Pink-eyed Pimpernels and Peacocks

Write about a character looking for a sign.

Pink-eyed Pimpernels and Peacocks 

The word ‘sign’ means a ‘gesture or motion of the hand,’ and comes from the Old French signe, meaning ‘sign’ or ‘mark’ and from the Latin signum, meaning, ‘identifying mark, token, indication, symbol’. It also means ‘proof, military standard, ensign, a signal, an omen, sign on the heavens, or constellation’. 

I grew up on a farm in County Derry, and I suppose from an early age, I heard my father talking about the weather. A farmer needs to be in tune with the seasons in order to run a farm. I also heard sayings like ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning’. The first time I ever heard the word sign, was when my grandmother recited this poem to us. It was called ‘Signs of Rain’, by Dr. Edward Jenner. There were forty signs altogether including, the hollow wind beginning to blow, the clouds looking black, soot falling down the chimney, spiders peeping from their cobwebs, and the ‘pink-eyed pimpernel’ closing. I had no idea what a ‘pink-eyed pimpernel’ was but it sounded so mysterious and poetical. I was later to learn that this pimpernel was known as the ‘poor man’s barometer’ or the ‘shepherd’s weather glass’. The poem also said that the ducks would quack loudly and the peacocks would cry. 

‘Loud quacks the duck, the peacocks cry’ was a line that really struck me. We had ducks and all I remember is them quacking from time to time but I had never seen a peacock or heard it cry. Apparently the poem was written to explain the poet’s reasons for turning down an invitation to go for a walk:

‘T will surely rain; I see with sorrow,

Our jaunt must be put off to-morrow.

I once heard that ‘if spiders weave their webs in the shelter of doorways and windowsills’ you can expect bad weather. However, ‘if they spin their web on the tops of bushes, in the early spring’ you can expect good weather. I also read that if hens wander away from their normal roosts, and go out into the meadows, then this is a portent of good weather and conversely if they will stay closer to their roosts, bad weather is coming. 

Nowadays we rely on weather satellites to predict the weather and because of this we can find out if a storm is coming. I read that:

A 7-day forecast is right about 80% of the time, a 5-day forecast is usually accurate 90% of the time and a 10-day forecast is only right about half the time. 

I enjoyed listening to this interview which I heard on a BBC Radio Four programme called, ‘The Last Bus to Serendip’ which was presented by Dr Aleks Krotoski, a journalist and psychologist, whose avowed aim was to discover what serendipity was and why we need it more than ever. She said serendipity was like a happy accident and that ‘we’re all like lightning conductors to everyone else’s lightning’. She interviewed James Burke, a science historian who is renowned for making connections between unconnected events. The example he gave was how Mozart developed the helicopter in ‘seven jumps’:

He starts off with Mozart stealing The Marriage of Figaro from Beaumarchais.Beaumarchais not only wrote plays, he was a champion of American independence and he helped to get funds for the revolution and then became a great friend of Jefferson. Jefferson tried to get Capital punishment repealed and he was influenced by an Italian called Beccaria who wrote a book on penology and he based his book on Spurzheim’s work on phrenology. Follen, a social reformer was influenced by Spurzheim’s work and he stabbed someone. He was called before Hoffmann, a judge who also wrote horror stories and Edgar Allen Poe stole a few of them and after that Rachmaninoff stole a few from Poe and the final connection was made when Rachmaninoff gave money to Sokorsky, a fellow Russian immigrant who then developed the helicopter. So as Burke argues, ‘Mozart developed the helicopter in seven jumps’.                                                                   

The word ‘serendipity’ was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 and he said it was derived from a Persian fairy tale, ‘The Three Princes of Serendip’ who possessed amazing analytical skills and were able to solve mysteries. The online Cambridge Dictionary defines serendipity as ‘the fact of finding interesting or valuable things by chance’. 

I recently listened to a TED talk by Joanna McEwen on raising your vibration to increase your serendipity. She argued that:

Whilst life throws many events our way – some positive, some challenging – we have within ourselves, the power and possibility to create an environment that enhances the probability of these fortunate events that make our lives a little more plain sailing and a lot more fun.

I suppose I would call myself an optimistic character, and never really got too hung up on signs. I would say that I agree with sentiments that Joanna McEwan expressed when she argued that we can increase our vibration in order to increase our serendipity. Sometimes in life you just have to make the best of things, even in trying circumstances.

In my childhood, signs were attributed to weather forecasting but when I began studying English Literature signs were used in respect of character analysis. For example, in The Great Gatsby Nick declares:

Unlike Gatsby and Tom Buchanan, I had no girl whose disembodied face floated along the dark cornices and blinding signs, and so I drew up the girl beside me, tightening my arms.

Basically Nick, the novel’s narrator says that he does not idealise Jordan, his girlfriend. However, he points out that Tom and Gatsby idealise Daisy in this love triangle.

At the opening of the novel, Nick says:

I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realised by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon.

Unintentionally, Nick is drawn into the love triangle, despite his best efforts not to get involved.  

So as humans we rely on signs for predicting the weather and also foretelling what will happen in a novel, or maybe even in our own lives.