Weather is not just the preserve of popular music

IT was extremely interesting to read about what researchers get up to in what has been described as their spare time (“Stars of pop music are singing about all sorts of weather”, The Herald, July 7).

There is little new, however, about the weather being a subject of verse, song or narrative.

Let us consider a few examples from the works of Shakespeare. In Sonnet 18 he asks the question: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day ?” In Richard III, Gloucester declares: “Now is the winter of our discontent” and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream speaks of “contagious fogs”. In Macbeth the three witches question when they will meet again in “thunder, lightning or in rain?” Scotland’s national bard , Robert Burns, in The Cotter’s Saturday Night describes the November chill blowing “wi’ angry sugh” and the “short’ning winter-day” being near a close.

In Tam O’ Shanter he writes of the severe weather outside the drinking establishment where Tam was ensconced:

The wind blew as ‘twad blawn its last;

The rattling showers rose on the blast;

The speedy gleams the darkness swallowed;

Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow’d

In this country we spend an inordinate amount of time in discussion of the weather. That should not come as a great surprise because it is not unknown for us, as they say, to have four seasons on the same day. However, with regard to reading and hearing descriptions of it, I readily concede that I am more of an admirer of Shakespeare and Burns than, with all due respect, Cobby and Buie, Bob Dylan, and the Hollies. Perhaps, a suitable conclusion would be to observe: to each his own. Ian W Thomson, 38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie.