On the morning of the day when Agincourt was fought[1] the gamesome lark seemed as if she were singing with the double object of awaking the English and of making intercession at heaven's gate for their success. Flocks of ravens roused the drowsy Frenchmen by croaking in such wise that all the country-side could hear. By our foes this was taken as a sign, not that the birds would feast on their dead bodies, but that English flesh should be the prey. The poet was full of portents. Earthquakes, floods, storms, famines, plagues; monstrous births, comets, armies in the air, blood issuing from the ground: these are a few of the methods nature adopts to hint at what is coming. I append references, so that those who will may take their fill of such horrors.[2]
Concerning the minor portents, which come under the head of weather-lore, Drayton gives a few hints:
"The strutting peacock yawling 'gainst the rain,"[3]
made so much noise on entering the ark that the most unbelieving antediluvian must have felt sure that wet weather was imminent, particularly as the brawling of the carrion-crow supported the assurance of the peacock. We learn from Polyolbion[4] that when Pendle's head is free from clouds the people thereabout expect a halcyon day, and that those on the banks of the Can (or Kent?), in Westmoreland, can tell what weather to look for from the voice of its falls.[5]
"For when they to the north the noise do eas'liest hear,
They constantly aver the weather will be clear;
And when they to the south, again they boldly say,
It will be clouds or rain the next approaching day."
St. Swithin's reputation as a weather indicator is not forgotten in
- ↑ The Battle of Agincourt [i. 41].
- ↑ The Barons Wars, book i. v. 10 [i. 92]; book i, v. 33 [i. 97]; book ii. v. 15 [i. 111]; book iv. v. 41 [i. 158]; Miseries of Queen Margaret [ii. 389, 391]; Eng. Heroic. Epis. [i. 301]; Pol. ii. [ii. 689]; see, too, note, p. 701; Pol. xxii. [iii. 1066]; Legend of T. Cromwell, Earl of Essex [ii. 590]; the Moon-Calf [ii. 479].
- ↑ Noah's Flood [iv. 1536, 1537].
- ↑ xxvii. [iii. 1182].
- ↑ Pol. xxx. [iii. 1222].
