'Serious' St. Swithin's Day Greeting Card

Four of our St. Swithin items—two ‘serious’ and two more humourous—were inspired by the fusion of an idiom and a weather rhyme. “Come rain or (come) shine” is an idiom of uncertain date believed to have originated from English agricultural practices. Milking, sowing, harvesting—farmwork has to be done no matter what the weather. Hence, “come rain or (come) shine” came to be widely understood to mean inevitably, regardless of circumstances. According to British folklore, “St. Swithin's Day if thou dost rain, for forty days it will remain. / St. SwithIn's Day if thou be fair, for forty days 'twill rain nae mair.” The St. Swithin verse, probably from the 17th or 18th century, is self-explanatory. + Our more ‘serious,’ straightforward greetings depict St. Swithin in full canonicals back-to-back in a rainy environment and in a sunny one. In our genially humourous examples, we’ve given St. Swithin a large colour-coordinated umbrella on the left; and, on the right, sunglasses and a tube of sunscreen. + Image Credits: The cutouts of the Saint are from a late-19th-century devotional print (holy card) in the designer’s private collection. Here, the sun and backgrounds are adapted from images acquired from Pixabay.. + St. Swithin’s Feast: July 2; Translation of His Relics: July 15