In Maryland, this superstition is thus expressed: If you kill a Spider upon your clothing, you destroy the presents they are then weaving for you.
In the Secret Memoirs of Mr. Duncan Campbell, p. 60, in the chapter of omens, we read that "others have thought themselves secure of receiving money, if by chance a little Spider fell upon their clothes."
"When a Spider is found upon your clothes, or about your person," says a writer in the Notes and Queries, "it signifies that you will shortly receive some money. Old Fuller, who was a native of Northamptonshire, thus quaintly moralizes this superstition: 'When a Spider is found upon your clothes, we used to say some money is coming toward us. The moral is this: such who imitate the industry of that contemptible creature may, by God's blessing, weave themselves into wealth and procure a plentiful estate.'"
A South Northamptonshire superstition of the present day is, that, in order to propitiate money-spinners, they must be thrown over the left shoulder.
It is most probable that Euclio, in Plautus' Aulularia, 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. Euclio. You hag of hags, I choose those cobwebs to be watched for me.
A superstition prevails among us that if a Spider approaches, 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 directly 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 forebodes 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 cathedral 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. Patrick's having exorcised and banished all kinds of vermin from Ireland.
The same virtue of repelling Spiders is attributed also to chestnut and cedar wood; and the old roof at Turner's Court, in Gloucestershire, four miles from Bath, which is of chestnut, is said to be perfectly free from cobwebs; hence also are the cloisters of New College, and of Christ's Church, in England, roofed with chestnut.
A small Spider of a red color, called a Tainct in England, is accounted, by the country people, a deadly poison to cows and horses; so when any of their cattle die suddenly and swell up, to account for their deaths, they say they have "licked a Tainct." Browne thinks this is, most probably, but a vulgar error.
It is a very ancient and curious belief that there exists a remarkable enmity between the Spider and serpents, and more especially between the Spider and the toad; and many curious stories are told of the combats between these animals. The following, related by Erasmus, which he asserts he had directly from one of the spectators, is probably the most remarkable, and we insert it in the words of Dr. James: "A person (a monk) lying along upon the floor of his chamber in the summer-time to sleep in a supine posture, when a toad, creeping out of some green rushes, brought just before in to adorn the chimney, gets upon his face and with his feet sits across his lips. To force off the toad, says the historian, would have been accounted death to the sleeper; and to leave her there, very cruel and dangerous; so that upon consultation, it was concluded to find out a Spider, which, together with her web and the window she was fastened to, was brought carefully, and so contrived as to be held perpendicularly to the man's face; which was no sooner done but the Spider, discovering his enemy, let himself down and struck in his dart, afterward betaking himself up again to his web: the toad swelled, but as yet kept his station. The second wound is given quickly after by the Spider, upon which he swells yet more, but remained alive still. The Spider, coming down again by his thread, gives the third blow, and the toad, taking off his feet from over the man's mouth, fell off dead."
The following cosmogony is found in the sacred writings of the Pundits of India: A certain immense Spider was the origin, the first cause of all things; which, drawing the matter from its own bowels, wove the web of this universe, and disposed it with wonderful art; she, in the mean time, sitting in the center of her work, feels and directs the motion of every part, till at length, when she has pleased herself sufficiently in ordering and contemplating this web, she draws all the threads she had spun out again into herself; and, having absorbed them, the universal nature of all creatures vanishes into nothing.
Among the Chululahs of our western coast, Capt. Stuart informs me there is a vague superstition that the Spider is connected with the origin of the world. To what extent this curious notion prevails, or anything more concerning it, I have been unable to learn.
The natives of Guinea, says Bosman, believe that the first men were created by the large black Spider, which is so common in their country, and called in their jargon "Ananse;" nor is there any reasoning, continues this traveler, a great number of them out of it. Barbot also remarks that, in the belief of the Guinea negroes, the black Ananse created the first man.
That the Spider should be connected with the origin of the world and man in the several beliefs of the Hindoos, Chululahs, and negroes, races so widely different and separated from one another, is a coincidence most remarkable.
A large and hideous species of Spider, said to be only found in the palace of Hampton Court, England, is known by the name of the "Cardinals." This name has been given them from a superstitious belief that the spirits of Cardinal Wolsey and his retinue still haunt the palace in their shape. In running across the carpet in an evening, with the shade cast from their large bodies by the light of the lamp or candle, these "Cardinals" have been mistaken for mice, and have occasioned no little alarm to some of the more nervous inhabitants of the palace.
The story of the gigantic Spider found in the Church of St. Eustace, at Paris, in Chambers' Miscellany, is related as follows: It is told that the sexton of this church was surprised at very often discovering a certain lamp extinguished in the morning, notwithstanding it had been duly replenished with oil the preceding evening. Curious to learn the cause of this mysterious circumstance, he kept watch several evenings, and was at last gratified by the discovery. During the night he observed a Spider, of enormous dimensions, come down the chain by which the lamp was suspended, drink up the oil, and, when gorged to satiety, slowly retrace its steps to a recess in the fretwork above. A similar Spider is said to have been found, in 1751, in the cathedral church of Milan. It was observed to feed also on oil. When killed, it weighed four pounds! and was afterward sent to the imperial museum at Vienna.
The following remarkable anecdote is translated from the French: "M. F— de Saint Omer laid on the chimney-piece of his chamber, one evening on going to bed, a small shirt-pin of gold, the head of which represented a fly. Next day, M. F— would have taken his pin from the place where he had put it, but the trinket had disappeared. A servant-maid, who had only been in M. F—'s service a few days, was solely suspected of having carried off the pin, and sent away. But, at length, M. F—'s sister, putting up some curtains, was very much surprised to find the lost pin suspended from the ceiling in a Spider's web! And thus was the disappearance of the bijou explained: A Spider, deceived by the figure of the fly which the pin presented, had drawn it into his web."
In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, it is stated that "Spiders do shun all such wals as run to mine, or are like to be ouerthrowne."
A Spider hanging from a tree is said to have made both Turenne and Gustavus Adolphus shudder!
M. Zimmerman relates the following instance of antipathy to Spiders: "Being one day in an English company," says he, "consisting of persons of distinction, the conversation happened to fall on antipathies. The greater part of the company denied the reality of them, and treated them as old women's tales; but I told them that antipathy was a real disease. Mr. William Matthew, son of the Governor of Barbados, was of my opinion, and, as he added that he himself had an extreme antipathy to Spiders, he was laughed at by the whole company. I showed them, however, that this was a real impression of his mind, resulting from a mechanical effect. Mr. John Murray, afterward Duke of Athol, took it into his head to make, in Mr. Matthew's presence, a Spider of black wax, to try whether this antipathy would appear merely on the sight of the insect. He went out of the room, therefore, and returned with a bit of black wax in his hand, which he kept shut. Mr. Matthew, who in other respects was a sedate and amiable man, imagining that his friend really held a Spider, immediately drew his sword in a great fury, retired with precipitation to the wall, leaned against it, as if to run him through, and sent forth horrible cries. All the muscles of his face were swelled, his eye-balls rolled in their sockets, and his whole body was as stiff as a post. We immediately ran to him in great alarm, and took his sword from him, assuring him at the same time that Mr. Murray had nothing in his hand but a bit of wax, and that he himself might see it on the table where it was placed. He remained some time in this spasmodic state, and I was really afraid of the consequences. He, however, gradually recovered, and deplored the dreadful passion into which he had been thrown, and from which he still suffered. His pulse was exceedingly quick and full, and his whole body was covered with a cold sweat. After taking a sedative, he was restored to his former tranquillity, and his agitation was attended with no other bad consequences."
In Batavia, New York, on the evening of the 13th of September, 1834, Hon. David E. Evans discovered in his wine-cellar a live striped snake, about nine inches in length, suspended between two shelves, by the tail, by Spiders' web. From the shelves being two feet apart, and the position of the web, the witnesses were of opinion the snake could not have fallen by accident into it, and thus have become inextricably entangled, but that it had been actually captured, and drawn up so that its head could not reach the shelf below by about an inch, by Spiders, and of a species much smaller than the common fly, three of which at night were seen feeding upon it, while it was yet alive.