THERE are few weather sayings which can be attributed to a very small locality - usually, they apply to larger and rather vague areas like "the north", "the coast" or perhaps "the Pennines" and even the area around a county boundary, but the modestly-sized town of Whitby has its own piece of lore for the month of May.

It reads "A wet May makes lang-tailed hay", perhaps indicating that timely rain will produce a crop of tall grass in time for the hay harvest, but there are lots of other sayings which suggest that rain during May, so far as Britain is concerned, is not welcome.

On the other hand, however, there are just as many sayings which welcome a rainy May. In some parts of England, a wet May used to be regarded as ideal for producing a bumper hay crop while a contradictory saying said that "A May wet was never kind yet". Some districts seem to prefer a cool May with some wind, a combination which is reckoned to produce fine crops of hay and corn, and even overseas, the French believe that "A cold May brings many good things".

It is not wise to shear sheep in May however, an old saying suggesting that "to shear in May will shear them all away" while a thunderstorm in May is thought to be beneficial to the hay crop.

One very old piece of wisdom, however, is never to check your hay crop in May because the sight could make you weep! Examine it in June - when you'll come home whistling a merry tune. So they say!

It seems that this piece of wisdom originates in the fact that very unpromising crops can sometimes make miraculous recoveries if they're left to their own devices.

LIKE many other parts of England, this region has lots of buildings which were formerly workhouses. Some are now converted into flats or offices and some have disappeared, but for many people the role of a workhouse is now little more than a distant memory from bygone times. Some of us will remember these dismal places; others, too young to have experienced the need for such institutions, may not appreciate or understand their original purpose.

Workhouses developed because of the need to cope with vagrants and tramps, male and female, who wandered the countryside and towns, somehow managing to survive without apparently working. They were categorised in various ways - among their names were idle and disorderly persons, rogues and vagabonds, tramps, paupers, vagrants and ne'er-do-wells.

Down the ages, these homeless wanderers have been regarded as a social problem, not only because some stole the belongings of others but also because they might cause or spread highly infectious diseases.

When England was a Catholic country such people were cared for by the Church, but after the Reformation in the sixteenth century, the new Protestant Church found itself unequal to the task.

Furthermore, the number of vagrants increased during the sixteenth century and although various measures were passed by the government, the problem grew steadily worse. Eventually, Elizabeth I passed a law in 1601 which stipulated that every parish, rural or urban, large or small, should appoint overseers whose duty was to levy rates for the relief of the poor. This became known as the Great English Poor Law Act and the rates raised were to be used for a variety of purposes, such as paying for the apprenticeship of children whose parents could not maintain them, providing work for the able-bodied unemployed, and for assisting those who could not work due to sickness, age or infirmity.

In this way, responsibility for vagrants, tramps and their like was passed firmly to the parishes and for a time, this system seems to have been successful. After the Civil War, however, difficulties were experienced through the law of settlement by which anyone who came to live in a parish, where he was not normally settled, could be turned away and sent back to the parish to which he belonged either by birth, or marriage, or the ownership or occupation of property.

This led to abuses with genuinely needy people being turned away, and so the parishes tried other systems to cater for the poor and the homeless, such as workhouses (indoor relief), the farming-out of the poor to contractors for work, with various other kinds of outdoor relief ranging from the payment of doles to the hiring of paupers by farmers in return for nominal wages paid out of the poor rate.

By the early nineteenth century, the poor, in all their forms, had become a serious burden to society which was costing the country a fortune without any sign of improvement. A Royal Commission was established and its eventual recommendations led to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. One effect of this was to abolish the old system and merge parishes into what became known as unions.

Instead of having lots of parishes making their own arrangements - which were generally very unsatisfactory - groups were formed into larger unions throughout the country and one effect was for all their resources, financial as well as administrative, to be centralised. In this way, large new workhouses, run by an elected board of guardians, were built in which paupers, tramps and vagrants could be accommodated while receiving food and medical treatment, and where they could be made to work as a contribution to their upkeep.

There were sixty of these union workhouses in Yorkshire, for example. In this area, they were at places like York, Bedale, Thirsk, Easingwold, Skipton, Ripon, Harrogate, Helmsley, Whitby and elsewhere, but one has survived in Allhallowgate, Ripon, where it is now a museum.

It is unique because the museum occupies the actual workhouse, complete with old bath tubs, cells, work area and kitchen. This is Britain's first workhouse museum in an authentic location and offers a most realistic experience of the grim atmosphere which prevailed within living memory.

The museum has details of all union workhouses in Yorkshire. The Ripon Workhouse Museum is part of the Ripon Museum Trust which operates three law and order museums in the city - in addition to the Workhouse Museum, there is a Prison and Police Museum in St Marygate, and the Courthouse Museum in Minster Road, opposite Ripon Cathedral.

A combined three-in-one ticket lasting a week and costing only £3.50 for adults will permit admission between 1pm and 4pm most days (from 11am during school holidays, and July and August).

FOLLOWING last week's notes about goldilocks, a name for the marsh marigold which blooms in some of our woodlands and meadows, it seems another flower also bears this name. Listed in Culpepper's Herbal, it is also known as the crowfoot (ranunculus auricomus), in addition to being called the goldcup, goldknob, butter flower or frog's foot.

Its appearance is very similar to a buttercup and it is a member of that family. It can be used to manufacture a tincture which is a remedy for itching skin conditions and rheumatics. The Oxford Book of Wild Flowers also features this flower but does not use the name crowfoot - it lists it only as goldilocks.

IN my mail this week is a letter from a Wensleydale reader who reminds me of the famous verse which records the arrival of the cuckoo:

In April, come he will,

In May he sings all day,

In June he alters his tune,

In July he prepares to fly,

In August, go he must.

I'm not sure how widespread is this verse because there are two similar ones which apparently originated in North Yorkshire. One reads:

The cuckoo in April, he opens his bill,

The cuckoo in May, he sings the whole day,

The cuckoo in June, he changeth his tune,

And the cuckoo in July, away he must fly.

The other North Yorkshire verse refers to the cuckoo as female - it goes:

In April, cuckoo sings her lay;

In May, she sings both night and day;

In June, she loses her sweet strain,

In July, she flies off again.

Some other variations add the lines "If he stay till September, 'tis as much as the oldest man can remember!" and "The cuckoo sings at midsummer, but not upon the day".

I have no idea whether cuckoos sing on Midsummer Day, but I believe it is the male who sings "cuc-coo" while the female has a bubbling type of song