Saturday, July 3, 2010

Sunshower or The bear's getting married

Today I experienced this wonderful moment. Me and my sister were going back home when suddenly it started to rain. The sun was shining, the clouds were not very dark and still it was pouring..When we have this phenomenon, we say the bear's getting married.
I looked it up and this is what I found on Wikipedia. I want to hear from you, though.







Animals

* In South African English, it is referred to as a "monkey’s wedding," a loan translation of the Zulu umshado wezinkawu, a wedding for monkeys.
In Afrikaans, it is referred to as jakkalstrou, jackals wedding, or also Jakkals trou met wolf se vrou as dit reën en die son skyn flou, meaning "Jackal marries Wolf's wife when it rains and the sun shines faintly."

* In Hindi it is also called “the jackal’s wedding.”

* In Bengali it is called a devil's wedding.

* In Arabic, the term is “the rats are getting married.”

* In Korea, a male tiger gets married.

* In Eritrea the traditional belief is that the hyena is giving birth.

* In various African languages, leopards are getting married.

* In Kenya, hyenas are getting married.

* One animal, the fox, crops up all over the world, from Kerala to Japan (Japan also refers to it as 'Kitsune (the fox) takes a bride,') to Armenia; there’s even an English dialect term, “the foxes’ wedding,” known from the south west of England.

In Calabria, Italy, it is said that “when it rains with sun, the foxes are getting married.”

* In Bulgaria there is a saying about the bear marrying.

* In Tamil Nadu, South India tamizh speaking people say that the fox and the crow/raven are getting married.

Devils

In the United States, particularly the South, a sunshower is said to show that "the devil is beating his wife"; a regional variant from Tennessee is "the devil is kissing his wife".

In French, the phrase is "Le diable bat sa femme et marie sa fille" (i.e. "the devil is beating his wife and marrying his daughter").

In German, the variation is "Wenn's regnet und die Sonne scheint, so schlägt der Teufel seine Großmutter: er lacht und sie weint" (i.e. "When it's raining and the sun shines, the devil is beating his grandmother: he laughs and she cries").

Similar phrases occur in Hungary and Holland.

The lower Caribbean has a variant, "The devil and his wife are fighting for a bone".
In the Netherlands people say: "Het is kermis in de hel" (i.e. "There is funfair in hell").

In Piedmont, Italy, the phrase is "Al diau al bat la fumna", which, in Piedmontese, means "the devil is beating his wife".
[edit] Witches

In Polish, the saying is that "when the sun is shining and the rain is raining, the witch is making butter". In Spain, the witches are getting married.

In dialects of north-eastern Italy (Veneto), a variation concerns "witches" and "combing": piova e sole, le strighe se pètena ("rain and sun, the witches are combing their hair"), piova e sole, la striga se fa le coe ("rain and sun, the witch is plaiting her hair").

A further variation is found in Catalan folklore, in a song: plou i fa sol, les bruixes es pentinen, plou i fa sol, les bruixes porten dol ("it rains and sun is shining, witches comb their hair, it rains and sun is shining, the witches are mourning").
For Filipinos, "elves are getting married", or "tikbalang" (half-horse, half-men) and a "kapre" are getting married, while in Greece it is the poor.

In Lithuanian, the phenomenon is described as "orphans' tears," where the sun is the grandmother drying those tears.
In Russian, it is called грибной дождь (gribnoy dozhd'), "mushroom rain," as such conditions are considered favorable to growing mushrooms. It is also often referred to as слепой дождь (slepoy dozhd'}, which literally translates as "blind rain".

In Brazil a common saying is "Sol e chuva, casamento de viúva. Chuva e sol, casamento de espanhol" (i.e. "Sun and rain, a widow's marriage. Rain and sun, a spanish man's marriage.).

Really amazing! Havent thought of this before...

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for teaching me something I did not know before. Being a mad lover of rain, I usually try to listen to the drops drumming me a name with their sound while falling down.
Please have a great Sunday.

daily athens

Dani said...

Dear ρομπερτ, you live, you learn.
I edited the text and saw that (in the wikipedia article)Greece is mentioned, namely people say, the poor are getting married. Is this true?
I found this very interesting.
Thank YOU!
Have a sunny Sunday!

Kaori said...

Wow, so interesting! I had no idea we had an expression for that in Japan! What a great post and lovely photos ;-)

Anonymous said...

This was most interesting to read, thank you !
We don`t have any saying for this thing, at least I don`t know it.
Or perhaps when we get the sun and rain in springtime we are saying " the summer is coming" :)

Thank you also for your comment on my side!

Clytie said...

I have never heard of any of these terms before! I didn't know the phenomenon had a name!

Dani said...

Im now puzzled. Hmm...Anyhow, I wish you all experience this amazing phenomenon. It's so great, but i dont understand why its connected to the devil, the witch..

Thank you for the lovely comments!
Have a sunny Monday!

sonia a. mascaro said...

Great photos! Very interesting post. Love seeing the phenomenon. Yes, in Brazil we say Sol e chuva, casamento de viúva. Chuva e sol, casamento de espanhol.

Have a nice weekend.

Beth Niquette said...

Living in Oregon, this often happens--I didn't know it had a name, or so many interesting ideas about it.

I like the name Sun shower. I'd never heard of it before.

Thank you for your post--I totally enjoyed reading about this, and your photos are wonderful.

Veronica said...

My mom and dad would always say "se estan casando las brujas" or the "witches are getting married". I heard that alot as a kid and I say it all the time if there is a sunshower happening. Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy but this is a saying in Spain and so I am following tradition. :)