Enter The Weather Vanes

“Every wind," wrote Francis Bacon, "has its weather," and many proverbial sayings about the relations of wind direction to weather were current long before modern meteorology, with its synoptic charts, made clear the reasons for these relationships. Such sayings indicate some of the reasons why men have always been interested in knowing which way the wind blew, even if they were not sailors, dependent upon its favorable course to get them speedily to the havens where they would be.

Man's interest in this subject is evinced in a bewildering diversity of weather vanes. No other weather instrument has assumed a thousandth part as many shapes as has the one originally designed for the mere practical object of pointing out the direction of the wind, and no other has become the embodiment of so many ideas that have nothing to do with meteorology.

Let us take a little walk about the neighborhood for the purpose of observing some of the forms affected by this familiar contrivance. Later we shall try to find out whether any of these forms have particular meanings, or whether they represent merely the haphazard fancies of the craftsman. We shall begin with that most aspiring of vanes, at the tip-top of the church steeple. It gleams in the sunshine, holds its head erect and proudly surveys the landscape. One expects momentarily to see its wings go flap-flap and to hear a stentorian crow. All your life you have beheld this glorious, bellicose bird on the spire, and perhaps never until this moment have you asked yourself why he is there! Why a weathercock, rather than a weather dove, for example? Why, indeed, any bird or beast?

Here is a mystery that demands elucidation. About town we find an astonishing variety of vanes; astonishing, at least, to those who have always taken weather vanes for granted and never given one of them a second look. Apparently there are vanes for every taste—or lack of it—and the householder has almost as much latitude in the choice of a vane as the merchant has in the choice of a trademark or the bibliophile in that of a bookplate.

As we proceed we see that, in many cases, the design of a vane bears some relation to the character of the building on which it is placed. Sometimes this relation is merely esthetic; the vane harmonizes with the architecture of the building, and that is all. Very often, however, an attempt has been made to give expression, in the vane, to some function the building performs; or, in the case of a dwelling, to make it emblematic of the owner's tastes or habits. Some vanes offend our eyes by an excess of realism. Instead of being subtly symbolic, they are mere effigies.