1937-07-16 — Page 10

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Rain, Rain,

THE

GO AWAY!

St. Swithin's day, QUNSETTLED)

If ye do rain,

For forty days it

Toll remain,

St. Swithin's day,

an ye be fair, For forty day.

มเสร

rain

мас

****RAVELLERS are fond of explaining to us how im- portant a part Rumour plays in the national life

of China, Rumour which is sud- denly and unexpectedly present In its ancient walled cllies.

Except for odd examples of this phenomenon, such as the

hearsay, persistent

at the beginning of the Great War, of Russian soldiery passing through England, our daily papers prevent us from too easy an acceptance of unconfirmed reports.

Towards our own traditional superstitions we remain, how- ever, still remarkably eredulous. We all, for instance, continue to observe the weather conditions on St. Swithin's Day with a lively attention.

THE HUMAN RACE likes nothing

better than to connect the wayward movements of the natural world. with experiences of its own inti- mate life, and some such motive Was undoubtedly AL work In its Identification of the central day of the month of July-for long assumed to be meteorologi- cally prophetle-with the moving of the bones of the famous Win- chester blahop to their ceremonial shrine.

This event took place on July 15, A.D. 971, exactly one hundred and eight years after St. Swithin had been buried at his own uncon- ventional request on the north side of the church droppings."

under the eaves-

St. Bwithin

appears to have been a practical-minded but un- usually plous Baxon prelate with little love of personal display.

HE LEFT ALL military and foreign affairs to Bishop Alston, whoso eplacopal stool

was at Sherborne, at. Swithin himself serving King Ethelwulf in quieter ways, by accompanying the little Alfred.

SPANKING IS NECESSARY

By A FATHER

recent article on the punishment of children was of much interest

to me as a parent.

Llewelyn

POWYS

"England's darling," to

Rome;

by building a bridge of stone over the Itchen; and, alas! that any such notion should ever have entered his head, by Invent- ing the tithe system, a polite de- vice by which a professional priesthood, without embarrass- ment to itself and sitting fat by the fire, could dip and dip again into the pockets of the swepting inity.

It chances often enough that the date of the old prelato's translation does in actual fact Inaugurate a rainy spell,

I used to observe this even in the days of my childhood, for the birthday of

my companion- brother was on St, Swithin's Day, and twenty to one if his hayaeld picale did not herald the first bad thunderstorm of the summer with the breaking up of the weather through the Dog-days and the August holidayn.

The Fifteenth of July is a bad time for a wet spell, because in England a great deal of hay is likely to be lying out during that week, and wild weather means for the farmer the hasty tossing and turning of swathes in the day and

at night the tossing and turning from anxiety of his own mar- row bones.

SOME RASCALLY toss-pots of

antiquity, wishing to use the good bishop as a stalking - horse for shameless boozing, must needs raise the cry that St. Swithin was a drunken blshop.

It is true enough that in the old days in Somerset when the sun was pricking hot the men in the delds could whift up a drop or two of their famous cider during Swithin's week.

to They used

keep great earthenware Jars of it, called "owls," under tali hedgerow elms. where all was cool as in a cellar.

Indeed, if you pass through any Somerset village during these July

16, HONGKONG TELEGRAPH. FRIDAY, JULY

"Here Comes the Sun!"

days you will find the air between the roofs of thatch heady with the fermented juice of the applet Beer and cideri simple drinks for an honest folk.

Let the gin drinkers bide in towns. "Drunk for a penny and dead drunk for twopence," as the tavern signs of Wapping-old- Stairs used to brag in the Eight- eenth Century!

Why, even the Bishops down in Somerset compose poetry in cele- bration of Bic.

Take, for example, this verse written by John Still, who was Bishop of Bath and Wells during Queen Elizabeth's reign.

"And Tib, my wife, that as her life Loveth well good ale to seek, Full oft drinks she till ye may see The tears run down her cheek: Then doth she trowl to me the bail, Even as a molt-warm should, And saith, Sweet heart, I took my

part

Of this jolly good ale and old,

"Back and side go bare, go bare; Both foot and hand go cold;

But belly, God send thee good ale

cnough,

Whether it be new or old,”

But in wet weather or in Ano weather, what supreme weeks are those that stand. on each side of St. Swithin's Day-the kernel of

STORIES ABOUT LOVERS

common expresalon, "falling who said of his wife that the peace suggests something of God came into his life when he love," accidental or unexpected, and this married her, and of William Ewart element provides much of the Gladstone, whose love for Catherine which is associated with Glynne, and hers for him retained its brightness through long years to the end.

romance

the subject.

When Lord Salisbury, the famous Victorian statesman, was having a struggle for a living as a second son,

But there is another side, it should

One has to develop a child's "bet- ter nature" by pointing out good from evil. At an early age one his to adopt simple methods of imparting small country church. He this Information-methods hich will impress the young, unformed mind. The methods which I favour

he one day sauntered aimlessly into be remembered,

do not differ much from those em- ployed by the average dog-owner in training his pet,

A puppy learns to behave Itself by being made to roolise that mis- behaviour has painful consequences, A strap used at the right time, and in not too forcible a manner, is the beat schoolmaster

for tho little

animal. And I have yet to meet the dog which, after having grown into n decorous maturity, cherishes an Il-will at its master for chastising

early; indiscretions,

In many respects, children can

Was

charmed by the orkan musle, and walled to express his thanks to the musician, and that was how he got his wife. No:

their a few go out to seek fate, looking for a lover. Coventry Patmore, in his "Angel of the House," makes one say.

"I confess

I never went to ball or fote Or show, but in pursuit express Of my predestined mate." There have been some great loves and lovers. We think of Tennyson,

non existent-or rather imholy delight from doing the wrong undeveloped-better nature and re- ting, They are naturally untidy, sorted to the old-fashioned method to the appro- and are naturbly strong-willed, of applying a strap They do not respect private property, priate part of his, anatomy. Only fast, week my little son threw My points against sparing the rod a guest gloves Into the fire, and might be summed up as follows: gurglingly announced his crime to the shocked household. He will not commit this indiscretion again-my strap has seen to that

kened to puppies. They derive an apparently

The Enfant Terrible

Though matches are all made in

heaven, they EDY,

Yet Hymen, who mischief oft

hatches,

Sometimes deals with the house

t'other side of the way, And then they are Lucifer

matches."

One man made a remark which suggested that he did not give heaven the credit in his case. His friends knew him as a great lover of cham- pagne. Some years

after he had his chums by entering astonished into marriage, a friend was with him at dinner, and observed that he passed the champagne.

After the Indies had left the diningroom, he ventured to ask the abstinence. "Oh!" reason for this was the reply, "nover again! It was after a bottle of champagne that I proposed."

The congregation must have amlled when, on the first Sunday Bonar a sense of after his morringe Andrew 1. One cannot ins!!! social responsibility into children announced these lines of the 10th with mere platitudes. They must be Psalm to be sung: firmly handled.

"Unto me happily the lines In pleasant places fell; Yea

the Inheritance I

3. When words are not backed up with physical.punishment, children begin to disregard such pleas, re- Children delight in making people cognising the truth of the old Scot- awkward with their disconcerting tish saying, that "Sticks and stanes utterances. Some parents merely will break my banes, but words they smile when their little son and heir cahan hurt me."

3. An Infant mind is not sumelent announces that the visitor has " nock like a stork, and terri

big ly developed to appreciate the moral al- niceties of a altuation. Actions speak buck teeth." They forget though the description is not allo- fouder than words, so far as children

that gether lacking in sincerity, the per- are concerned, and

ទ

why

да

son who happens to possess these a believer in stentle doses of that old physical features does not always fashioned corrective, the strap. relish the light of publicity which 4. One must let a child realise child's tongue can turn upon him. who really is master in the house.

My bay was accustomed to making Otherwise, children are apt to deve many rude observations of this type top egotistical impressions of their until I stopped appealing to his own importance.

in beauty doth excell."

One day a man of the slow type was seized with a coughing fit, and excused himself by saying that he had got a bit of grit in his throat. Her answer was meant to be atimu- Inting: "You should swallow it, for you badly need it in your system.'

One young man had nerve enough in all conscience, for when he saw her father about courting his daugh ter, the father said, "Yes, sir, the man who marries my daughter will get a prize, I can tell you." To which the youth made answer, "May I see it, please?"

F. J. 5.

the nut, the core of the apple, the heart of the yearl

Now is the time to enjoy.a gar- den, to zlt with your love under the shade of a mulberry tree on some fair lawn down by the silver-flow- ing Thames. All a silence and sunshine, and shadows behind old red walls where idle peacock butterfles settic upon nems whiter than the necks of swans.

OF THE ENGLISH poets. Andrew Marvel understood best the appropriate mood for these halcyon weeks, weeks when, as the old Greek farmer, Heslad, wrote: "Goats

fattest,

is wine women most wanton, and men weakest." Andrew Marvel sings as one inebriate with the happi- ness of being alive at such scnson:

аге

best,

"Stumbling on melons, as I pass Ensnared with flowers, I fail on

grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure

Less

Withdraws into its happiness; Annihilating all that's made Taa green thought in a

shade.

green

***

And how cloquently he pleads with his coy mistress!

"But at my back I always hear Times winged chariot kurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of mast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My cchoing song: then worms shall

try

That long preserved virginity. And your quaint honour turn to

dust,

And into ashes all my lesi;

The prave's a Ane and private place, But none, I think, do there em

brace,"

Yet even for those diapossessed ones who never have known what it is to be happy in such green gardens of pleasure, there in no cause for despair. Lovers who

the have the wit to leave

main roads and turn aside into by-path meadows will find that wild wood paradises are during these fav- oured weeks common in foxglove woods, in dog-rose lanes, and be tween the neres of the rye.

IT IS IN truth reviving to remem- ber that the greatest gifts of life are not to be bought or sold, and have little to do with the gratifica- tion of the acquisitive impulse, or with conspicuous waste, or with worldly vanities. A young poeti- cal clerk, insulted and exploited from Monday morning to Baturday noon, may very well experience more happiness in the spending of a few summer hours than ever comes the way of the pampered clubmen of Piccadilly,

* Whenas the rye reach to the chin, And chopcherry, chopclierry ripe

within,

Strawberries soimming in the cream, And schoolboys playing in the

stream; Then O, theri O, then O, my trus

Love said,

Till that time come again, She could not live a maid."

-To-day's Thought

IT takes a great deal of elova- tion of thought to produce a very little elevation of lita.

--EMERSON.

1987.

ROUND

ABOUT by

The Showman

WOMAN who is "harassed"

has been baring her soul in a sympathetic news- paper. The only way sho keeps sane, it seems, la to go away for the week-end and "alt in the garden watching the flowers and birds."

Her mind will be "full of pleasant thoughts, dreama and aspirations."

And the newspaper publialies a photograpia of the house where she gocs-a simple to cot, it looks, with no air conditioning at all and, no second footman.

I think I knoto. All she sayr, plus the rural beauty of a heavy lunch followed by a round of golf that is quaintly coloured by the aspirations of General Sir Archibald Potiering-Doddie. The ecstasy of cocktail time under the old apple-tree, with Lady Angela Publicity wearing her new Cossack cocktail trousers. The rural perfection of after- dinner bridge with all the birds vailing. And then back, refreshed and £5 down, to the hubbulx,

Mr. Rabbity's Whistle

THE Bearded Woman of Wopps-on- the-Wold reports a very quiet time" bar the fuss about old Mr. Rabbity's tin whistle.

He had his grandson down to stay and the young monkey plugged up his granddad's tin whistle with a cork. Every day for years Mr. Rab- bity has been playing Lily of Laguna on that whistle.

Well, was a proper shock like for him to blow and nothing to happen. a nart of backfire, you might say. Well, he caught the young sprig and began to baste him, and he yowled to rights.

"After the basting Mr. Rabbity said, Willie. I freely forgive you. You in high note in your yowling that I've been trying for, but never could get on necount of that dratted Now whistle having but six holes.

Y' play The Lily again, and you yowl when I wink.'

"It was a champion duet. Bo out of

evil comes good."

"Did I Tell You How.. ?"

гт

THE secretary stated that the trophy would be for the ladies' champlenship at the Small Bore Meet- ings at Bisley in future."

The Great Bore Meetings, of course, are restricted to men, and take place after the shooting is over.

1937-07-16 — Page 10

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