A ”storm of extraordinary violence…the like of this tempest was not seen in our time”, the Domestic Annals of Scotland observed, “nor the like of it heard in this country in any age preceding” lashed the eastern coast of Scotland in 1625. “This was long after remembered as the Storm of the Borrowing Days, such being the popular appellation of the last three days of March, as expressed in a well-known rhyme”.
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894) contains a version of the rhyme in which March, wanting to extend its power and range to kill three sheep it had spotted on a hill, begged April for an extra three days. April duly obliged. The first was wet and windy, on the second there was snow and sleet, and the third was so cold that birds froze to the trees. Nevertheless, the sheep survived and came limping home.
The idea that March had borrowed three days from April as an explanation for the stormy weather at the tail end of the month was not confined to Scotland. In Staffordshire, a rhyme ran “March borrowed of April/ three days, they say;/ One rained, the other snowed,/ and the other was the worst day that ever blowed”. A Spanish folk tale tells how a shepherd promised March a lamb if he would moderate the winds. March agreed, but the shepherd reneged on his side of the bargain. In revenge, March borrowed three days from April, causing the winds to blow stronger than ever.
Over in Ireland, the story of the borrowed days featured an old brindled cow and managed to throw in sow some chronological confusion for good measure. The scrawny cow, on reaching the end of March unscathed, began to curse April, tossing her tail and boasting that as March had gone and April was here, she would have her reward, fresh grass. March, though, retaliated by borrowing three days from April, during which time the weather was so bad that the cow died and was skinned.
This version was picked up by G H Kinahan in the Folklore Journal of 1885, where he noted that “this year, 1885, we have had very severe weather the first days of April, and to account for this one of the natives state they are borrowed from March, and are called “Borrowing Days”, Laethanta na Riabhaiche in Gaelic, or the Skinning Days.
In Northern Ireland, March was provoked not only by a cow, but also by a blackbird, and a stone chatter, all three of which boasted that they could outwit the month. To put them in their place, March had to borrow nine days from April, three to fleece the blackbird, a further three days to punish the stone chatter, and three more for the grey cow.
By the time Britain got round to implementing the Gregorian calendar, in 1752, the dates of the seasonal equinoxes were falling eleven days early, a problem particularly affecting the date of Easter which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The solution to putting the calendar back in line with the equinoxes was simple, effective, but radical, removing eleven days that year so that September 2nd was followed by September 14th.
Did this mean that the borrowed days of traditional folklore now fell around the middle of April? This was a point considered in 1827 by the Irish language writer, Amnhlaoibh O Sùlleabháin, who wrote in The Diary of an Irish Countryman, “this the 12th day of April, is the first of the three days of the old brindled cow, namely three days in which the weather of March took from the Old April”.
Sir Walter Scott, too, was alive to the point in a note he penned in The Heart of Midlothian (1818); “the last three days of March (old style) are called the borrowing days, for as they are remarked to be unusually stormy, it is feigned that March had borrowed them from April to extend the sphere of his rougher sway”. Just to sow further confusion, in the Scottish Highlands it was believed that February 12th, 13th, and 14th were borrowed days from January. It was a good omen for the rest of the year if those days were stormy, but if they were fair, no further good weather could be expected through the spring.
A blustery end to March and beginning to April was welcomed by farmers, the winds drying out the soggy fields ready for planting. “A cold April the barn will fill”, went one piece of weather lore, while for the French, Portuguese, and Spanish a cold April was synonymous with plentiful supplies of bread and wine. In England the early part of April was known as “blackthorn winter”, because of the white blossom of the thorn and the coldness of the weather. Beware a foggy first three days of April, though, a sure harbinger of floods in June.
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