Photograph: Jason Whitman/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
St Martin’s Day, 11 November, is associated with feasting and the beginning of preparations for winter. Like St Swithin’s Day, Martinmas was believed to indicate the weather ahead.
Saint Martin, who is understood to have lived in fourth-century France, was associated with geese, having supposedly hidden in a goose pen to avoid being made bishop, only to be given away by their honking. Weather predictions from his day tend to have a flavour of goose.
“If the geese at Martin’s Day stand on ice, they will walk in mud at Christmas” asserts one, adding that the reverse is said to be true if there is mud on St Martin’s.
Geese are slaughtered for the Martinmas feast, supposedly the saint’s revenge for betraying him. According to medieval writer Johannes Hartlieb, the wishbone of the feast-day goose was carefully preserved by “the most sagacious” to foretell the winter ahead.
“Thereby they divine whether the winter will be severe or mild, dry or wet,” wrote Hartlieb in 1455. “And are so confident in their prediction that they will wager their goods and chattels on its accuracy.”
A military officer even told Hartlieb that the Teutonic knights relied on these goose-bone weather predictions when planning their military campaigns.
Modern weather forecasters are more cautious about long-term predictions. But then, they do not have the backing of a saint.
