282 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



travelers in Italy, for a small sum, may see the "tarantula dance" executed 

 in the very best style, either with or without the original accessory of a spi- 

 der's bite. The superstition is doubtless a very ancient one, prob- 

 Italian ^-^^^ handed down from early Roman times. A species of Lycosa, 

 ■pj which takes its name from Tarentum, near which it was sup- 



posed especially to abound, is the spider to which tradition as- 

 scribes the peculiar effects to be described. The modern scientific name 

 is Lycosa tarentula. When one is bitten by this spider, so the story goes, 

 at first the pain is scarcely felt; but a few hours after come on a violent 

 sickness, difficulty of breathing, fainting, and sometimes trembling. Then he 

 is seized with a sort of insanity. He weeps, he dances, he trembles, laughs, 

 cries, skips about, breaks forth into grotesque and unnatural gestures, as- 

 sumes the most extravagant postures, and, if he be not duly assisted and 

 relieved, after a few days of torment, will sometimes expire. If he sur- 

 vive, at the return of the season in which he was bitten, his madness 

 returns. 



Some relief is found by divers antidotes, but the great specific is 

 music. At the sound of music the victim begins the peculiar movements 

 which are known as the " tarantula dance," and continues them while the 

 music continues, or until he breaks into a profuse perspiration which 

 forces out the venom. Thereupon he sinks into a natural sleep from 

 which he awakes weakened, but recovered. Such in substance is the story 

 generally told, believed, and until comparatively modern times unquestioned, 

 which has found its way into the works of many travelers and natural- 

 ists of the earlier sort. It may be worth while to print an example of 

 thesa stories. Here is what one old writer has to say :— 



" Alexander Alexandrinus proceedeth farther, affirming that he beheld 

 one wounded by this Spider, to dance and leape about incessantly, and the 

 Musitians (finding themselves wearied) gave over playing : where- 

 • ^m 1 upon, the poore offended dancer, hauing vtterly lost all his forces, 

 fell downe on the ground, as if he had bene dead. The Musi- 

 tians no sooner began to playe againe, but hee returned to himselfe, and 

 mounting vp vpon his feet, danced againe as lustily as formerly hee had 

 done, and so continued dancing still, til hee found the harme asswaged, 

 and himselfe entirely recovered. Heerunto he addeth, that when it hath 

 happened, that a man hath not beene thorowly cured ])y Musique in this 

 manner ; within some short while after, hearing the sound of Instru- 

 ments, hee hath recouered footing againe, and bene enforced to liold on 

 dancing, and never to ceasse, till his perfect and absolute healing, which 

 (questionlesse) is admirable in nature."^ 



Goldsmith, who seems to have been well informed on this point, does 



^ Quoted from "Troasnrie of Anciont and Modern Times," page 393, in Mr. Frank Cowan's 

 "Curious Facts in the History of Insects." 



