Martinmas

A spell of mild weather around Martinmas is traditionally known as St Martin's Summer. Martinmas falls on November 11th and, in practical terms,  Martinmas was the most important festival between Michaelmas and Christmas, the harvest and winter quarter days. It marked a shift in patterns of work, when people paid taxes, took up winter quarters - or, like Alfred the Great, began a new reading project.

St Martin’s Day is the feast day of the saint, Martin of Tours, particularly noted as 11th minute of 11th hour of the eleventh day, eleventh month.  In England, as well as the Saints day, the 11th was pastorally known as the first day of winter.

Poetically, the phrase can also be used for a time of happiness or love which comes late in life - sunshine in the autumn of old age. 

Robert Louis Stevenson's poem St Martin's Summer explores the themes of nostalgia and uncertainty.

As swallows turning backward
When half-way o'er the sea,
At one word's trumpet summons
They came again to me -
The hopes I had forgotten
Came back again to me.

I know not which to credit,
O lady of my heart!
Your eyes that bade me linger,
Your words that bade us part -
I know not which to credit,
My reason or my heart.

But be my hopes rewarded,
Or be they but in vain,
I have dreamed a golden vision,
I have gathered in the grain -
I have dreamed a golden vision,
I have not lived in vain.