Today (15 July) is St Swithin's Day (sometimes spelled Swithun, which scholars believe is closer to the Saxon pronunciation). The folk belief says that if it rains today it will rain for the next forty days, and if it is fine today, then it will be fine for the next forty days. Here's the rhyme:
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 na mair
I'm sorry to say that it rained all morning, although the afternoon has been gloriously sunny - so that confuses matters as regards St Swithin's prophecy.
The BBC published an article about the legend and I was intrigued by one of the comments made by a reader, which claimed that the number forty appears so often in folk tales and in the Bible because it is meant to signify 'a lot' rather than a specified number. The commentator said it was a mistranslation of the ancient Greek word for 'many'. The OED says forty is from an Old English word, and is similar to the equivalent word in other Germanic languages eg Frisian and Old Norse. However, one of the definitions is "Used indefinitely to express a large number".
Since the word "forty" occurs only 23 or so times in the part of the Bible written in Greek and more than 120 times in the portion written in Hebrew/Aramaic, I find *"The commentator said it was a mistranslation of the ancient Greek word for 'many"* hard to swallow. A mistranslation of the *Hebrew* word perhaps, although if the ancient Hebrew words were anything like the modern ones it seems like a bit of a stretch.
Posted by: maxqnz | July 17, 2009 at 10:53 AM
Good point. Thanks for clarifying that.
Posted by: Virtual Linguist | July 18, 2009 at 03:07 PM