St Swithin's Day: Watch the skies

Feast day of St Swithin (Swithun), England, confessor, patron of Winchester
(Small Cape marigold, Calendula pluvialis, is today’s plant, dedicated to this saint. The esoteric meaning of this plant is ‘omen; sign’.)

Watch the weather today
Our story today takes us back more than a millennium, to the days when the British Isles were beset by Viking raids and Charlemagne’s empire ruled supreme in Europe. St Swithin (or Swithun) was Bishop of Winchester, England, and adviser to King Egbert of Wessex (d. 839) and probably tutor to his son Ethelwulf. He was called the ‘drunken saint’, but no such behaviour is recorded of him ...

An old English legend says that the good bishop wished to be buried in the churchyard of the cathedral, in a humble grave outside the north wall, so that the ‘sweet rain of heaven might fall upon his grave’. Nine years later his monks tried to move his remains inside the cathedral but there was a violent thunderstorm and rain for the following 40 days and 40 nights. Believing their beloved late bishop to be weeping in distress, they abandoned the venture. Miraculously, two rings of iron, fastened on his gravestone, came out as soon as they were touched, and left no mark of their place in the stone. When the stone was taken up, and touched by the rings, by themselves they fastened to it again ...