Before Met Éireann was issuing flood alerts, our ancestors relied on the behaviour of Mother Nature to predict the weather.
They used old superstitious beliefs and customs, known in the Irish as piseogs, to ward off inclement weather conditions.
There was a piseog for almost every scenario, from the agricultural - “Don’t give a hatching hen to anyone or your husband will die”, to the surreal “it is unlucky to knit at night unless you are certain the sheep are asleep.”
As they would say round these parts – “that’s Just oul pishlugs”. St Swithin’s day had mostly sunshine, so there shouldn’t be rain for 40 days and nights, or so the lore would have us believe.
