File:Clavis calendaria; or, A compendious analysis of the calendar, illustrated with ecclesiastical, historical, and classical anecdotes (1812) (14765602894).jpg

Identifier: claviscalendari01brad (find matches)
Title: Clavis calendaria; or, A compendious analysis of the calendar, illustrated with ecclesiastical, historical, and classical anecdotes
Year: 1812 (1810s)
Authors: Brady, John, d. 1814
Subjects: Calendar
Publisher: London, Longman
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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inscience, and manifest advantages in point of intel-lectual acquirement, are not yet wholly eradicated. In the highlands of Scotland they form theirprognostic or presage of weather on a supersti-tious, but innocent conceit, that the year will begoverned, as to its general fluctuation, by thestate of the twelve days beginning from the 31stof December: thus if the 31st of Decembershould be fair, so will the ensuing January; if the1st of January should be fair, so will the succeed-ing February; if the 2d of January, &c. so willMarch be found, and so throughout the year.Various persons still imphcitly believe in theseauguries; but it is to be hoped the weather ingeneral in the highlands will be found rathermore favourable throughout the different months,than can well be expected from an observationmade on the days they have selected in the verydepth of the winter season. The etymology of the word almanac has been,perhaps, the subject of more dispute than that of See Vol. I. page 43.
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43 any term admitted into our language. With thesingle exception of Verstigan, all our lexico-graphers derive the first syllable al from the arti-cle definite of the Arabic, which signifies Me; butthe roots of the remaining syllables are variouslyaccounted for, some taking it from the Greekl^avuxog—a lunary circle; others from the Hebrew,manach, to count; Johnson takes it from theGreek, jw-r^v, a month ; but why the first syllableshould be in one language, which these autho-rities agree in, and the two last in any other lan-guage, is not easy to comprehend. Whether,therefore, the Saxons originally took their termfrom the Arabic, either wholly or in part, Ver-stigan seems the most to be relied on: They,he says, alluding to our antient Saxon ancestors, used to engrave upon certaine squared sticks, about a foot in length, or shorter or longer as they pleased, the courses of the moones of the whole yeere, whereby they could alwaies cer-* tainely tell when the new moones, full moones, anclaviscalendari01brad

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