Tomorrow sees the start of ‘fill-dyke’. This is a festival which (for you city slickers who don’t know) lasts the entire month of ‘February’.
My dad used to rant back on the farm about February being ‘fill-dyke month’ and, when pressed, he would often quote the rhyme. ‘Be it black or be it white, But if it’s white, it’s the better to like’.
I have checked this saying out and apparently it is from an old 17th century poem about the English countryside water ditches and fields being flooded in February by either muddy rainwater or thick snow.
Despite my extensive research into that 17th century poem, one cannot help but notice how its words still have a ‘English Defence League’ racist ring to them.
