then this earlier biography also tells that in the year nine seventy one, more than one hundred years after his death on July fifteenth, in fact, his remains were actually successfully moved from their original resting place, from the vile and unworthy place and taken to a new church. And so this contradicts the forty days of rain revenge

story and really has nothing to do with weather. Now Here client actually brings it back to the figure of John Earle, the Anglo Saxon professor I was talking about earlier, who, he says, quote in the middle of last century, discovered

and translated a fragmentary chronicle concerning the transference. According to this, Bishop Swien appeared in a dream to an aged smith at Winchester, bidding him communicate to the monks the saints wish that his bones should be brought within the church asking for a sign to convince the monks of the authenticity of the message. He was told to pull an iron ring embedded in Swithin's stone coffin and it would come away. So it did, but the smith still hesitated

until Swyin had appeared to him three times. Then he obeyed.

worked at the grave of Swithin. The blind came to it and recovered their sight. There's a story of a humped man losing his hump. So the king at the time, King Edgar, heard of these wonder works, and he thus ordered that Swiin's remains be moved from his grave into a gold shrine covered in jewels. Seems to befitting of such a humble man as Swithin, And there was a great ceremony in the feast. And in this version of the story there's like nothing at all about weather. So

what's the origin of the connection to whether? As of Klein's article, he says the answer is not really known, But of course Earl speculates that it may have to do with a pre existing tradition, possibly going back to three Christian times. Throughout many different local European pagan mythologies of weather predicting proverbs that were rooted in some kind of local god or hero. There are other local saints

around the world associated with weather prediction heuristics. For example, the legend of Saint Medard's Day June eighth, known in France so Madard or Medardas was a Christian bishop who lived in the fifth through the sixth century in modern day France, and the legend about him goes that one day when Madarda's child he was out walking in the country with a bunch of other people. They were out

and it was nice weather. But then a terrible thunderstorm broke out, and the people all around him were soaked in the rain. But Madard himself was bone dry because he was sheltered from above by a giant eagle that hovered over his head with wings unfolded for the entire of his journey home. So an eagle umbrella.

France prot Ais. And then he also says quote, the reigning saint in Flanders is a Saint a Godoliev And in Germany there are three reigning saints or Saints days. One of the days is that of the Seven Sleepers. I think we've talked about the Seven Sleepers on the show, haven't we.

about things like it? How far back did we think about time in the same way, Because nowadays, with via time travel fiction, we think about this sort of thing all the time. If I could go back and change this. If I could go into the future and see what this will look like.

published in seventeen sixteen. I knew nothing of this work beforehand, but I looked it up and it had some very funny parts. It's a satirical poem giving advice about how to walks around the city, including everything from what to where, to strategies for avoiding common dangers and obstacles in the streets. You know, how not to get a chamber pot port on your head or whatever. And here's one couplet from it when suffocating mists obscure the morn let thy worst wig long used to storms be worn.

liberal horn shall strow the ear. When the dark skies dissolve in snow or rain, the labor hind shall yoke the steer in vain. But if the threatening winds in tempest roar, then war shall bathe her wasteful sword and gore. And then here's the relevant part with Swithen, This is the other half here. How if on Swithin's feast, the welkin lowers, I was like, what, I had to look

that up, so that meaning dark clouds gather. Basically, welkin is the sky lowers, I think means like lowers like it grows dark, if the sky grows dark, If on Swithin's feast, the welkin lowers, and every penthouse streams with hasty showers twice twenty days, shall clouds their fleeces drain

and wash the pavements with incessant rain? Let not such vulgar tails debase thy mind nor Paul nor swithen rules the clouds and wind, oh sad to end on that kind of rhyme that doesn't really work anymore, Mind and mind and wind? I wonder did did mind sound like wind? Or did wind sound like mind?

you're strict about it, it is always wrong. The Royal Meteorological Society post points out quote since records began, not a single forty day drought has occurred anywhere in the UK during the summer months, and there has not been one instance at any time of the year of forty consecutive days of rainfall sunshine on Saint Swithin's day in Miami, Maywell auger forty days of unbroken sunshine, But in Blackpool

it most assuredly does not. So the if you're very strict about interpreting it, this never ever has happened, and never will happen. I mean maybe in a million years, but never happens.

the rule came partially true. In eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen. July fifteenth was dry and followed by dry weather. Of the series eighteen oh seven to eighteen nineteen, it was generally true enough, but in the wet summer of eighteen sixteen,

though the adage was literally verified. Yet the heaviest wet fell before the fifteenth and Earl has a friend who studies meteorology who tells him that, you know, really, the only way people can believe this prognostication has predictive value is by quote attention being given to the instances wherein it fell true and neglect of the cases in which the reverse occurred.

of confirmation bias. They're not actually true in all cases, or sometimes even in most cases, but because we're already familiar with a proverb propounding a rule or a pattern, we notice events that conform to the rule and associate them with the rule, and we tend to ignore events that contradict the rule, or at least we don't mentally associate them with the saying. So I was just thinking

of common sayings. One that came to mind for me is absence makes the heart grow fonder, seems very true, right, seems very true?

the heart grow fonder, and sometimes it doesn't. And in the cases where it does, it seems like it proves the saying true, and in cases where it doesn't, it just doesn't occur to us to count it against the proverb. So maybe instead it just counts as confirmation of an opposing proverb. Oh, out of sight, out of mind confirmed? So like both are true even though they contradict.

out of mind. Yeah. But anyway, back to the weather. So, while it's certainly not true all of the time, maybe not even most of the time, when taken as a predictor of trends on average, I think you could argue the swin proverb has a little bit of truth to it. And there is interestingly actually a mechanism, a scientific mechanism we can point to that would explain why it sometimes has a little truth to it, and that is the jet stream.

So to explain that a little bit more so, the jet stream is this fast moving current of air in the upper atmosphere above like nine thousand meters that typically flows from west to east. There are four main jet streams on Earth. You've got two at the boundary of each polar region in the North Pole and the South Pole, and then you've got two subtropical jet streams. The specific current that has the most influence on European weather is

the northern polar jet stream. Jet Streams are formed because of the temperature difference between two big masses of air, in this case, the cold polar air and the warmer air of the northern mid latitude. So you've got warmer air at lower latitudes colder air at higher latitudes, and there's a boundary point where they meet, and this boundary point creates strong horizontal pressure gradients in the upper atmosphere. In short, big differences in pressure between over here and

over there. And these big differences in pressure mean there's a lot of moving air in the upper atmosphere. The moving air at this boundary gets deflected to the right in the northern hemisphere because of our old friend, the Coriolis effect. Because the Earth is spinning west to east, it deflects these movements to the right, which creates this powerful, fast moving river of air flowing west to east in the upper atmosphere and is going fast at speeds of

several hundred miles per hour. And this is the northern Polar jet stream. It often tends to flow right over or right around the British Isles. So the position of this jet stream is largely determinative of Europe's weather. If the jet stream is flowing in a relatively straight line across roughly the same latitude, it can mean somewhat erratic weather, actually, because what that means is it will be pulling regular storms in from the Atlantic on a repeating basis, and

then they'll be punctuated by periods of calm in between. However, if it's a more squiggly line, think of like a meandering river, kind of looping up and down. If it's shaped more like that, which it sometimes is, Britain's weather will depend more on which side of the squiggly line it ends up lassoed into. So if it is trapped in part of a bend reaching up from the south, this will tend to mean warm, dry weather, kind of

a more Mediterranean weather system. And if it is part of a bend curling down from the north, this will usually mean Britain gets cool, rainy weather driven by the polar air mass coming in from the sea. And these wavy patterns can sometimes park over an area like Britain for several weeks at a time, leading to somewhat stable patterns which, while not exactly conforming to Swien's forty days prediction,

they can approximate it. So there is a little bit of something going on here based in real weather patterns.

unpredictable nature. But if you can sort of even just casually think, oh, it's just like that legend, then then it feels like there's some there's some bumpers on the lane, you know.

kind of Yoda issue. And then Saint Swithin's Day, if that'll be fair for forty days, a northerly jetstream might result in some fairly decent spells, but then again it might not.

well known track of his. Even if you're not aware of Rocky ericson like that, one's been used in a number of things, and like a number of his songs, he's kind of a I think he's one of those artists that is often kind of a musician's musician, you know. So his his songs have been covered a lot by folks that were inspired by his music.

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