(Vol. v., p. 242.)
Your correspondent μ asks whether any traces of such a popular
belief exist at present.
In the Highlands of Scotland, where at this season the heather is burned
by the shepherds, the belief is general among the people; I may add that
it is a belief founded on observation. In Australia a hot wind blowing
from the north caused (in part at least) by bush fires in the interior,
is invariably succeeded by rain from the opposite part.
It would not be difficult, perhaps, to assign a satisfactory reason for
a meteorological fact, which by a misnomer is dubbed "Folk Lore."