Hardly
a week goes by we don't hear about hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis hitting
somewhere in the world and bringing some serious devastation with them. Today,
scientists can predict some severe weather, but we still don't know how to stop
it. Sometimes, the only thing to do is either batten down the hatches or get
out of town, so just imagine what our ancestors thought when they saw the storm
clouds rolling in. They didn't have all the technology we do today, so they
needed to come up with their own explanations about what was happening in the
skies above.
GRUNGE
BIZARRE
THINGS ABOUT THE WEATHER OUR ANCESTORS BELIEVED
Every so often, Mother Nature
takes the opportunity to remind us that no matter how many massive buildings we
build, no matter how technologically advanced we are, and no matter how cool we
think we are, we're still at her mercy.
The normal wind and rain is
just the start of it, and hardly a week goes by we don't
hear about hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis hitting somewhere in the world
and bringing some serious devastation with them.
Today, scientists can predict some severe weather, but
we still don't know how to stop it.
Sometimes, the only thing to do is either batten down
the hatches or get out of town, so just imagine what our ancestors thought when
they saw the storm clouds rolling in.
They didn't have all the technology we do today, so
they needed to come up with their own explanations about what was happening in
the skies above.
Their stories might not tell us much about the
weather, but they do say something very important: Our ancestors were weird
people.
SOMEONE DISAPPEARS? THE
HARPIES GOT THEM
For the ancient Greeks, the
strongest of winds were actually Harpyiai (harpies) — half-bird, half-woman
creatures sent by Zeus to deliver an unmistakable message.
There are a few stories about
the harpies delivering vengeance to particular people.
After King Phineus of Thrace
spilled some secrets, the harpies descended to steal every plate of food he
tried to eat.
It wasn't until the Argonauts
visited and other wind gods — the Boreades — chased the harpies away that the
king was left in peace.
Not everything they did was
bad, and Homer credits one with giving birth to the mystical horses of
Achilles.
But ... most of what they did
was bad.
Greek lore said that when
someone disappeared suddenly and completely, they had been stolen by the storm
winds of the harpies.
Typically, it was thought the harpies then delivered their captives off to become slaves to the other gods.
THE MOST DISGUSTING
FORECAST EVER
The Victorians were obsessed
with leeches.
To be fair, they probably
weren't any worse than the other methods of the day, but they were more gross.
The movement really got into
full swing when George Merryweather found an old poem that talked about a
leech's tendency to rise to the surface when "disturbed."
That led him to create the
Tempest Prognosticator, which was essentially a fancy way of arranging 12
bottles containing leeches and water.
When the air pressure
dropped, the theory went, the leeches would rise in their bottles, trip a pin,
and ring a bell.
Legit? Slightly, says Atlas
Obscura.
Merryweather would write the
Whitby Philosophical Society whenever his leeches predicted a storm, and
sometimes, they were right. Kind of.
They were able to predict a
storm was coming sometime in the future, but at the end of the day, that's not
entirely helpful.
Merryweather had grand plans
for installing his Tempest Prognosticators all across London, but it wasn't
long before the British Meteorological Office came up with some less gross options.
THE HAG OF BEARA AND THE
WINTER MONTHS
In Scotland and Ireland, the
long, dark winter months were the domain of one of the mother goddesses.
According to Irish traditions
(via Wilderness Ireland), she was reborn every year on Samhain and grew more
powerful throughout the winter months.
On May 1 — Bealtine — she
began to age until she became the Hag of Beara again.
Traditional also says that on
February 1, you could tell how long the winter was going to last.
If it was a dark, overcast
day, the Hag was sleeping and winter would end soon. If it was sunny, it was
going to be a longer winter because she was up and burning her fires.
The Scottish tales of Beira
are a little different.
According to Wonder Tales
from Scottish Myth and Legend (via Sacred Texts), Beira aged as summer
approached and used all her power to prolong the winter with storms and frost
even into the spring months.
Finally, she headed off to
the Green Island of the West, and on the last night of winter she would drink
from the island's Well of Youth.
Her youth restored, she
headed back to Scotland and slept the summer away as a beautiful maid.
By midsummer, she was an
adult, by autumn she was elderly, and when winter returned, she returned to her
haglike and horrible appearance.
THE DIVINE, UBER-FEMINIST
RAINBOW
Zulu folklore has some
incredible beliefs about the power of the rainbow, and they're documented in
the book Zulu Thought-patterns and Symbolism.
Any pool of water a rainbow
touches was believed to be home to these snakes, which had the power to swallow
a man whole.
If a woman approached the
pool, though, she could politely petition the divine Princess through the
rainbow, and ask for whatever it was she wanted most.
Childless women in particular
were told to ask the rainbow for help conceiving, and — somewhat less
heartwarming — ugly girls were told to watch for the rainbow so they could ask
to be made pretty.
Men and boys were also told
to be aware of the rainbow and not walk beneath it. Rainbows were thought to be
responsible for bringing an incurable illness to any man unfortunate enough to
walk near one.
THE SAINT THAT BRINGS THE
RAINS IN ENGLAND
St. Swithun is the patron
saint of Winchester Cathedral and, like many saints, his story is a mixture of
history and legend.
According to Historic UK, his
dying wish was to be buried outside beneath the rains.
And he was for a while, but
in 971 the Bishop of Winchester decreed that he should have a burial more
befitting his life's work and status as patron saint.
He was moved inside, and this
is where the legend starts. After he was interred, the entire area was stricken
by 40 days of storms as he expressed his heavenly displeasure.
From then on, if it rained on
St. Swithun's Day (July 15), it was said to be a sign it was going to rain for
the next 40 days.
There's at least one massive,
St. Swithun's Day storm on record, and it happened in 1315.
But unfortunately, the story
of the 40-day rainstorm beginning when his bones were first moved actually
stems from a medieval mistranslation of old texts.
So, for centuries, people looked to the skies on St. Swithun's Day because some medieval scribe or translator goofed up.
THE ICE SAINTS
Historic UK says many people
believed church saints held some power over the weather, particularly over the
areas and days they were most strongly associated with.
The faithful in the
Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Poland believed in the
power of the Ice Saints, a group of bishops and martyrs who had feast days in
mid-May.
Just who makes up the group
varies; it always includes St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, and St. Servatius (May
11, 12, and 13), and Poland typically includes St. Boniface (May 14).
There's also occasionally St.
Sophia, who has her feast day on May 15 and is sometimes called Cold Sophia.
According to the book Holy
Holidays, the ice saints ushered in a period of freezing temperatures.
Living in Germany says
they're commonly called the cold gardeners or the icy men, and they're responsible
for a cold snap called Eisheiligen.
It's only after their feast
days pass that the weather is guaranteed to be stable enough for planting
crops, and in Germany, they're also said to be behind chilly nights in June,
known as the Iron Nights.
THE POWER TO SUMMON THE
WINDS AND STORM
Throughout history, people
rumored to be able to summon and control winds and storms.
In Greenland, women who were
pregnant or who had just given birth were thought to be able to cause a storm
by going outside, taking a mouthful of air, going back into the house, and
exhaling. Finnish wizards were known to sell the wind — more precisely, they
sold ropes tied in three knots.
Untying the first knot would
summon a moderate wind, the second knot would summon hard winds, and the third
knot would summon a hurricane.
That particular belief was so
powerful that neighboring Estonians held Finnish wizards in high regard.
Scottish witches summoned the
wind by hitting a wet rag against a rock three times and reciting a chant,
while the people of New Guinea believed it was the natives of Bibili who could
summon the wind with a huff.
There were ways to stop the
wind, too. The Khoikhoi could stop gusts of winds by hanging up skins, which
would knock the wind to the ground when they were blown down.
Ancient Corinthians wrote
about a family said to know how to calm even the most vicious of storms, while
in Sumatra, villagers besieged by storms would slash at the wind with swords to
send it away.
THE CROP THIEVES OF THE
SKY-PEOPLE
One of the most bizarre
weather tales was told by the most unlikely of people: Saint Agobard of Lyon.
But according to The
Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West, he also wrote about
wizards called the tempestarii.
It was a long-held belief
that they had the power to cause thunderstorms and hail, but when Agobard
recorded them he suggests they were probably just men and women who dabbled in
old pagan beliefs.
In 815, he wrote "On
Hail and Thunder," an essay that describes the popular belief that these
weather-controlling wizards were working hand-in-hand with sky people from a
place called Magonia.
It was a widespread belief
that the sky sailors paid the weather wizards to call storms and damage crops,
which were then loaded onto the sky ships and taken home.
Agobard calls it "so
much foolishness," but also adds it was so accepted that he had seen
people taken prisoner, chained, and interrogated by villagers convinced they'd
captured thieves from Magonia.
Some have taken Agobard's
writing to be more than just a commentary on the weather, and scholar Jason
Colavito says it's been interpreted as one of the earliest records of UFO
sightings.
Either way, it's a pretty
epic story.
HERE, BOY! HERE, WIND!
COME 'ERE!
A sailor might be tempted to
whistle away a jaunty tune, but according to Melville's Folk Roots, there were
a series of guidelines built around whether someone should whistle.
Whistling was thought to call
the wind, and in cases of calm skies and seas, sailors might whistle in hopes
of raising winds and getting on their way.
But they needed to be
careful, because sudden winds were thought to herald the Devil. If whistling
brought a strong gust, they were certain the Devil was now on board.
Even worse, he was probably
there because the whistling had made him insanely angry, and no one wants to
deal with an angry devil — especially surrounded by the nothingness of the sea.
THAT'S DEFINITELY NOT A
POT OF GOLD AT THE END OF THAT ONE
Rainbows are one of nature's
most beautiful weather wonders, but for the Karens of Burma, they were
something very, very different.
More than that, it was a
reminder of the importance of a proper burial, as neglecting the dead would bring
tragedy to a family.
Those foolish enough to point
at a rainbow like this one had better stick their fingers in their belly
buttons or risk bringing disaster into their lives.
So western rainbows were
harbingers of tragedy, but eastern rainbows were just as heartbreaking.
Women who died while pregnant
were thought to be forever separated from the earth, the sky, and their loved
ones, and their only way of quenching their thirst was through a rainbow.
On the rare occasions when a double rainbow was seen in the east, it was said to be the spirit of the woman's husband visiting her.
ABOUT GRUNGE
The
world is pretty weird...in fact, it's a whole lot weirder than you think. If
you haven't learned something new today, you're missing out. Grunge is the
place to immerse yourself in weird news, fun facts and cool tidbits on history,
entertainment, science, and plenty more. It's just like reading books...but
exciting!
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