Weather Folklore

The weather was the first great god of the human species. Long before the rise of agriculture, the rise of cities, the rise of writing, the first human beings looked up at the sky and saw it as a living being. The thunder was a voice; the rain was a gift; the wind was a presence. From that first looking, an entire layer of folklore grew. This section gathers the traditions of the sky: the thunder gods who hold the lightning, the rain-calling rites that ask the heavens for water, the wind spirits, the frost giants, the lightning birds, and the agricultural almanacs by which the people of the land read the will of the year.

The Thunder Gods

The most widespread of all the weather gods is the thunder god. Across nearly every continent and in nearly every age, the god of the thunder has been a great figure: armed, bearded, riding the storm, throwing the lightning, and bringing the rain. The thunder gods of the world — Thor, Zeus, Jupiter, Perun, Indra, Shango, Raijin, Lei Gong, Tlaloc, Chaac, Hadúr, Ukko, Taara, and many others — share a startling set of features: a hammer or an axe, a chariot drawn by goats or rams, a role as protector of order, and a double function as giver of fertility (rain) and bringer of destruction (lightning).

The same figure, in different keys, plays across the world. The Vedic Indra breaks the dragon Vritra with his vajra and releases the waters of heaven. The Norse Thor smashes the giants with Mjollnir and protects Asgard. The Yoruba Shango throws the thunderstone and is the king of justice. The Maori Tāwhirimātea sends the winds from the body of his father. The Australian Wandjina watches the coast from the rock and calls the rain. Each is a figure of the sky, and each is a figure of the human: brave, strong, sometimes wrathful, sometimes gentle, always watching.

Rain-Calling and the Dry Lands

Where the rain is uncertain, the folk have always asked for it. The rain-calling traditions of the world form a continuous chain from Dodona to Tibet, from the Hopi snake dance to the Christian Rogation Day procession. The forms are various, but the hope is the same: that the sky will open, that the field will drink, that the people will be fed.

The Greek oracle of Dodona, in Epirus, was the place where the rustling of oak leaves was read as a sign from Zeus, and the questioners came in times of drought as well as in other troubles. The Japanese Ame-no-Iwato, the “heavenly rock cave,” was the place where the sun goddess Amaterasu withdrew into a cave, plunging the world into darkness, and the gods had to lure her out with laughter and a mirror. The Hopi and Zuni snake dances were, among other things, calls to the rain. The Indian Varuna-japa, the recitation of the names of Varuna, the lord of waters, was a private rite of asking. The West African libation for rain was a pouring of water on the ground, with the words that the sky should pour in turn. The Slavic Dodola procession, led by a girl covered in leaves and flowers, walked from house to house singing for the rain. Each rite was a way of reminding the sky of its duty, and each was a way of reminding the people of their dependence on the sky.

The Rainbow Serpent and the Rainbow as Omen

The rainbow is one of the great images of weather folklore. In many traditions it is a snake, a serpent, or a celestial being who comes down to the earth to drink. The rainbow serpent of the Australian Aboriginal tradition, the great being of the Dreamtime, is one of the oldest and most powerful of the figures; he lies in the deep waterholes, and he rises in the storm, and his body arches over the land to bring the rain. The Norse Bifrost, the bridge of the gods, was a rainbow that reached from Asgard to Midgard, and the red in the rainbow was the burning of the flame that kept the giants out. The Irish leprechaun, with his crock of gold at the foot of the rainbow, is a more domestic echo of the same image: a treasure that is always just out of reach.

The rainbow is also an omen. In much of European folk belief, a rainbow that ends in water is a sign that the water will rise; a rainbow that comes after a storm is a sign that the storm is done; a rainbow seen in the morning is a warning of rain. The same careful reading of the rainbow can be seen in the agricultural almanacs, where the colour of the sky at sunrise, the shape of the clouds at noon, the sound of the wind at night, were all signs to be read and acted upon.

Wind Spirits, Frost Giants, Lightning Birds

The wind has its own folklore. In nearly every tradition, the four winds are the four corners of the earth, and the names of the winds are the names of the gods who send them. The Greek Boreas was the north wind, a great winged being who carried off the maiden Oreithyia; the Roman Auster was the south wind, a bringer of rain; the Slavic Stribog was the wind itself, the god of the winds, who blew the great oak and scattered the leaves. The winds were also messengers, and the sound of the wind in the chimney was, in some folk traditions, the voice of the dead.

The frost giants of the Norse — the sons of Ymir, the first being — were the cold itself, and the ice that came down from the mountains was their breath. The Japanese oni, the great horned demons, came in the cold of winter, and the long nights of the year were their time. The lightning birds of the southern African tradition — the hammer-bird, the umBhani — were the lightning itself, and their cry was the thunder. The sun-maidens of the European folk tradition — the women who danced in the field at midsummer, who bathed in the dew of the morning, who wove the white ribbons of the St. John’s day — were the figures of the sun’s blessing on the land.

The Moon and the Tides

The moon, like the sun, was read as a sign. The waxing and waning of the moon was the great clock of the folk year, and the agricultural almanac was set by it. The new moon was a time to begin things; the full moon was a time to harvest; the dark of the moon was a time to rest. The same was true of the tides, which the fishermen of the coast learned to read with a care that almost amounted to a science. The European folk tradition had many proverbs about the moon, and the practice of planting “by the moon” has not entirely died.

The moon was also a person. In many traditions the moon was a god or goddess, and the markings on its face were a story. The Chinese Chang’e lived in the moon palace with her jade rabbit; the Norse Máni drove the moon-chariot across the sky; the Japanese Tsukuyomi watched the world from the night sky. The same stories, in different keys, are told all over the world. The moon was felt to be a kind of elder sister to the sun, more quiet, more patient, more in touch with the slow rhythms of the earth.

Weather Rhymes and Almanacs

The folk reading of the weather was, in a sense, a folk meteorology. The rhymes of the English and Scottish countryside — “red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning, shepherds take warning” — encode real meteorological observations, passed down through the centuries, and they have a real predictive value. The same can be said of the rhymes of the sailors (“when the wind is from the east, neither good for man nor beast”), the rhymes of the farmers (“a wet May brings a big load of hay”), and the rhymes of the gardeners (“plant potatoes when the oak leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear”).

The almanacs of the folk — the English Old Moore, the French Mathieu de la Drôme, the American Farmer’s Almanac, the German Hundertjährige Kalender — were, in their time, the working tools of the rural world. They were, also, repositories of weather lore, and they preserved proverbs, saints’ days, and moon-phases alongside the astronomical predictions. The almanac, in this sense, was the meeting-point of folk belief and folk science, and the modern meteorological almanac is one of its descendants.

Weather and the Festivals of the Year

The festivals of the seasonal year were, in nearly every tradition, also weather festivals. The fire festivals of Beltane and Samhain were also calls to the sun and to the rain. The Midsummer dew was gathered in the morning, and was used to wash the face for beauty and the fields for fertility. The Rogation Day processions of the Christian calendar were also processions for rain, in which the fields were blessed and the heavens were asked to send water. The Blessing of the Sea, the blessing of the boats, the blessing of the crops, were all rites in which the weather was the unspoken partner of the human.

The Beltane rain ritual, in particular, is one of the most striking of the European customs. In Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, the Beltane fires were lit on the hill, and the cattle were driven between two fires for purification. The dew that gathered on the grass that night was gathered by the young women of the village, and was used to wash the face and the hands for the coming year. The ritual was a small and quiet thing, but it was also a way of asking the sky to send its blessing down. The same custom, in different forms, can be seen in the Greek Thargelia, the Roman Floralia, and the Indian Vasantotsava.

The Wild Hunt and the Winter Storm

The winter storm, in the folk imagination, was the wild hunt. The Norse Oskorei, the English Wild Hunt, the French Mesnie Hellequin, the German wütendes Heer — all were processions of the dead who rode out on the winter nights, with the king of the dead at their head. The hunt could be heard in the wind, and the huntsman could be seen, sometimes, in the shape of a stag or a black dog. The hunt was a warning, and to see it was a sign of coming death.

The wild hunt is one of the deepest images of European weather folklore, and it joins the thunder god, the rain-calling, and the rainbow to the cycle of the year. The winter is the time of the wild hunt, and the spring is the time of the green return. The sky, in this older view, was not only a thing of physics; it was a stage on which the gods and the dead performed their great processions. The folk reading of the weather was a reading of that stage, and the rhymes, the almanacs, and the rituals were the way the people of the land stayed in touch with the actors.

See Also

• Thunder Gods Across Cultures — Thor, Zeus, Indra, Shango, and the rest of the sky-fathers
• Rain-Calling Traditions — The rites that ask the heavens for water
• Nature & Landscape — The wider world of nature folklore
• Norse Folklore — The world of Thor, the Norns, and the wild hunt
• Slavic Folklore — The world of Perun, Stribog, and the rusalki
• Seasonal Festivals — The fire festivals of the turning year
• Mythical Creatures — A wider bestiary
• European Folklore — The wider European context