Study of weather changes is constant

IRISH people’s obsession with the weather, and what ‘it’s going to do’, is not unique.

Many of the signs on which traditional weather prediction has always been based are also talked about in other parts of the world.

Even though the land and climate in both countries are very different, the weather-conscious Irish farmer has, for example, much in common with, say, a fellow farmer in Greece.

For thousands of years before Jean Byrne, or Martin King, came on the television each night to give us scientific forecasts, people looked to the sky, plants, and animals for indications of what the morrow would bring.

Indeed, there’s a striking similarity in the signs on which amateur meteorologists of old, around the world, based their predictions. This is borne out by retired UCC classics lecturer, Dr Patrick Cronin, in a newly-published study spanning 3,000 years.

The scholarly tome sets out the attempts made by the Greeks to predict weather change by naked-eye observation of signs from the sky, unaided by scientific meteorology.

Knowledge of weather lore gained while growing up on a farm in Sliabh Luachra, close to the Cork/Kerry border, was fundamental in Dr Cronin’s later study of how the Greeks went about it. Much of his seminal knowledge was gleaned from his father while they saved hay or worked in the bog together, or while observing the fire on the hearth with his mother.

This is acknowledged in the book’s dedication, which reads: ‘To the memory of my father, who taught me to read the wind.’ In a foreword, TCD Emeritus Professor George Huxley describes Dr Cronin as a scholar by vocation and a countryman at heart.

He has combined his boyhood insights with his knowledge of the Greek language. But his rural upbringing helped him in another way — while the greater part of his research was carried out at his desk and in academic libraries, he could easily identify with the old people he interviewed in the Greek countryside.

It was from farmers, shepherds, and sailors that he learned a deal about Greek weather lore. His book contains a catalogue of 720 signs derived from clouds, comets, dew, frost, mist, moon, winds and many other natural phenomena.

The crucial importance of the weather for agriculture is recognised in an ancient Greek proverb with a universal application — it is the seasons, not the soil, that bear crops. Most of the predictions in Ireland and Greece are based on observation of birds, animals, insects and fish, the sun and the moon.

The Greeks, however, use far more signs from animals and the sky than we do, though some signs are common to both countries. One is that gulls fly in from the sea before a storm, often referred to by people in Cork, Kerry, Donegal and Tipperary. Another is that streaks of light beneath the sun are a sign of bad weather — found in the folk traditions of the Blasket islands, and other areas along the west coast.

Dr Cronin grew up in a place with a lyrical name that would have been familiar to the great Gaelic poets, Eoghan Ruadh Ó Suilleabhain and Aogan Ó Rathaille, who hailed from the area. It’s called Magha an tSamhraidh (summer pasture), not far from the Paps Mountains.

People in the area would look towards the Paps, and other mountains, for weather indications from the presence of cloud, clarity of the atmosphere and other observations. Low clouds on the mountains are seen as a sure sign of approaching rain.

Other mountains mentioned by him include Clara and Muisire, in Co Cork, and Cnoc Firinne, near Ballingarry, in Co Limerick. Translated, Cnoc Firinne means hill of truth, believed to be so named because of the accurate weather indications it rendered farmers through the centuries.

The sudden appearance of thousands of ants on a road in Ireland has always been regarded as a portent of rain. The ancient Greeks also used this weather sign. And Dr Cronin believes that faith placed in ants as weather prophets is justified. Ants, he says, have a high sensitivity to atmospheric change and can anticipate rain sooner than man.

Another belief common to Ireland, Greece, and many other countries is that if swallows fly low it is a sign of rain. This sign is reliable, he remarks. Swallows are able to catch insects at high levels in fine weather, but when the atmosphere is very humid, just prior to rain, insects remain near ground level so that swallows descend in pursuit.

Not all the old signs could be trusted, but people all over the world have benefited over millennia from the wisdom of weather lore.

* Greek Popular Meteorology from Antiquity to the Present, by Dr Patrick Cronin, is published by Edwin Mellen Press.