An atlas of one kind of weather
Who is getting married when it rains in the sun?
Languages all over the world have a name or a saying for rain that falls while the sun shines, and in more than half of the languages here somebody is up to something. A fox is getting married. The devil is beating his wife. A wolf is giving birth. Here are 796 sayings, from 139 languages, each with the page it was copied from.
the fox's wedding (bride's entry into the groom's house)
Japanese · Japan
Start with yours
What does your grandmother say?
Pick a language. You get its saying, then three from elsewhere: the one next door, the same story told far away, and a different story altogether.
Choose a language to see its saying.
Atlas
139 languages, one shower
Each dot is a saying found in a dictionary, a folklore collection or a scholar’s article, or, for a smaller share, on a reference site or from an informant. It sits where its source says it was heard. Click a dot to read it and the page it comes from.
Tap a dot. Zoom with + and −, then drag. Ctrl or ⌘ and the wheel also zoom.
The map could not load. The table at the end of the page lists every saying.
A dot is a record, not a census. A language is on the map because someone wrote the saying down and I could open the page; the blank parts are parts nobody searched, or whose sources would not load. A dot drawn as a ring means the source names only a country or a language area, so the dot sits in the middle of it.
The plots
A handful of plots
Sort the sayings by what happens in them and a few plots cover 77% of the records. The plot “The devil’s household” is the biggest, with 184 records in 27 languages; “A plain word” comes next, with 159 records in 72 languages.
Whose wedding?
In 50 languages somebody is getting married (43 of them in the test). In 108 of the 135 wedding records the couple are animals, most often foxes (39), jackals (26) and monkeys (9); in 27 records they are people, such as a widow, the poor or an old woman.
Births
The other animal plot is a birth. Who gives birth: a wolf (Armenian, Turkish, Persian and Uzbek); a hyena (Amharic and Oromo); a fox (Tigrinya and Uzbek); a doe (Spanish and Armenian); rabbits and other animals (Spanish and Persian); a leopard (Luganda); devils (Serbo-Croatian); a lion (Persian); jackals (Persian). In Low German and Maltese the child is a person: a baptism, a child born out of wedlock. 18 of the 36 records are informants’ accounts, mostly from a 1998 mailing-list survey, so I mark them as accounts, not as dictionary entries.
Neighbours
Do the plots follow the language, or the neighbours?
Matti Kuusi, the Finnish folklorist who wrote a 420-page book on this one saying, gathered about 3,000 variants and concluded that the great majority share one family tree. That is how a German reference work, Röhrich’s, reports his 1957 book; I could not open a copy of the book itself.
A test that could fail: take every pair of languages from different families and ask how often both have a given plot. If plots travel between neighbours, pairs 1,500 km apart or less should share them more often than pairs 5,000 km apart or more. Before running it I wrote down the test, the plots, the distances and the two plots for which I predicted a positive difference: weddings and the devil’s household. I set no significance threshold in advance; an earlier version of this page used p below 0.01, and I no longer do. Five plots were tested, so a single p near 0.04 means little. After the first run an outside check found duplicate records and languages; I fixed them and ran the test again on the corrected data, and these are the second-run numbers. I also added two checks: leaving out each language in turn, and counting only dictionary and study records.
● near, up to 1,500 km · ○ far, 5,000 km or moreDifference
122 languages with a verified record, 224 near pairs and 3,545 far pairs, all between different language families. “Pairs of the same family” below means any distance.
Weddings, as I predicted: near pairs share them in 21% of cases (48 of 224), far pairs in 8% (291 of 3,545); p = 0.005. Leaving out any one language, the worst case is p = 0.017 (without Basque); counting only dictionary and study records, p = 0.034. Languages of the same family share weddings in 17% of pairs, less than near neighbours of other families do.
The devil’s household, also as predicted: 7% against 0.06% (2 of 3,545 far pairs); p = 0.004. But it rests on two languages: Hungarian is in 12 of the 16 near pairs that share it and Estonian in 4. Without Hungarian, p = 0.16; counting only dictionary and study records, p = 0.011. And languages of one family share it at least as often as near neighbours do (9% against 7%), so for this plot the data cannot tell language from neighbourhood.
Witches, which I did not predict: 4% against 0, p = 0.038, and every near pair that shares them involves Estonian, while languages of one family share witches more often (7%) than near neighbours do; I do not lean on it. Births appear in only seven languages, too few for the test to say anything. Plain descriptive words show no neighbour effect (25% near, 33% far; p = 0.87); the test cannot tell whether they were carried or coined anew.
What this cannot show: the atlas records where sources were found, not where sayings exist. Europe and East Asia were searched hardest, a language counts as having a plot only if the page was found, and a language’s position stands for a whole region. Far pairs are mostly across continents, so any plot common in one well-searched region would give the same pattern; the result is compatible with contact, not proof of it.
How old
How old is it?
The oldest pages I found, by the date of the text, not of the saying. The first page found is a plain word; the first story found is nearly three centuries later, in another language.
- c. 1244日照雨
sun-shining rainA waka poem by Fujiwara no Mitsutoshi, the first example in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten. A plain description, no story yet. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, entry hideri-ame - 1527Quando faz sol e chove, dizem que casa a raposa
when it is sunny and it rains, they say the vixen is getting marriedFrom the comedy Eufrosina. Kuusi dates it 1527; Hendriks (2017) quotes it from the 1561 edition. I have not seen the play. Hendriks 2017, Als het regent en de zon schijnt · secondhand - 1538ragya
rain in sunshinePesti, Nomenclatura, as dated by the Hungarian etymological dictionary ÚESz for the sunshower sense. A plain word, and the same word names a plant blight. ÚESz, entry ragya - 1550Tis kermis inde hel
it is a fair in hellSymon Andriessoon, Duytsche Adagia, Antwerp, as quoted by Hendriks (2017). The oldest printed sunshower saying I found. Hendriks 2017 · secondhand - 1560chirapayani
to drizzle while the sun shinesDomingo de Santo Tomás, the first Quechua dictionary (Valladolid), under “lloviznar con sol” (my reading of a damaged scan). Still a plain word in the 2005 Cusco dictionary: chirapa, rain with sun. Santo Tomás, Lexicon (1560) - 1591Cuckolds go to heaven
said in rain and sunshineDated 1591 and 1623 by the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, as quoted by Hendriks (2017); I have not seen the dictionary. An English sunshower saying older than any English line about the devil's wife. Hendriks 2017 · secondhand - 1627Cuando llueve y hace sol, alegre está el pastor
when it rains and the sun is out, the shepherd is happyGonzalo Correas, Vocabulario de refranes, as cited by Hendriks (2017). Hendriks 2017 · secondhand - 1630Wenn die Sonn scheinet vnnd zugleich regnet, so ist in der Hölle Kirchweih
when the sun shines and it rains at the same time, it is the church fair in hellChristoph Lehmann, Florilegium Politicum, p. 334, no. 32, as given in Röhrich's reference work on German sayings. Röhrich, Lexikon der sprichwörtlichen Redensarten, “Kirmes” - 1668Donnerts und die Sonne scheint dazu: der Teufel schlägt seine Mutter
if it thunders and the sun shines too: the devil is beating his motherJohannes Praetorius, Blockes Berges Verrichtung, Leipzig, about thunder with sun. Röhrich holds that the one beaten was first the devil's wife, not his grandmother. Röhrich, “Kirmes” - early Qing下白雨，娶龍女
when white rain falls, someone marries the Dragon’s daughterQu Dajun, Guangdong Xinyu, which also names the rain: “white rain”, “white barge-in rain”. The same lines had been quoted in the Ming dynasty from a Sichuan song, where a sunshower is not certain. Guangdong Xinyu, juan 1 (Wikisource) - 1732狐の嫁入り
the fox’s weddingThe puppet play Dannoura Kabuto Gunki, the first example of the sunshower sense in the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten. The dictionary lists first another sense: a line of foxfire at night. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, entry kitsune no yomeiri - 1738the Devil was beating his Wife behind the Door
said of rain with sunJonathan Swift, Polite Conversation, as quoted by Hendriks (2017). An earlier English line, from Edward Ward (1703), has the devil doing it “in rainy weather when the sun shines”. Hendriks 2017 · secondhand - 1889A sun shower is caused by the devil whipping his wife
the raindrops presumably being her tearsJames Mooney, “Folk-Lore of the Carolina Mountains”, Journal of American Folk-Lore: the earliest American record in this atlas. Bergen (1896) calls the saying general in the United States. Mooney 1889
A date marks the first page found, not the age of the saying. Kuusi observed that the saying was already about as widespread at the start of the modern era as in the twentieth century, so the dates tell little about how it spread; that, too, is Röhrich’s report of him.
The sky
What is actually happening up there?
Meteorologists describe a few set-ups, and none of the sources I rely on says which is commonest (Wikipedia says wind-blown rain “usually”, on the strength of a local radio glossary). Rain can be carried past the edge of its cloud by the wind. A shower cloud can move on or fade while its drops are still falling. And, according to Wikipedia, the sun’s angle can let it shine in under a single shower cloud passing overhead.
Two of those decide how wide the strip is where you get rain and sun together: how far the wind carries a drop while it falls, and how far the low sun reaches in under the cloud’s edge. The calculator adds them. Shower clouds often have their base within a kilometre or two of the ground; near the ground a 2 mm drop falls about 6 m/s.
Drag the figure along the ground.
A calculation, not a measurement: steady wind from the cloud base down, a straight cloud edge, rain falling right up to it, no evaporation. Fall speeds from the formula in R. Stull, Practical Meteorology (2017), chapter 7.
The rainbow needs the sun below 42° and you with your back to it. The World Meteorological Organization’s Cloud Atlas puts it this way: if the sun is higher than 42°, the primary bow will be below the horizon.
In English
In English: the devil and his wife
In the American collections the saying is almost always the same one: the devil is beating his wife. Röhrich says it dominates the whole English-speaking world; the nineteenth-century British folklore collections I found give weather rhymes and fairies instead, though the devil appears in English writers of 1703 and 1738. An older English saying, “cuckolds go to heaven”, is dated 1591. The oldest American record here is from the Carolina mountains in 1889, and a collector in 1896 called it general in the United States.
In the Harvard Dialect Survey, an online questionnaire with set answers, 10,691 respondents, mostly American, were asked what they call rain with the sun out. 55% had no word for it and 34% said “sunshower”; 6% said the devil is beating his wife, and the animal weddings scored under 0.2% each. South Africa has its own: the monkey’s wedding, cited in the Dictionary of South African English from the Cape Times of 29 November 1949. The dictionary thinks it probably comes, ultimately, from the Portuguese “casamento de raposa”, the vixen’s wedding; Zulu or Dutch are other possible routes.
Recorded in English, oldest first
- Western North Carolina mountains, USA · 1889
“A sun shower is caused by the devil whipping his wife, the raindrops presumably being her tears.”
James Mooney, Folk-Lore of the Carolina Mountains · source - Southern St Andrew, Jamaica · 1904
“When the sun is shining during a shower the devil and his wife are fighting.”
signed 'F.', Folklore of the Negroes of Jamaica (continued), Collectanea · source - Middleburg, Vance County, North Carolina, USA · 1912–43
“If it rains when the sun is shining, the "bad man" is whipping his wife, and it will rain again tomorrow.”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7: Popu · source - Wilson and Lucama, Wilson County, North Carolina, USA · 1912–43
“If it has been raining all day, and the sun shines again before setting, the "bad man" is beating his wife”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 · source - Leland, Brunswick County, North Carolina, USA · 1912–43
“stick a pin in the ground, place your ear to the pin, and you can hear the devil and his wife quarreling.”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 · source - Southern United States · 1926
“the devil is whipping his wife around the stump with a frying pan”
Newbell Niles Puckett, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro · source - Adams County, Illinois, USA · 1935
“The sun shining during a rain means that the devil is whipping his wife.”
Harry Middleton Hyatt, Folk-Lore from Adams County Illinois · source - Adams County, Illinois, USA · 1935
“If sunshine, rain and a rainbow are seen at the same time, the devil is fighting with his wife.”
Harry Middleton Hyatt, Folk-Lore from Adams County Illinois · source - Adams County, Illinois, USA · 1935
“Stick a black-headed pin into the clay and lower your ear to the pinhead and you will hear them.”
Harry Middleton Hyatt, Folk-Lore from Adams County Illinois · source - Grainger and Jefferson counties, Tennessee, USA · 1939
“The devil's whuppin' his wife.”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 (quot · source - Ozarks, Missouri/Arkansas, USA · 1947
“the Devil is a-whippin' his wife”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 (citi · source - Kentucky, USA · 1955
“the devil is whipping his children; the devil is whipping his grandma”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 (citi · source - Oklahoma, USA · 1964
“When the sun shines while it rains, it means the devil is beating his wife behind the door.”
Wayland D. Hand (ed.), The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 · source
Some sayings describe violence or use a label that is offensive today; they are given as the source gives them.
Sources
Every saying, with its page
796 records. Search by word, language, place or source, or filter by plot. Each row opens on the map, and each source link opens the page the saying was copied from.
| Language | Saying | Meaning | Where | Source |
|---|
How this was made
- I searched dictionaries, folklore collections, dialect atlases and scholarly articles region by region. Every saying here is copied from a page I could open, and the page is linked. Where a scan was too damaged to quote, the card says so.
- Each record has a tier, shown on its card: dictionary or folklore collection; scholarly study; reference site or secondary compilation, meaning a Wikipedia or Wiktionary page (often the English Wiktionary) or a saying quoted secondhand from a survey such as Hendriks’s; or an informant’s account, mostly from a 1998 survey on the LINGUIST List. 94 records rest on the reference tier, the weakest one the test counts; informants’ accounts are left out of the test, and the check that also leaves out the reference tier is shown with it.
- English Wikipedia and listicles gave me leads, not sources (the English Wiktionary is cited, as a reference site). Three lines that circulate as sunshower sayings were left out as jokes or misreadings, without separate checking: “liquid sunshine”, an Argentine “monkey at Mirtha Legrand’s wedding”, and a Vietnamese song credit.
- Where a place is named by the source, the dot is there. Where only a country or a language area is given, the dot is a ring in the middle of it.
- The translations are literal and mine. I could not open a copy of Matti Kuusi’s 1957 book, the main study of this saying; what I say of it comes from two summaries that are named.
What is missing
Africa, Central Asia, the Pacific and most Indigenous languages are thin, because dictionaries there were hard to reach or not searched. Austrian and Bavarian dialect dictionaries were not searched, and the Swiss one only by a single full-text search; most forms from there come from German reference works. Yiddish, Icelandic, Thai, Burmese and Khmer are missing for the same reason. Silence in this atlas is not proof that nothing is said.
Compiled and written by Marius Comper. Language data: Glottolog (CC BY 4.0). Map: Natural Earth.