NOVEMBER

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Ancient Cornish name:
Miz-dui, black month.


Jewel for the month: Topaz. Fidelity.


November 1st. (All Saints' Day.)

On All Saints' Day hard is the grain.
The leaves are dropping, the puddle is full,
At setting off in the morning
Woe to him that will trust a stranger.
On All Saints' Day blustering is the weather,
Unlike the beginning of the past fair season:
Besides God there is none that knows the future.

From the Welsh. 1792.


Apples, peares, hawthorns, quicksetts, oakes. Sett them at All Hallow-tyde, and command them to grow; sett them at Candlemas-tide and entreat them to grow.

Wilts.


Who sets an apple tree may live to see it end,
Who sets a pear tree may set it for a friend.

Hereford.


Their loveliness of life and leaf
At last the waving trees have shed;
The garden ground is sown with grief,
The gay chrysanthemum is dead.
But oh! remember this:
There must be birth and blossoming;
Nature will waken with a kiss

Next Spring!

Clement Scott.


Thorny balls, each three in one,

The chestnuts throw in our path in showers!

For the drop of the woodland fruit's begun,

These early November hours.

Browning.


There never was a juster debt
Than what the dry do pay for wet;
Never a debt was paid more nigh
As what the wet do pay for dry!


A wet Sunday, a fine Monday, wet the rest of the week.

Winchester.


An early winter,
A surly winter.


St. Martin's Day. (November 11th.)

If Martinmas ice can bear a duck,
The winter will be all mire and muck.


'Tween Martinmas and Yule,
Water's wine in every pool.


If it is cold, fair, and dry at Martinmas, the cold in winter will not last long.

Old saying.


Young and old must go warm at Martinmas.

Italy.


Weary the cloud falleth out of the sky.

Dreary the leaf lieth low,

All things must come to the earth by-and-by,

Out of which all things grow.

Owen Meredith.


The year's on the wane,
There is nothing adorning,
The night has no eve,
And the day has no morning;
Cold winter gives warning.

Hood.


The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere;

Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead,

They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrub the jay,

And from the wood-tops calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

W. Cullen Bryant.


November 20th. (St. Edmund's Day.)

Set garlike and pease
St. Edmund to please.

Tusser.


If on Friday it rain,
'Twill on Sunday again;
If Friday be clear,
Have for Sunday no fear.


From twelve to two
See what the day will do.


November 23rd. (St. Clement's Day.)

Catherine and Clement, be here, be here;
Some of your apples, and some of your beer;
Some for Peter, and some for Paul,
And some for Him that made us all.
Clement was a good old man,
For his sake give us some;
Not of the worst, but some of the best,
And God will send your soul to rest.

Worcestershire.


November 30th. (St. Andrew's Day.)

On St. Andrew's the night is twice as long as the day.

Portugal.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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