Yesterday, as we know - of course you knew! - was the feast-day of St Maurus. This good and holy man was born about AD 510, the son of Equitius, a Roman nobleman, and when he was about 12 years old, his father placed him in the care of Benedict, the founder of the order that still bears the latter's name.
There, we are told, Maurus advanced in piety and learning, and became a model of perfection to his brethren, most especially in the virtue of obedience. He also learned some quite extraordinary skills.
When St Placid, for example, another inmate of the monastery at Subiaco, went one day to draw some water from the lake, he carelessly fell in. Maurus, having the advantage of a vision of the happening in his cell, hastened to the lake, and scarcely pausing at the edge, walked upon the waters as if on dry land. He seized the no doubt by now decidedly unplacid Placid by the hair, and dragged him to the shore.
Maurus ended up in France, where he founded the famous abbey of Glanfeuil. He ruled over it as abbot for 38 years, before expiring, with full ecclesiastical honours, on January 15th, 584. His importance to meteorology, however, lies not in the admirable qualities of the saint himself, but in the coincidence that on his feastday 636 years ago, there occurred one of the greatest storms, allegedly, in Irish history. It is remembered as "St Maury's Wind".
The late 1300s in Ireland were remarkable for the abundant rainfall, and also for a succession of fierce storms which caused frequent and widespread devastation in countryside.
One of the worst of these, St Maury's Wind, occurred on January 15th, 1362, and caused great damage, particularly in Dublin. It has been immortalised in an epic poem by one John Harding - a poem, it must be said, which must be appreciated more for its historical insight than for its literary merit or its author's rhyming skill:
In that same year - `twas on Saint Maury's Day -
A great wind did greatly gan the people all affraye;
So dreadful was it then, and perilous,
And `specially was the wind so boisterous,
That stone walls, steeples, houses, barns and trees
Were all blown down in diverse far countrees.
Another contemporary chronicler described St Maury's Wind a little more succinctly as "a vehement wind, which shook and threw to the ground steeples, chimneys and other high buildings, trees beyond number, divers belfries and the bell tower of the Friars Preachers in Dublin".
By either version, it was quite a storm.