Note: You have to take the bad with the good. Even the Spring has cold. You can not have one without the other. You can not have good without bad. You can not have cold without hot. This is a Celtic duality alluded to an in a Scots variant of this week’s proverb, “Cha tig fuachd gu ‘n tig Earrach.” Cold comes not until Sring. The Celtic year begins in winter when it is cold. But in a sense, you can not know it is cold because you do not have warm to compare it with. In the Spring, however, you have both, warm and cold, and each acts as a point of reference for the other. Each allows you to know the other.
Note: The wisdom of this proverb is self-evident to many. This is true of any caregiver, any parent, any babysitter, who has been imprisoned with children due to inclement weather. These people have discovered that the walls of any enclosure are not capable of releasing the vast stores of energy pent-up in every child.
Note also: This proverb is also a word-play on the genitive case. Irish is an inflected language. This means that the role a noun plays in a sentence is determined by a case ending. For example, if a noun is the subject of the sentence, it would require a nominative case ending. If it were the object of the sentence, it would require the accusative case ending. Consider the following sentence. “The car hit the wall.” A car is doing the action so it is the subject of the sentence. The sentence is about the car. On the other hand, the wall was the object of the action of the car. Therefore, it is the object of the sentence.
English lost all its case endings, except one for the genitive case. Let us modify our earlier example. “John’s car hit the wall.” The noun “John” is said to be in the genitive case, where the “‘s” acts as a genitive case ending. Nouns in the genitive case imply the preposition “of.” We could make this explicit on our example. “The car of John’s hit the wall.” Both examples mean exactly the same thing.
The genitive case is the most important case in Irish. It is used to group nouns into classes called declensions. The declensions all have the same or similar genitive case endings. In our proverb, we have two uses of the genitive case. The first is genitive singular, “lá na báistí” — the day of rain. Báistí is the genitive singular of báisteach. The second is genitive plural, ” lá na bpáistí” — day of the children. “Na bpáistí” is the genitive plural of “an páiste.” The definite article before a genitive plural noun triggers eclipses. Therefore, in this case, the two genitive phrases are pronounced exactly the same.a
Note: One meaning of this week’s proverb is the obvious one about the variations of weather in March. “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.”
Charming and fascinating he resolved to be. Like March, having come in like a lion, he purposed to go out like a lamb. Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, 1849
New England has this variety of weather all year long.
There is a sumptious variety about the New England weather that compels the strangers admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. … Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. Mark Twain, Speech, The Weather, 1876
It has been said that if you don’t like New England weather, just wait a minute.
There is another more sublte meaning in this week’s proverb. It is a metaphor for the fickleness of youth. This is hinted at in the use of the word ‘athrú’ which actually means change. The seanfhocal literally means, “‘Tis many a change that a day gets done [in] March.” The word ‘cuir’ used with the preposition ‘d(h)e’ means, among other things, ‘accomplish’ or ‘get done.’ The word ‘March’ is the actual metaphor for youth.
This metaphor is, perhaps, more apparent in a variation of this proverb that comes from the north of Ireland. “Is iomaÌ taghd a thagann i lá earraigh.” (‘Tis many a change that comes in a spring day.) It is implicit in the use of the word ‘taghd’ which usually means ‘fit’ or ‘impulse.’ “Tá taghd ann.” (He is impulsive. Literally: There is impulse in him.) Spring may be a more familiar metaphor for youth than March.
Note also: The speaker pronounces the word ‘iomaí’ as umi: while we represent it above as imi:. The pronunciation umi: is more common in the south and west of Ireland, while imi: is more common in the north. However, the pronunciation imi: was proposed as the Lárchanúint (Core dialect) pronunciation that is used in Foclóir Póca. The “Pronunciation Guide” in Collins Pocket Irish Dictionary also uses the Lárchanúint pronunciation, saying that the spelling ‘io’ is pronunced as a short ‘i,’ e.g., ‘fionn’ where the short ‘i’ is pronounced like the ‘i’ in the English word ‘shin.’
Olc síon an sioc, is fearr sioc ná sneachta agus is fearr sneachta ná síorbháisteach.
Frost is bad weather,[but] frost is better than snow, and snow is better than eternal rain.
Note: Your editor took a bus tour of Dublin once. During the tour, the bus driver was heard to comment on the local climate, a common Irish pastime: “Oh, the weather was grand this week last. It only rained twice. Once for three days and once for four days.”
From the lament in this week’s proverb, you would think that Ireland gets a lot of rain. As you will see in the table below, Dublin has an average annual rainfall of 29.7 inches. But, the average annual rainfall for New York City, over the same points in time, is significantly greater at 47.5 inches.
IRISH CLIMATE – ANNUAL RAINFALL
Station
1962 (mm) (inches)
1980 (mm) (inches)
1990 (mm) (inches)
1997 (mm) (inches)
1998 (mm) (inches)
Cork Airport
1,042.4 41.0
1,303.8 51.3
1,032.7 40.7
1,269.2 50.0
1,378.4 54.3
Dublin Airport
654.2 25.8
825.1 32.5
728.4 28.7
725.9 28.6
832.4 32.8
Kerry
1,232.3 48.5
1,775.5 69.9
1,334.8 52.6
1,393.7 54.9
1,782.3 70.2
Kilkenny
790.5 31.1
898.1 35.4
842.1 33.2
932.6 36.7
977.8 38.5
Malin Head
991.3 39.0
1,084.3 42.4
1,310.8 51.6
999.7 39.4
1,285.2 50.6
Mullingar
968.2 38.1
1,007.6 39.7
1,022.1 40.2
938.6 37.0
1,079.9 42.5
Shannon Airport
921.2 36.3
1,043.1 41.1
1,023.9 40.3
1,026.9 40.4
1,144.5 45.1
Central Park, New York
998.2 39.3
1,132.8 44.6
1,546.9 60.9
1,115.1 43.9
1,237.0 48.7
Sources: Irish Meteorological Service U.S. National Weather Service
It rains with about the same frequency in New York and Dublin, about 11 days a month, on average. Yet, it is not common to hear complaints in New York about “eternal rain.” The difference can be attributed to the fact that when the rain is over in New York, the sun comes out and tends to stay out. In Dublin, however, it seems to be eternally overcast, with the sun peeking out of the clouds for only a few hours each month. In New York, when it rains it usually pours. By contrast, Dublin rains tend to be more of a gentle mist. Dublin’s perpetual cloudiness permits this mist to linger in the air indefinitely. This tends to give the impression of “eternal rain”.
