April Showers Bring May Flowers

[Bullgrit]

"April showers bring May flowers." I've heard this saying all my life. But I've only lived in the U.S. south.

Have you ever heard this outside the southern U.S.? Is this a very regional saying?

Bullgrit

 

[Dragonwriter]

It's a pretty common saying anywhere you get rain in April and flowers in May. Which is to say just about everywhere.

I hear it plenty here in Southern California.

The phrase dates back (in one form or another) to Chaucer and likely before. Here's a quick copy of the original text and a translation:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veine in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour,

When the sweet showers of April have pierced
The drought of March, and pierced it to the root,
and every vein is bathed in that moisture
whose quickening force will engender the flower;

April showers, engender the flower. There's the written root of the phrase.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, very common up here in the midwest.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Common in New England, too.

 

[Rhun]

"April showers bring May flowers." I've heard this saying all my life. But I've only lived in the U.S. south.

Have you ever heard this outside the southern U.S.? Is this a very regional saying?

Fairly common here in Utah, and we get plenty of precipitation in April. With that said, I have flowers start coming up in my yard in March every year, despite the snow we are still getting.

 

[Klaus]

Kinda reversed here in the Southern hemisphere: "the waters of March close the summer".

 

[Umbran]

It is likely to be common among folks of a certain age nationwide, due to the 1962 Bugs Bunny cartoon, "Wet Hare", which played regularly well into the 1970s, and begins with Bugs singing the song, "April Showers".

YouTube - Wet Hare -- 1962

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Actually, that is a very commonly mis-repeated variant of an ancient saying, the original wording of which was:

"April showers bring May SUPERPOWERS!"

That's absolutely, 100% historically accurate.

 

[fba827]

it's common in the Maryland/Virginia/D.C. area too
(heck, i remember elementry school boards that would have this plastered on during april)

 

[Bullgrit]

OK, well, it's not as regionally restricted as I thought.

While contemplating our current raininess, it dawned on me that other parts of the U.S. can have drastically different climates. For instance, take Arizona's dryness and Washington's (state) wetness. Is April particularly wet (or less dry) for them? Is May particularly known for blooming flowers? Would natives of those areas have heard the saying?

And, of course, it probably only rhymes in English, so if other nations even have the same climate patterns, they may not have a saying for it.

Bullgrit