PERHAPS the most evocative pen-picture of a red sunset is that drawn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in The Song of Hiawatha, when the crimson sky over Gitche Gumee, Big-Sea-Water, is pointed out to the young warrior by an old Indian woman called Nokomis:
Fiercely the red sun descending, Burned his way along the heavens, Set the sky on fire behind him, As war parties, when retreating, Burn the prairies on their war-trail.
But the image is a common one in all cultures and is almost invariably seen as a sign of good, settled weather. By the same token, as we know: "A red sky in the morning is the shepherd's warning". The crimson sky is top of the agenda in any catalogue of weather-lore.
The Greek philosopher Theophrastus, for example, knew all about it as long ago as 300 BC. "The plainest sign of rain," he wrote, "is that which is to be observed in the morning when the sky appears red before the sun rises.
And it was also a popular portent in Biblical times - according to St Matthew the Lord reminds the Pharisees that "when it is evening, ye say it will be fair-weather for the sky is red; and in the morning, it will be foul weather today because the sky is red and lowring".
Shakespeare, as you might expect, describes it more poetically. In Richard III, he strikes an optimistic note, and has his hero musing thus:
The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And by the bright track of his fiery car
Gives token of a goodly day tomorrow.
But in Venus and Adonis, the narrator is in a sombre mood as he describes:
A red morn that ever yet be-
tokened
Wreck to the seaman, tem-
pest to the field,
Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds
Gust and foul flaws to herds-
men and to herds.
The saying is even to be found in our own Irish folklore, where redness in the various sectors of the sky is analysed in detail:
Dearg anuas, fearthainn is fuacht;
Dearg anoir fearthainn is sioc;
Dearg anios fearthainn is gaoth;
Dearg aniar, tuineadh is grian.
The significance of the red in Ireland, it seems, is just to tell us what other unpleasantness we may expect to accompany the inevitable rain - only in the western sky can a touch of crimson be observed with any optimism.