“As fat as moles.”

“You’ve gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick,” was a common expression when I was a school boy, when anyone was relating something which was incorrect.

  Come day, Go day, God sends Sunday. 
  Sunday moon, flood before it is out. 
  Singing before breakfast on Monday, cry before the week is out. 
  As Friday so Sunday. 
  Friday is either the fairest or foulest day of the week. 
  Sun always shines on Saturday little or much.

    Saturday new moon and Sunday full,
    Never good and never wull.

January.

On corner walls,
A glittering row,
Hang pit irons less for use than show,
With horse-shoe brightened as a spell,
Witchcraft’s evil powers to quell.

                                                  John Clare.

The first thing on New Year’s morning, open your Bible and the first verse your finger or thumb touches that verse, will betoken what will occur during the year.

On New Year’s morning if a sprig of green is placed in the Bible, the verse on which it lies fortells the events of the year.

It is lucky for a dark man to enter the house first on New Year’s morning, and I know a man who used to see the Old Year out and the New Year in with a friend who always arranged for a very dark man to wait for him outside his own house until he returned.  The man then entered the house first, and after a glass of something warm and good wishes, he left.

It is also a custom on New Year’s Eve for some people to hide a sovereign or half-sovereign outside the house and when leaving the house on New Year’s morning to pick up the piece of gold which is said to ensure their having gold in their pockets all that year.

Whatever is done on New Year’s day, you will do throughout the year.

As the weather is the first twelve days of January so it will be for the twelve months.  Each day’s weather is taken for the corresponding month.

Plough Monday, First Monday after Epiphany.  This custom has almost passed away.  Only two lots of men were seen in Peterborough this year, the Stores no doubt not encouraging them as the tradesmen did in the old times.  In Northampton, in 1910, I saw numerous groups of children with blackened faces and grotesque dresses going about the streets on this day as Plough witches.

  When the day lengthens,
  Then the cold strengthens,

On Old Christmas day (7th January new style) the day has lengthened a cock’s skip.

January White.

If the grass grows in January it grows the worse for it all the year.

      St. Paul’s day, 25th January.

In some verses dedicated To all my worthy Masters and Mistresses, by John Small, Bell-man, Stamford, 1850, is the following:—­

  If Saint Paul’s day be fair and clear,
  It doth betide a happy year;
  If blustering winds do blow aloft,
  Then wars will trouble our realm full oft,
  And if by chance to snow or rain,
  Then will be dear all sorts of grain.