June - is it the most romantic month of the year?

Tourism promoters on the Caribbean Island of Nevis have declared June the island’s Official Month of Romance. Nevis is undeniably gorgeous but where did this tradition of June romance and weddings come from? 

Let's start at the beginning - was it the Romans? 

The month of June gets its name from the Latin name for the month which was Junius which in turn is named after the Roman goddess Juno. Juno was the daughter of Saturn and sister and wife to the chief god Jupiter (the ancient immortals were prone to incest. I suppose it comes from having so few immortals to choose from!)  Juno was the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire she was called Regina ("queen") and, together with Jupiter and Minerva their daughter she was worshipped on the Capitol (Juno Capitolina) in Rome. As well as being the goddess of marriage she was also the goddess who watched over the finances of the empire and her temple on the Arx (one of two Capitoline hills), was the Roman mint, so she had her hands on the purse strings too.

In ancient Rome, the period from mid-May through mid-June was considered inauspicious for marriage. Ovid says that he consulted the Flaminica Dialis, the high priestess of Jupiter, about setting a date for his daughter's wedding, and was advised to wait till after June 15. Plutarch, however, implies that the entire month of June was more favourable for weddings than May. This may have been because there are several meteor showers disturbing the heavens in May. So it seems that the Roman’s were not too keen on June weddings despite the name of the month.

Was it the Medievals?

There is a popular belief that the tradition of June brides in northern Europe began in 1500s and that it is associated with bathing. Folklore dictates that the common people took a bath once a year, in May, when the weather was warm enough for a young person to take off their clothes and wash and that with this annual grooming ritual out of the way they could get on with the business of marriage and mating.

It is certainly true that many people, especially the poor, covered their chests in goose fat and sewed themselves into their clothes for the winter in an effort to ward off the cold and diseases. They were then cut out of them in the spring when they washed, the fetid clothes were burned and new ones were put on. Which must have made anyone feel better and smell more fragrant. Of course there is no denying that a clean vest is better than a rancid one if you’re after a bit of loving but it’s hardly enough to get someone to the altar.

In her book, A General View of the Rural Economy of England, 1538-1840 (CUP, 1990), Ann Kussmaul concludes that there was no immutable season for English weddings, they happened at all times of year but having said that she goes on to identify a trend but it was not for weddings in June even though the term 'honeymoon' referred to the first moon of after the summer solstice on June 21, a term which became synonymous with 'time following the wedding.'  

Was it the weather?

It seems that our ancestors got married either in early spring before the main agricultural work of the year had begun or in the autumn when it was over. What is more it seems also that after dancing around the Maypole and having a bath our ancestors were prone to a bit of illicit frolicking in the hay. 

Over the summer months when our young ancestors were clean and fragment and they could get out into the fields and woods away from their parents’ supervision they frequently got themselves pregnant. So their romantic frolics under the summer sun and the honeyed moon led them to altar in the autumn and christenings in spring.

So perhaps June was the most romantic month. It was a time when young people discovered each other, discovered sex, formed bonds that would last the rest of their lives. Today a June a wedding is a beautiful thing whether it's in Nevis or the local Town Hall.

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Hail, Cake and the French Revolution

• Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette in the 2006 Movie

The weather in England is unseasonably cold at the moment and for the first time in my life I find myself with hay fever; I am allergic to tree pollen, driving through squalls of hail and sleet in the car, and huddling in front of the fire in the evening for warmth!

England's weather is notoriously unpredictable but this spring has been particularly cold with the wind blowing from the north for days on end. Historians and archaeologists are becoming increasingly aware of the influence of weather on the world’s great events and as someone who has been researching life in 18^th century Britain and France I was amazed to find that the weather could be said to one of the causes of the French Revolution.

The summer of 1788 was a particularly warm one in London that year. As temperatures soared in the capital the incidence of Scarlet fever and Typhus spread through the city and in August over 1000 deaths were attributed to fever alone but as Londoners sweltered the French baked. The spring and summer of the year before the Revolution were characterised by searing drought.

The French were not particularly good farmers at the time, the aristocracy and major land owners were not interested applying of developing improvements to agriculture and food production unlike their British counterparts and food production was already pretty poor. At the end of this unprecedented dry period the skies opened and hail the size of fists fell bashing the fruit from the trees and the smashing the crops in the fields to smithereens so when the French entered the winter of 1788-9 food stocks were at an all time low.

To make matters worse the disastrous harvest was followed by months of freezing weather. The temperature barely rose above freezing for three months through November, December and January. In London the river Thames froze but in France the effect of frozen earth meant that root crops had to be chiselled out of the ground.

So when Marie Antoinette reportedly said on hearing there was no bread to be had in Paris, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," it was because of the weather.