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To Elizabeth Roberts
Otterbourn
Whitsuneve [14 May 1853]

MS Huntington Library: Yonge Letters

My dear Madam
I have no time for more than to enclose the June Holidays and thank you for the last received, I don’t think we Hampshire folks are good at traditions we have none of St Swithin but such as are common to all the world. There is a curious little old Church dedicated to him, over a gate way. I believe, in spite of this rain, he is buried at the back of the Altar in the Cathedral in a place called by the Vergers the Holy Hole. Here we dread a wet St Swithin, but in Gloucestershire they desire it and call it the Christening of the Apples1

Yours sincerely
C M Yonge

1There is a folk tradition that if it rains on 15 July, the festival of St. Swithin (d. 863), bishop of Winchester, it will go on to rain for the next 40 days as well.

Cite this letter


The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge(1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

URL to this Letter is: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/3010/to-elizabeth-roberts-26

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