Snow

: NATURE SONGS
: Popular Rhymes And Nursery Tales

In Yorkshire, when it begins to snow, the boys exclaim,--



Snow, snow faster,

The cow's in the pasture.



When the storm is concluding, or when they wish it to give over, they

sing,--



Snow, snow, give over,

The cow's in the clover!



White is the rural generic term for snow, and black for rain. Thus,

in the well-known p overb,--



February fill the dyke,

Be it black or be it white;

But if it be white,

It's the better to like.



The Anglo-Saxon and Northern literatures are full of similar poetical

synonymes. A common nursery riddle conceals the term snow by the image

of a white glove, and another in the same manner designates rain as a

black glove:



Round the house, and round the house,

And there lies a white glove in the window.[38]



Round the house, and round the house,

And there lies a black glove in the window.



[Footnote 38: A copy of this riddle occurs in MS.

Harl. 1962, of the seventeenth century.]