What The Heck Is Sheila’s Brush?
Winter in Trinity, NL
St. Patrick’s day is kind of a big deal in Newfoundland. It’s a time for parties, music and celebrating the island’s strong Irish heritage. Somewhere amid the festivities, though, the talk is bound to turn to the weather, specifically Sheila’s Brush.
What is Sheila’s Brush?
Sheila's Brush is a Newfoundland weather superstition. Its a winter storm believed to follow on the heels of St. Patrick’s Day (March 17).
‘Brush’, according to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English is a Newfoundland word for ‘stormy weather.’ In that context, it’s not in use much outside of the phrase Sheila’s Brush these days, but the entry in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English suggests it was once more common.
Remembered In A Rhyme
The snow associated with St. Patrick’s Day and Sheila’s Brush was perpetuated in an old rhyme:
Patty walks the shores around
And Sheila follows in a long white gown.
Patty is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day, and Sheila’s ‘long white gown’ is snow.
Sheila’s Day
White gowns and rhymes aside, Newfoundland once had a tradition of calling March 18 ‘Sheila’s Day’. This was separate from any storm superstition and appeared to have the effect of doubling-up the St. Paddy’s Day fun.
In his 1832 book British America John M’Gregor wrote:
St. Patrick’s day, and Sheelagh’s day (the saint’s wife) the day following, are occasions on which the mass of Newfoundland Irish revel in the full glory of feasting and drinking. They are certainly at those periods beyond any control; and they completely forget themselves, fighting and drinking, until they are overcome by the one, or laid up by the other.
Sheila’s Day possibly came to Newfoundland with the Irish (though it doesn’t seem to survive in Ireland). Sheila's Brush seems to be a fairly Newfoundland-specific event, at least with respect to terminology. Many places, however, hold on to the idea of stormy weather happening in the later parts March (aka equinoctial gales), even though there’s not a lot of evidence to support it.
Predicting the Spring
Depending on who you ask, the Sheila’s Brush can get a bit more nuanced than just a storm following St. Patrick’s Day.
Winter sunrise, Trinity, NL
For some people Sheila’s Brush doesn’t have to follow St. Patrick’s Day, it can come early. If the storm comes ahead of St. Patrick’s Day it means that Newfoundland is in for a miserable Spring. If the Sheila waits and comes after March 17 a good spring is in store — Sheila is ‘sweeping away the last of the winter.’
Patrick and Sheila
March can be a pretty stormy time in Newfoundland. Some people take it as a foregone conclusion that there will be two snowstorms book-ending their St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. They call the storm before St. Patrick’s Day ‘Patrick’ and the storm afterward ‘Sheila.’
Who is Sheila?
It’s pretty clear who Patrick is but much less is known about Shelia. In fact it’s not really clear who she is at all.
Lots of people have ideas, though.
One of the fleshed-out Sheila origin stories depicts her as an impatient woman that St. Patrick met on his travels in Ireland. It appears to be a variation on an old story told about Jesus, laundry and Good Friday.
The Impatient Sheila Story
St. Patrick was travelling along a dusty road in Ireland, It was a sunny, warm day and he soon became thirsty. Hoping for a drink, he knocked on the door of a small house. Inside was a woman named Sheila. She was busily washing a pile of laundry and was very irritated that someone had disturbed her.
Patrick apologized and asked for some water.
Sheila, still angry, took a ladle and dipped it into her wash, and said, "if it's a drink you're after...take this, and don't bother me again, I've got to get these clothes out on the line while it's still sunny."
St. Patrick was shocked to be greeted so rudely. He looked at Sheila and said, "You’ll not dry your clothes in the sun today."
He tossed the dirty water she'd given him into the air and soon after a storm came up, and Sheila was punished for poor behaviour — her clothes weren’t going to dry.
There are, as I’ve said, less developed tales too.
One such story has it that Sheila was Patrick’s girlfriend and that Patrick whipped up a snow storm to keep her from following him when he went out to do… whatever he didn’t want his girlfriend to know about. it was a sort of Sheila’s brush-off, I guess.
“Sheila’s day is the day after St. Patrick’s Day, the eighteenth of March. That’s the Day when Sheila shits on Patty.”
In both of these stories, there seems to be an antagonistic relationship between Patrick and Sheila. I wonder if that opposition is sort of mirrored in the lived experience of Sheila’s Brush, by which I mean having the festivities of St. Patrick’s Day juxtaposed with the unpleasantness of a storm.
Not all Sheila origin stories suggest an opposition between Patrick and Sheila, sometimes their relation appears neutral or maybe even good.
A woman surrounded by cleaning utensils, Nationaal Archief, public domain
One of this sort suggests that Sheila is Patrick’s wife and that the storm is symbolic of her cleaning up after the St. Patrick’s day celebrations. Others say she was cleaning up after his wake (and for that reason the storm could come up to 3 days after St. Patrick’s Day).
Sheila: Lost in the Storm
In the Memorial University Digital Archives there’s another, more local, origin story. One folklore informant (from Avondale) suggested that Sheila was the name of a woman who went astray in a storm (a ‘glidder storm’) on March 18. She died and her body was recovered the next day. On the anniversary of her death there was another storm and the people said “That’s Sheila coming back.”
Thereafter, I suppose, storms on March 18 were attributed to her.
No Definitive, Closer To Fine
So, there are lots of Sheila origin stories. To me, that suggests that there has been lots of telling and retelling of tales over the years and possibly a lot of ‘reverse engineering.’ People have, I think, tried to extrapolate from the custom a story that explains it.
So, there probably isn’t a single, definitive story connecting St. Patrick, Shelia and snowstorms.
The most likely origin, I think, is not really a story at all.
Equinoctial gales were a widespread belief among mariners and, I think in Newfoundland, the spring equinoctial gale (or brush) got named for Sheila simply because it fell close to Sheila’s Day.
If we continued to remember ‘Sheila’s Day’ the term Sheila’s Brush might not seem like an unusual name at all.
A Strange Sort of Storm
Snow in Happy Adventure, NL
“My seal-hunting experience was signalized by “a good stoutish block of a night,” to mark Sheila’s brush “shockin’ cold wedder, that’d moider a man, an’ de snow wonnerful t’ick.””
Regardless of the murky origin, Sheila (and her storm) have a reasonably long history of being part of the conversation.
There are references to boats not setting sail until after Sheila’s Brush was over. To be clear, they were not waiting for a storm to die down; they had decided, well ahead of March 17, that a storm would happen and they ought to wait til it was done.
In William Wilson 1866 book Newfoundland and its Missionaries, In Two Parts wrote that “[small sealing schooners] sailed about the twenty-first of March. They sailed thus late to avoid the equinoctial gales, or, as the saying was, 'We wait until after Saint Patrick's brush.”
Sailing aside, Sheila’s ability to interrupt work has lead to the storm to be thought of as a bit of a holiday, at least according to the March 26, 1925 edition of The Evening Telegram.
They wrote:
Amongst the Newfoundland fisherfolk one of the most eagerly looked forward to holidays of the year is the 18th of March, known as 'Sheila's Brush."
Primarily the word "brush" In the dialect of the island means a storm or blizzard, and "brush" has come to mean a cessation of work, in short, a holiday; enforced if you please, but none the less a holiday.
I’ve never heard of a snow day being called ‘a brush’ but that piece was written nearly a century ago. I’m thinking of bringing it back, something like “Metrobus is off the roads? Time for us all to take a brush now.”
Wrapping it Up
So, there really isn’t a neat and tidy package as far as Sheila’s Brush is concerned. All that can really be said is that generations of Newfoundlanders have come to expect a snowstorm (or ‘brush’) to happen near St. Patrick’s Day (and the nearly-forgotten Sheila’s Day).
That storm has come to be known as Sheila’s Brush.
Beyond that, there’s a lot of conjecture and mystery.
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Ireland, Sheila and Newfoundland, Herbert Halpert, 1977
Sheila’s Day, Newfoundland Folklore Survey Word Slip, 1973
Sheilagh's Brush, Newfoundland Folklore Survey, 1955
Vikings of the Ice, 1922
A Bad Weather Holiday, The Evening Telegram, March 26, 1925
