The Cricket on the Hearth. 
393 
their legs, "but "by the use of their wings, and have orifices under their 
throats by which they utter tuneful sounds. It is also reported that 
they sing sweetest when their heads are cut off, and when they are 
dead better than when they are alive.” {Topography of Ireland , 1187, 
p. 40.) 
This vocal accomplishment was confined to the male 
insect, hence the rhyme, handed down from antiquity :— 
“ Happy the cicadas 5 lives. 
Since they all have voiceless wives.’ 5 
Ben Jonson credits the cricket also with tuneful 
powers: “ Walk as if thou hadst borrowed legs of a 
spinner and voice of a cricket ” (.Bartholomew Fair , i. 1). 
It was considered a sign of good fortune to have a 
cricket chirping by the hearth, and to kill one of these 
harmless little creatures was looked on as a breach of 
hospitality. 
“ The cat, with eyne of burning coal, 
Now couches fore the mouse’s hole; 
And crickets sing at the oven’s mouth. 
E’er the blither for their drouth.” 
(Pericles, act iii., Gower.) 
Shakspeare has several references to this lover of the 
fireside, whose monotonous note is so suggestive of cosy 
comfort. The boy Mamillius thus begins a tale of gob¬ 
lins by a winter’s fire- 
u Mam. There was a man— 
Herm. Nay, come, sit down ; then on. 
Mam. Dwelt by a [churchyard: I will tell it softly ; 
Yond crickets shall not hear it.” 
(Winter’s Tale, ii. 1, 28.) 
This was for some time considered a scientific blunder on 
the part of the poet, but modern naturalists have demon¬ 
strated that the cricket is by no means deficient in the 
sense of hearing. 
Sir Thomas Browne mentions “ the Gryllotalpa, or 
