April Showers brings May flowers

Posted by ESC on February 20, 2006

In Reply to: April Showers brings May flowers posted by Amber on February 19, 2006

: I need to know where the proverb "April Showers brings May flowers" originated and some history about it.

I had never heard the following meaning ascribed
to the phrase. But it says here:

APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY SHOWERS - "Something good may happen as a result of unpleasant events. The proverb has been traced back to about 1557. First attested in the United States in 'Colonial American Poetry' .

1557
Sweet April showers
Do spring May flowers
Thomas Tusser, A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, April Husbandry."

From Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

April showers bring forth May flowers - mid-16th century proverb.
From "Oxford Dictionary of Quotations," Fifth Edition, edited by Elizabeth Knowles (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2001).