(M250) But the belief that the weather of the twelve months can be predicted from the weather of the twelve days is not confined to the Germanic peoples. It occurs also in France and among the Celts of Brittany and Scotland. Thus in the Bocage of Normandy “the village old wives have a very simple means of divining the general temperature of the coming season. According to them, the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, including Epiphany, represent the twelve months of the year. So the thing to do is to mark the temperature of each of these days, for the temperature of the corresponding month will be relatively the same. Some people say that this experience is rarely at fault, and more trust is put in it than in the predictions of the _Double-Liégois_.”(739) In Cornouaille, Brittany, it is popularly believed that the weather of the last six days of December and the first six of January prognosticates the weather of the twelve months; but in other parts of Brittany it is the first twelve days of January that are supposed to be ominous of the weather for the year. These days are called _gour-deziou_, which is commonly interpreted “male days,” but is said to mean properly “additional or supplementary days.”(740) Again, in the Highlands of Scotland the twelve days of Christmas (_Da latha dheug na Nollaig_) “were the twelve days commencing from the Nativity or Big _Nollaig_, and were deemed to represent, in respect of weather, the twelve months of the year. Some say the days should be calculated from New Year’s Day.”(741) Others again reckon the Twelve Days from the thirty-first of December. Thus Pennant tells us that “the Highlanders form a sort of almanack or presage of the weather of the ensuing year in the following manner: they make observation on twelve days, beginning at the last of December, and hold as an infallible rule, that whatsoever weather happens on each of those days, the same will prove to agree in the correspondent months. Thus, January is to answer to the weather of December 31st; February to that of January 1st; and so with the rest. Old people still pay great attention to this augury.”(742) It is interesting to observe that in the Celtic regions of Scotland and France popular opinion hesitates as to the exact date of the twelve days, some people dating them from Christmas, others from the New Year, and others again from the thirty-first of December. This hesitation has an important bearing on the question of the origin of the twelve days’ period, as I shall point out immediately.