Review of Kingsbury, S. A., Kingsbury, M. E., and Mieder, W., 'Weather Wisdom: Proverbs, Superstitions and Signs', New York, Peter Lang, 1996, viii, 478pp., £33.00.

Abstract

This fine and even sumptuous compilation of more than 4,400 largely proverbial weather sayings, mainly drawn from American and British sources and archival collections, is particularly a reflection of the habit of compiling such material in the latter parts of both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The senior author - who died in 1994 before the book's publication - and his colleagues, had already issued 'A Dictionary of American Proverbs' (1992) and 'A Dictionary of Wellerisms' (1994). The third author was also responsible in 1990 for 'International Proverb Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography', Supplement 1 (1800-1981) issued by Garland. Their Preface now categorises these weather dicta as usually expressing either "folk wisdom in a metaphorical fashion" or "superstitions without any rational or scientific basis" (p. vii), and also stresses their folk transmission, over a considerable period of time, "the collective wisdom of generations of people who have depended on knowing at least to some degree of certainty what the weather might bring" (p. ix).