IN my dad’s column from March 4, 1978, he mentions an old Greek myth relating to “angry” March, so described because of the wind which tends to blow in from all directions throughout the month.

The myth stated that March was angry because an old woman from the island of Kythnos mistook him for a summer month, so he borrowed a day from his brother, February, and froze the old woman to death, along with her flock of sheep.

It seems a rather extreme punishment for such a crime (I hope March isn’t reading this or he might come for me!).

My university degree covered the myths of Ancient Greece, and I spent a year in the country after leaving school at 18, but I had never come across this tale and so set about researching it on the Internet.

For ages I could find absolutely nothing and went through countless variations of search terms relating to the myth until I finally came across a brief reference on a site called The Internet Archive (archive.org). This amazing resource is a bit like an international version of the National Archives.

Started in 1996, just as the internet was beginning to take off, its grand mission is to provide "Universal Access to All Knowledge" and now claims to have an almost unbelievable 279 billion web pages, 11 million books and texts, four million audio recordings and three million videos in its archive, all of which is free to access.

I found the bit I wanted in a substantial 19th century volume called "Weather Lore; A Collection of Proverbs, Sayings and Rules Concerning the Weather" by a man called Richard Inwards. There were a couple of lines about the myth, which he attributed to a "T Bent". Nothing else.

In past columns, I’ve talked about my habit of wandering off topic so, of course, once again I set off meandering through the internet to discover who this mystery "T Bent" was.

I felt like a detective tying to get to the bottom of a rather obscure clue, having to think laterally and persist in search after search. I even went as far as page three on one set of Google results. I know, hard core.

But I’m glad I did, as it turns out "T Bent" had a very interesting story, and better than that, he was a Yorkshireman. James Theodore Bent was brought up in the West Riding village of Baildon, and came from a well-to-do family. He developed a keen interest in history and grew up to become a distinguished archaeologist and adventurer.

What is wonderful about this story, especially in a year when we are marking the achievements of the suffragette movement, is that his wife Mabel was as well known and as adventurous as he was.

Together they toured the world to discover everything they could about foreign cultures and civilisations, and their findings contributed greatly to society’s knowledge about those unfamiliar worlds.

Their resulting books were very popular and well-respected, presumably because, being fearless and intrepid explorers who often put themselves in considerable danger, their work must have been incredibly exciting to their less adventurous readers back home.

One of Theodore’s most well-known works was "The Cyclades, or Life Among The Insular Greeks", published in 1885, which recounts his and Mabel’s adventures living among the rural inhabitants of these remote islands, and this is where he mentions the myth about March (and it is literally, just a mention, so I have no more to report on that!). He is not very complimentary about the island of Kythnos, declaring, "We thought we had never visited a more dreary, inhospitable shore".

Sadly, it was on one of their adventures that Theodore contracted malaria and died prematurely at the age of 45 in 1897.

Mabel was distraught, but found the strength to finish the book about ‘Southern Arabia’ that her husband had been writing at the time.

But her deep grief was reflected in her words: “It has been very sad to me, but I have been helped by knowing that, however imperfect this book may be, what is written here will surely be a help to those who, by following in our footsteps, will be able to get beyond them.”

Mabel never remarried and died at the age of 83 in 1929. She was buried, as she requested, with her husband at her ancestral home in Essex. (Source: tambent.com)