_Borrowing Days._--In a communication in "N. & Q." (Vol. v., p. 278.)
regarding Sir Alexander Cumming, there occurs the following statement:
"The last three days of March are called the 'Borrowing Days' in
Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very
blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would
wish to _borrow_ three days from the month of April in exchange
for those last three days of the month of March."
I remember to have heard, when a child, in the north of Ireland, a far
more poetical, if not a more rational, explanation of what is
undoubtedly a very common interchange of character between March and
April, for a few successive days towards the close of the former, and
commencement of the latter, month. "Give me (says March) three days of
warmth and sunshine for my poor young lambs whilst they are yet too
tender to bear the roughness of my wind and rain, and you shall have
them repaid when the wool is grown." An attentive observer of the
weather will seldom find the recurrence of this accommodation loan to
fail. This day (the 24th) and the two last days have been of a
temperature very unusual so early in the year, and I have little doubt
that before the 1st of May there will be a _per contrà_ of three
successive days of cold and bluster carried to the _credit_ side of
April's account with Æolus and Co.