You may hear the term Sheila’s Brush a bit more often these days. It had fallen out of use, but seems to be making a comeback. I first came across it while living in Newfoundland a few years ago.
No one seems quite sure where it came from. It’s likely part of old Irish folklore, but it seems to have disappeared from use in Ireland. Maybe its a lack of reliable snow storms in mid-March right after St. Patrick’s Day.
That was not a problem in Newfoundland, so the term seems to have stuck around there. Now we seem to be using it pretty much everywhere. It is thought to have come from Ireland along with St. Patrick’s Day. We kept the green beer. We seem to have forgotten Sheila.
According to the stories, Sheila was Patrick’s wife. Or mother. Or sister. Some relative of Patrick. March 18 was known in some places as Sheila’s Day. (There are many different spellings of Sheila, so it could also have been Sheelagh or some other variation.) Since we are coming up on the first day of spring, the legendary Sheila would do a sort of spring cleaning. She would sweep away the last of winter and in the process, give us one last storm just after St. Patrick’s Day.
Not that we can’t get a snow storm or two well into spring, but Sheila doesn’t get the blame for those. And they melt away pretty quick anyway. But that one storm that seems to come pretty much every year right around or just after St. Patrick’s Day has become known as Sheila’s Brush.
There’s not much to the legend. The origins seem to be lost to time. It’s hard to tell what Patrick might have done to make Sheila shake the snow from her brush. Maybe he was late getting home from driving the snakes out of Ireland. Or perhaps he forgot to pick up milk on his way. Maybe he indulged in one too many green Guinness. No one knows for sure.
All we seem to really know is that a snow storm right after St. Patrick’s Day is known as Sheila’s Brush. And today’s version could have been worse.
