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Watch the weather today because it will determine your summer:

‘St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain
Full forty days, it will remain
St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair
For forty days, t’will rain no more.’

St. Swithun was a Saxon Bishop of Winchester. Legend says that as Swithin lay on his deathbed, he asked to be buried out of doors, where he would be trodden and rained on. For nine years, his wishes were followed, but then, the monks of Winchester attempted to remove his remains to a splendid shrine inside the cathedral on 15 July 971.Miracles were reported there was a heavy rain storm that lasted for 40 days and 40 nights.

This led to the old wives’ tale that if it rains on St Swithin’s Day (July 15th), it will rain for the next 40 days in succession, and a fine 15th July will be followed by 40 days of fine weather. The date is commemorated with a Christian feast.

The Met Office put the tale to the test 55 times and found that rainy a 15th July is never followed by 40 days and nights of rain.

• St Swithin was also famous for charitable gifts and building churches.
• His emblems are rain drops and apples.
• Swithin was chaplain to Egbert, the 802-839 king of Wessex. Egbert’s son Ethelwulf, whom Swithin educated, made him bishop of Winchester in 852.
• Only one miracle is attributed to Swithin while he was alive. An old lady’s eggs had been smashed by workmen building a church. Swithin picked the broken eggs up and, it is said, they miraculously became whole again.

If you would like to try your hand at weather forecasting, try the Philip’s Guide to Weather Forecasting and see if you can do a better job than the poem!

If it rains where you are on 15th July and you believe the adage, you may wish to invest in an umbrella.