340 ARANEID^ — TRUE SPIDERS. 



would not suffer the Spiders to be molested because they 

 were considered to bring good luck. 



Staphyla. Here in our house there's nothing else for thieves to 

 gain, so filled is it with emptiness and cobwebs. 



EucUo. You hag of hags, I choose those cobwebs to be watched 

 for me^ 



A superstition prevails among us that if a Spider ap- 

 proaches, either by crawling toward or descending from 

 the ceiling to a person, it forebodes good to such person ; 

 and, on the contrary, if the Spider runs hurriedly away, it 

 is an omen of bad luck. But if the Spider be a poisonous 

 one, or a Fly-catcher, and it approaches you, some evil is 

 about to befall you, which to avert you must cross your 

 heart thrice. 



If you kill a Spider crossing your path, you will have 

 bad luck. 



A Spider should not be killed in your house, but out of 

 doors ; if in the house, our country people say you are 

 " pulling down your house." 



If a Spider drops down from its web or from a tree di- 

 rectly in front of a person, such person will see before night 

 a dear friend. 



A variety of this superstition is, that, if the Spider be 

 white, it foretells the acquaintance of a friend ; and if black, 

 an enemy. 



In the Netherlands, a Spider seen in the morning fore- 

 bodes good luck ; in the afternoon, bad luck,'^ 



There is a common saying at Winchester, England, that 

 no Spider will hang its web on the roof of Irish oak in the 

 chapel or cloisters;'^ and the cicerone, who shows the cathe- 

 dral church at St. David's, points out to the visitor that the 

 choir is roofed with Irish oak, which does not harbor Spiders, 

 though cobwebs are plentifully seen in other parts of the 

 cathedral.* This superstition (for it certainly is nothing 

 more)^ probably originated with the old story of St. Pat- 

 rick's having exorcised and banished all kinds of vermin 

 from Ireland. 



The same virtue of repelling Spiders is attributed also to 



1 AuluL, A. i. Sc. 3. 



» Thorpe's North. Antiq., iii. 329. 



» N. and Q., 2d ed. iv. 298. * Ibid., iv. 



^ Gent. Mag., June, 1771, xli. 251. 



I 



