Feb. 25. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



167 



LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1854. 



it 



LEGENDS AND SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING BEES. 



The Vicar of Morwenstow, among the beautiful 

 poems to be found in his Echoes from Old Corn 

 wall, has one entitled "A Legend of the Hive ■" 

 commences — 



" Behold those winged images ! 



Bound for their evening bowers ; 

 They are the nation of the bees, 



Born from the breath of flowers : 

 Strange people are they ; a mystic race 

 In life, and food, and dwelling-place !" 



As another poet has sung : 



" His quidam signis, atque base exempla secuti, 

 Esse Apibus partem Divince mentis et haustus 

 ^Etherios dixere." 



Mr. Hawker's Legend is to this effect : A Cornish 

 •woman, one summer, finding her bees refused to 

 leave their " cloistered home," and " ceased to 

 play around the cottage flowers," concealed a 

 portion of the Holy Eucharist which she obtained 

 at church : 



" She bore it to her distant home, 

 She laid it by the hive 

 To lure the wanderers forth to roam, 

 That so her store might thrive ; — 

 'Twas a wild wish, a thought unblest, 

 Some evil legend of the West. 

 " But lo ! at morning-tide a sign, 

 For wondering eyes to trace, 

 They found above that Bread, a shrine 



Rear'd by the harmless race ! 

 They brought their walls from bud and flower, 

 They built bright roof and beamy tower ! 

 " Was it a dream ? or did they hear 

 Float from those golden cells 

 A sound, as of some psaltery near, 



Or soft and silvery bells ? 

 A low sweet psalm, that griev'd within 

 In mournful memory of the sin !" 



The following passage from Howell's Parley of 

 Beasts, Lond. 1660, furnishes a similar legend of 

 the piety of bees. Bee speaks : 



" Know, Sir, that we have also a religion as well as 

 so exact a government among us here; our hummings 

 you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God 

 of Nature ; and ther is a miraculous example in Ccesa- 

 rius Cisterniensis, how som of the Holy Eucharist 

 being let fall in a medow by a priest, as he was re- 

 turning from visiting a sick body, a swarm of bees 

 being hard by took It up, and in a solemn kind of 

 procession carried It to their hive, and there erected 

 an altar of the purest wax for It, where It was found 

 in that form, and untouched." — P. 144. 



It is remarkable that, in the Septuagint version 

 of Prov. vi. '8., the bee is introduced after the ant, 



and reference is made to tV ipywrlav &s aenviiv 

 iroieiTai : ipyas. crefji. St. Ambrose translates it ope- 

 rationem venerabilem ; St. Jerome, opus castum ; 

 Castalio, augustum opus ; Bochart prefers opus 

 preliosum, aut mirabile* 



Pliny has much to say about bees. I shall give 

 an extract or two in the Old English of Philemon 

 Holland : 



" Bees naturally are many times sick ; and that do 

 they shew most evidently : a man shall see it in them 

 by their heavie looks and by their unlustines to their 

 businesse : ye shall marke how some will bring forth 

 others that be sicke and diseased into the warme sunne, 

 and be readie to minister unto them and give them 

 meat. Nay, ye shall have them to carie forth their 

 dead, and to accompanie the corps full decently, as in a 

 solemne funeral). If it chaunce that the king be dead 

 of some pestilent maladie, the commons and subjects 

 mourne, take thought, and grieve with heavie cheere 

 and sad countenance : idle they be, and take no joy to 

 do any thing : they gather in no provision : they march 

 not forth : onely with a certain doleful humming they 

 gather round about his corps, and will not away. 



" Then requisite it is and necessarie to sever and 

 part the multitude, and so to take away the bodie from 

 them : otherwise they would keepe a looking at the 

 breathlesse carcasse, and never go from it, but still 

 mone and mourne without end. And even then also 

 they had need be cherished and comforted with good 

 victuals, otherwise they would pine away and die with 

 hunger." — Lib. xi. cap. xviii. 



•' We bury our dead with great solemnity ; at the 

 king's death there is a generall mourning and fasting, 

 with a cessation from labour, and we use to go about 

 his body with a sad murmur for many daies. When 

 we are sick we have attendants appointed us, and the 

 symptoms when we be sick are infallible, according to 

 the honest, plain poet : 



' If bees be sick (for all that live must die), 

 That may be known by signes most certainly ; 

 Their bodies are discoloured, and their face 

 Looks wan, which shows that death comes on apace. 

 They carry forth their dead, and do lament, 

 Hanging o' th' dore, or in their hives are pent.' " 



Howell, p. 138. 



Of bees especially the proverb holds good, that 

 " Truth is stranger than fiction." The discoveries 

 of Huber, Swammerdam, Reaumur, Latreille, 

 Bonnet, and other moderns, read more like a' 

 fairy-tale than anything else, and yet the subject 

 is far from being exhausted. At the same time' 

 modern naturalists have substantiated the accu- 

 racy of the ancients in many statements which 

 were considered ridiculous fables. The ancients 



* The bee is praised for her pious labours in the 

 offices of the Roman Church, "as the unconscious ■ 

 contributor of the substance of her paschal light." 

 " Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam 

 pretiosae hujus lampadis Mater Apis eduxit." — Office 

 of Holy Saturday. 



