Ninety-nine words for rain in Irish? I have often heard the claim, but always assumed it was more metaphorical than factual. Certainly, Ireland can seem like a rain-washed land, and our language is known for the profligacy of its vocabulary, but 99 words seems excessive.
Even the speakers of Inuit languages such as Inuktitut and Yupik have clarified that they don’t have that many words for snow, which, after all, defines every aspect of their lives. They may have dozens or even hundreds of distinct terms used to describe snow conditions, but they aren’t all separate words in the way English treats vocabulary. Instead, they are nuanced variations of a base word created by combining roots and affixes to build a polysynthetic term that expresses different qualities: falling snow, drifting snow, crusty snow and so on.
That said, the Irish are different – we are such inveterate storytellers, and as the proverb goes, Is maith an scéalaí an aimsir (“Weather is a good storyteller”). Weather is a continuous story generator, offering insights, anecdotes, and fresh narratives for us to celebrate, bemoan, connect with and commiserate over on a daily, and even hourly, basis.
So, over time, it seems we have developed an incredibly rich bounty of weather words. The word for a sudden, heavy shower is spairn; as opposed to sprais, a sudden, heavy, spattering shower; or búisteog, which is simply a sudden shower; or múirling, a sudden heavy shower that moves like a wall of water; or liongar ceatha, a particularly nasty sudden shower; or tuile shléibhe, a sudden shower near a hillside.
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I could fill this entire page with rain words, but what’s more interesting is the insight this abundance of terms gives into our forebears; the countless sodden, shivery experiences that led to the creation of each word. They each offer a visceral sense of what the generations that preceded us endured in a world without Gore-Tex or central heating. The writer Frank McCourt is sometimes lampooned for his fixation on the wetness of his Limerick childhood in the memoir Angela’s Ashes, and yet the multitude of terms our people amassed suggests he may actually have downplayed the omnipresence of báisteach fadó (“rain long ago”).
Two years ago, I decided to embark on a project to seek out and collate as many weather words in Irish as I could, just to see what they might reveal about our past and our psyche. Overall, the process has left me with a compassion for, and a closeness to, those who coined the terms. It has highlighted how adept our ancestors were in observing and describing the specific characteristics of every form of meteorological experience, from hoar frost to heat haze. Without their fortitude and their ability to endure the downpours and the cold, it’s possible that we wouldn’t be here today.
Some of the terms were probably coined by the weather specialists of their era: the néaladóirí (cloud-watchers), réadóirí (stargazers) and fiachairí (those who observe ravens for signs of weather change). The closeness with which they observed every advancing cloud and pressure front is evident from the sheer richness and variety of terms they amassed.
- Rilleadh báistí: streaming rain, like oats through a riddle.
- Dallcairt: raining so heavily you cannot see ahead.
- Batar fearthainne: a battering, pounding or sudden downpour of rain.
- Cur dobhar: raining torrents, or pouring down floods. Dobhar is an old word for water, which gives us the word dobharchú, an otter, literally a water hound. Nowadays it more often means a flood or torrent. It can also mean darkness and obscurity.
- Gleidearnach: downpour of rain that seems combative or war-like.
Our forebears may not have had the sophisticated technology of today, but they were skilled at reading the signs of birds, trees, animals, insects and fish, as well as markers on land and sea. Birds were particularly good forecasters: swallows flying low foretold rain, as did hens roosting early, curlews calling, ducks loudly quacking and seagulls seen far inland. The heron’s behaviour offered many hints: Aimsir chrua thirim nuair a bhíonn an corr éisc suas in aghaidh srutha chun na sléibhte (“When the heron flies upstream to the mountains, the weather will be dry but rough”) and Fearthainn nuair a thagann sí an abhainn anua (“When she goes downstream, it will rain”).
Robins too could offer insights, depending on where they were and how good you were at observing their behaviour. Má bhíonn an spideog faoi thor ar maidin, beidh sé ina lá fliuch (“If a robin hides beneath a bush in the morning, rain is on the way”). If you see them high in the trees, it means something else: Dea-shíon an spideog ar bharr na gcrann (“Good weather when the robin is high on the branches”).
Plants also offered signs, for those who knew how to look: clover leaves closing up meant impending rain, while a heavy crop of haws meant harsh winter, as did leaves withering too quickly in autumn.
Weather lore was an area of focus of the Irish Folklore Commission, established in the 1930s to collect the traditional knowledge of communities throughout the 26 counties of the Irish Free State. Between 1937 and 1939, 50,000 schoolchildren from 5,000 schools gathered folklore from their elders in a project known as the Schools’ Collection (Bailiúchán na Scol). Among the myriad topics covered were signs of good or bad weather, predictions based on the appearance of the sky, moon-related weather lore, animal behaviour as weather indicators, plant-related weather signs and traditional methods of weather forecasting.
On the Aran Islands, for example, the schoolchildren recorded that good weather was expected nuair a thagann an rón i ngar don talamh (“when the seal approaches the land”), nuair a bhíonn torann mór ag an bhfarraige (“when there’s a loud noise from the sea”) and nuair a bhíonn dath nádúrtha ar an bhfarraige (“when the sea has a natural hue to it”).
Auguries of rain included dath gorm a bheith ar an bhfarraige (“the sea appearing blue”), an rón ag dul i bhfad amach ins an bhfarraige (“the seal going far out to sea”), an trá a bheith bog (“the strand being soft”) and an talamh ó thuaidh a bhéith i ngar (“the land to the north appearing near”).
There were so many different signs that could predict weather recorded throughout the country that it’s hard to do them justice. There are many more than 99 proverbs and sayings covering the topic. A cat, for example, could reveal impending rain if it lay with its back to the fire, while its scratching the leg of a table or chair signalled a storm. If it washed its face before the fire, good weather could be expected, but crossing its paws meant a flood within three days. Dogs too were said to be forecasters: if they ate grass, it was a sign of fine weather; but if they drank water from a spring, bad weather was due.
In fact, most animals were thought to be able to reveal some aspect of impending weather. Pigs were believed to be able to see the wind, and so a pig staring closely ahead indicated a storm brewing. The same conclusion could be drawn from sheep gathering into valleys or huddling by fences. Yet when sheep, goats or cows were seen grazing on the hilltops, it meant fine weather.
Even insects and arachnids could predict the future. A spider retreating to the edges of its web was a sign of clement weather, while pond skaters out in great numbers meant rain. Children would keep “water flies” in a jar as a type of barometer. Since the presence of midges and flies were also predictors of rain, it’s no wonder that the sight of fish jumping for them was also a predictor of rain.
What has struck me most through this deep dive into weather words and lore is how ingeniously our ancestors tuned themselves to the subtle signals of the natural world. Without hygrometers or radar maps, they were able to read the flight of birds, the shifting light on sea and land, the moods of trees and animals, and from them, craft a nuanced meteorological lexicon. These weren’t mere superstitions; they were finely honed survival tools.
We might assume such words and wisdom are obsolete in the age of satellite forecasts and digital apps. But I’m not convinced. There might just come a point when we’ll need to know that if the sun appears yellow and dull, with heavy clouds near the earth, it means wet weather, or that a long spell of fine weather can be predicted from a bright sun that appears to be near the earth, especially if it is combined with a deep blue sky that seems very far away.
That’s why I devoted myself to writing Ninety-Nine Words for Rain (and One for Sun). It could turn out to be nothing more than a nostalgic homage to an older way of knowing. Yet, there’s also the possibility that in some not-so-distant future when power grids flicker and data streams falter, these words will serve as a practical guide to navigating the weather once more. Either way, it’s worth keeping in mind that it will rain hard if a leprechaun of the ditch comes into the kitchen. A leipreachán an chlaí was a colloquial term for a frog.
Ninety-Nine Words for Rain (and One for Sun) by Manchán Magan is published by Gill Books
