kittyslave
rain
As far as we know, James Howell was the first person to actually earn a living entirely through writing in the English language. Oh, he’d had some minor part-time positions, but for the most part he was a pamphleteer — the 17th century equivalent of a blogger. Howell came very close to having an actual job once; he’d been offered a position as a secretary to the Privy Council. But the English Civil War broke out, which was terribly annoying. Howell decided to write a book instead.
Dodona’s Grove was an allegorical novel in which notable historical figures were presented as a typology of trees. As improbable as it sounds, the novel sold well enough for Howell to write other novels. Happily, Howell is best known for having written the first book of English grammar and for his small book of English proverbs.
We still use Howell’s proverbs today. If you’ve ever said “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” you were quoting Howell. What does all this have to do with the photograph above? Howell is also the author of this: Raine raine goe to Spain: faire weather come againe. Of course, we’re more familiar with the modern version:
Rain rain go away.
Come again another day.
The sentiment can also be applied to snow.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
