Musings on the Weather and Springtime

Spring (earrach) is here at last, though we're officially in the last month in April (Aibreán). We are coming into the good weather - the temperature was up to 18 degrees last week in nice sunshine. We have the sun again today, but it's barely crept over 5 degrees; anyone fooled by the appearance from inside is likely to end up with a chill, so we could be seeing a rash of "summer colds" next week!

Here at Meals on Wheels it's a good time to go for a drive - especially around the lanes of south County Longford. The winter floods have mostly receded and there's lovely spring flowers in the flat meadows around Lough Ree and Newtowncashel. Birds are busy gathering nesting material , and you can look forward to seeing spring lambs - depending on your taste, gambolling in the fields or steaming on a plate.

We all see the seasons, as known by the weather, lagging behind the position of the sun. The winter (geimhreadh) never really gets the biting cold until well after Christmas - January and February (Eanáir agus Feabhra) can be the coldest. At the other extreme, August (Lúnasa) can be more sultry than the official summer (samhradh) months of May, June, or even July (Bealtaine, Meitheamh, Iúil). Meteorologists talk about this lag, and advise us when the seasons 'actually' begin.

It is easy to think this is a modern phenomenon, or maybe the weather is upset by global warming, but is it really? In Gaelic tradition, ancient people were just as driven by the weather and the calendar as we are - more so because they needed to be sure of planting and harvesting times: it was a matter of life and death! Ancient Gaelic (or Gaulish, for the ones in France) calendars have been found that tell us, for instance, the Christian spring feast of St Brigid (Lá Fhéile Bríde) corresponds with the ancient Imbolc. Like many ancient civilizations, Gaels recognised the seasons with 4 feasts: they mark the beginning of each quarter year as defined by the sun's position, not the weather, and were set half way between the equinoxes and solstices. Imbolc is the beginning of earrach, on Lá Feabhra (1st Feb) but we have to wait till now for the weather to catch up!

Clever, those ancient Gaelic astronomers ...