AS WE noted yesterday in Weather Eye, the hallowed custom of eating goose at Martinmas, November 11th, allegedly came about because the hiding saint had killed and cooked a goose that noisily betrayed his presence. He was attempting at the time to avoid those who wished to elevate him to the See of Tours. But in fact, the eating of a goose is more closely associated with the feast of Michaelmas some six weeks earlier, and that practice, too, has associations with the weather.
On September 29th, the feast of St Michael, in 1588, Queen Elizabeth of England stopped for the night with one Sir Neville Umphreyville, and for their evening meal they had a roast of goose. Now 1588 was the year of the Armada, and just as the queen and Umphreyville had finished off their succulent meal, a messenger rushed in to announce the destruction of the Spanish fleet by vicious gales in the Blasket Sound in Co Kerry. Her majesty was moved to proclaim that "Henceforth shall a goose commemorate this famous victory".
Elizabeth might also on that occasion have taken the opportunity to obtain a long range forecast for the months ahead. This information, they say, is contained in the breastbone of the Michaelmas goose, and can be accessed by holding the bone up to the light. If it appears dark, a hard winter is on the way; if it is mottled, the season will be variable; and if the bone is almost transparent, the coming winter will be mild.
Sometimes however, the weather can be such that we resemble geese ourselves. When a chilling breeze affects us suddenly, we acquire a rough, pimply condition of the skin that is known as goose flesh. The phenomenon has its origins in the fact that our evolutionary ancestors had furry coats to keep them warm when times were cold. The usefulness of a furry coat, however, depends largely on the insulating properties of the air trapped between the hairs. It follows that the thicker the layer of hair, the thicker the layer of air, and the less heat an animal loses from its body.
Now the effective thickness of a layer of fur can be increased by altering the angle that the individual hairs make with the skin. To facilitate a more vertical orientation, therefore, a small muscle attached to the root of each hair contracts to make the hair stand up when stimulated by a drop in temperature. In human beings this mechanism has long since lost its intended function of conserving heat, but survives as the reflex action to the cold that gives us goose pimples.