Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/401

 12 S. III. Arc., 1917.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

395

become the chosen patroness of all those whose lives exposed them to unusual peril, and this explains why the ship's arsenal was called the sainte-barbe, or why miners, as in France, honour the Fete de Ste. Barbe. Almost every church in England probably once had some memorial of her ; even in 1883 C. E. Keyser (in his ' List of Buildings . . . .having Mural or other Painted Decora- tions ') could enumerate thirty-one instances remaining, and more must have been dis- covered since then.* Fragments of glass which refer to her remain in old windows in very many places ; while up to the late seventeenth century her name might be heard given by the English peasantry to a wayside weed which they knew as the herb of St. Barbary or St. Barbe. Indeed, in this they showed their former unity with Catholic Christendom, for practically in every land in Europe the yellow rocket or winter cress (Barbarea vulgaris, "R. Br.) was for some reason known by her name ; and in some places the common or garden nightshade (Sofanum nigrum, L.) was called after St. Barbara.

It was interesting to read COL. NICHOL- SON'S note concerning Ion blad de la Santo Barbo in Provence (ante, p. 158), for this lore of christened folk is so super- ciliously ignored by moderns that it is seldom heard or recorded. In Austria they gather " Barbara branches " on the eve of her feast, the cherry, pear, apricot, linden, and blackthorn or juniper being chosen. These are placed in water, and curiously watched for their blossoming on Christmas Night, to repeat the tradition of the welcome given by some of the trees and flowers at the Saviour's birth.

A. E. P. RAYMXJXD DOWLING.

Oxford and Cambridge Club.

FOLK-LORE : THE SPIDER : WALL-RUE

(12 S. iii. 272). Isle of Wight folk - lore hands down a few oral warnings. The following I had from living lips. In 1888 an old woman said to me :

" My grannie was a Calbourne woman, and when I was setting up house she warned me thus : 1 Now, my child, you are young, but whatever you do in your life never kill a spider. If you are sweeping, and come on a web, don't destroy

crosses in the churchyard bear St. Barbara's Igy, and in the church there is a statue of her Dwned, with a palm in her left hand, and lalioe and Sacred Host in her right, and leaning gainst a battlemented tower. Her body, or
 * At Knocke in Flanders many of the memorial
 * >me large relic, was formerly in the monastery

'lurch of St. Bavo at Ghent.

it till the spider is safe, then you may sweep away the web ; but if you kill the spider it will surely bring poverty to your house.' "

Another Islander repeated an old distich to me:

If in a house you live, and mean to thrive, Be sure you let your spiders run alive.

It is a current belief that " If you kill a spider there ~will surely be rain the next day."

It is also said that when a spider alight? on any of your possessions garment, book, hat, &c. you wUl very soon ( have a new one to replace the one of the spider's " lucky touch " (but this is not exclusively an Island belief ; it prevails also in Ulster).

In the north of Ireland it is probably due to Scotch settlers, if not to Bruce' s con- nexion with Rathlin Island, that no one of the blood or name of Bruce may dare to kill a spider.

In 1662 old Fuller notes a spider siiper- stition thus :

" When we see a spider on our clothes, we say, 'Some monev is coming to us.' "

Y. T.

The folk-lore of the spider is voluminous. The animal occupies five pages of Miss Phipson's 'Animal Lore of Shakespeare's Time.' See also Thiselton-Dyer's ' English Folk-Fore ' and ' Domestic Folk-Lore.' A good many of the superstitions attaching to the spider (especially the medical ones) were formerly considered scientific. Ramesejv ' Of Poysons ' (1660), does not accept them all, but gives credit to a good many that are now accounted pure folk-lore. Sir Thomas Browne discourses upon the anti- pathy between the toad and the spider, and dismisses it.

Wall-rue used to be an article of popular medicine. It was given to children in powder for ruptures, and was thought good for coughs and as a diuretic. C. C. B.

There is a curious illustration of spider folk-lore in Burton's ' Anatomy of Melan- choly ' :

" Being in the country in the vacation time not many years since, at Lindly in Lecestershire my Fathers house, I first observed this Amulet of "a Spider in a nut-shell lapped in silke, &c., e<> applied for an Ague by my Mother. [Burton adds in the margin : " Mistress Dorothy Burton, she Died, 1629."] Whom although I knew to have excellent skill in Chirurgery, sore eyes, ache*.

Arc Yet among all other experiments, this me

thought was most absurd and ridiculous, I could see no warrant for it. Quid aranea cum febre I' For what Antipathy ? till at length rambling amongst authors (as often I do) I found this very medicine in Diosc&rides, approved by Matthiolus,.