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out the hesitant ‘may’ of Fuller’s version when he noted it in his journal as ‘A stitch in time saves nine’, which is how we use the phrase today. It is usually employed to chivvy someone into attending to some small but irritating task that they would much rather put off indefinitely.

St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain
    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 nae mare.

    An ancient saying that blends traditional weather lore with legend. St Swithun, now sometimes written as Swithin, was a Bishop of Winchester in Saxon times who was renowned for his philanthropy and for his dedication to building churches. Legend has it that on his deathbed St Swithun asked to be buried outside, rather than in his cathedral so that his body could, as William of Malmesbury recorded in the twelfth century, ‘be subject to the feet of passers-by and to the raindrops pouring from on high’.
    His last wish was granted but nine years after his death the monks of Winchester built him a shrine within the cathedral walls and moved his remains there. The legend states that during the ceremony that marked the removal of his bones, the heavens opened and there was a huge downpour, which gave rise to the piece of folklore that says St Swithun’s mood on the anniversary of his removal from the fresh air determines the weather for the next forty days.
    But it seems likely that the forty days part of the story came from observation of the weather patterns, as there is actually a scientific basis for this outlandish sounding idea. In mid-July the jet stream tends to settle into position for the summer; and if by 15 July it’s on a southerly pathway, bringing rain, it will often stay rainy until the end of August. If it’s on a more northerly course, warmer weather will usually last.
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Time and tide wait for no man
    This ancient phrase is often interpreted to mean that neither time nor the ebb and flow of the sea can be influenced by the actions of man, and in a broad sense, it was intended to convey the idea that mankind is powerless over nature and its unstoppable forces. But the idea that the sea was part of the image came much later as our understanding of Middle English words began to fade. An early record exists in St Marher (1225) which reads: ‘And te tide and te time þat tu iboren were, schal beon iblescet.’
    But in Middle English ‘tide’ meant a period of time, as in Yuletide, noontide or eventide. So in the Middle Ages the phrase meant specifically that no person was powerful enough to halt the passage of time.
    The sentiment that time will keep ticking on no matter what we do appears in ‘The Clerk’s Tale’, one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , in the lines:

    For though we slepe or wake, or rome, or ryde, Ay fleeth thetyme, it nil no man abyde.

    In everyday use, the phrase has become a way of encouraging someone who is taking an unnecessarily long time over something to hurry up. In the US a second line is sometimes added to the phrase to make it more useful to parents, so it ends: ‘. . . and the school bus waits for no boy.’

Ash before oak
    Ash before oak the summer
    is all a soak,
    Oak before ash the summer
    is but a splash.

    In their quest to predict what kind of fortunes they could expect in the year ahead, country folk turned to the trees for signs of how much rain the summer would bring.
    Oak trees feature frequently in folklore as they were important to the Greeks, Romans, Celts and Teutonic tribes. The gods these civilizations worshipped, who had power over the fertility of the land and determined how much rain would fall, all held the oak tree as sacred, which conferred on the tree a respect that was passed down through generations of country dwellers.
    The ash was also a