Other References
For the ancient Egyptians, Sirius appeared just before the season of the Nile's flooding, so they used the star as a "watchdog" for that event. Since its rising also coincided with a time of extreme heat, the connection with hot, sultry weather was made for all time: "Dog Days bright and clear / indicate a happy year. / But when accompanied by rain, / for better times our hopes are vain."
In John Webster's 1623 play The Duchess of Malfi, the malcontent Bosola states "blackbirds fatten best in hard weather: why not I in these dog days?"
The phrase is mentioned in the short story "The Bar Sinister" by Richard Harding Davis. The main character, who is a street dog, explains "but when the hot days come, I think they might remember that those are the dog days, and leave a little water outside in a trough, like they do for the horses."
The Prologue of Tuck Everlasting, set in the first week of August, says: "These are strange and breathless days, the dog days, when people are led to do things they are sure to be sorry for after."
In recent years, the phrase "Dog Days" or "Dog Days of Summer" have also found new meanings. The term has frequently been used in reference to the American stock market(s). Typically, summer is a very slow time for the stock market, and additionally, poorly performing stocks with little future potential are frequently known as "dogs."
A casual survey will usually find that many people believe the phrase is in reference to the conspicuous laziness of domesticated dogs (who are in danger of overheating with too much exercise) during the hottest days of the summer. When speaking of "Dog Days" there seems to be a connotation of lying or "dogging" around, or being "dog tired" on these hot and humid days. A similar myth asserts that the time is so-named because rabid dogs are supposed to be the most common then. Although these meanings have nothing to do with the original source of the phrase, they may have been attached to the phrase in recent years due to common usage or misunderstanding of the origin of the phrase.
The feast day of Saint Roch, the patron saint of dogs, is August 16.
Icelanders refer to the Danish adventurer Jørgen Jürgensen as Jörundur hundadagakonungur ("Jørgen the dog-days King" in Icelandic) since he proclaimed himself lord protector for some months of 1809.
And there is this mention of "dogdays" in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol:
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
Poet J. M. Synge also wrote, "Seven dog-days we let pass, naming Queens in Glenmacnass", in the poem "Queens".
The phrase is used as the title of a sonnet by Australian poet, Howard Firkin.
The 1975 Sidney Lumet film Dog Day Afternoon takes its name from the phrase, as does the 2012 film "Diary of a Wimpy Kid : Dog Days", about the activities of a teenage boy during his summer school holidays.
In the Batman: Arkham City videogame, the serial killer Calendar Man tells stories to Batman about murders he has committed on a major holiday for each month. For the month of August, he chose the Feast Day of St. Roch (which he admitted to be an obscure holiday) as the basis for a dog-related murder, the best way to "celebrate the dog days of summer."
More recently, the term was used in the song "Dog Days Are Over", the second single released by the British band Florence and the Machine.
Read more about this topic: Dog Days