A cricket singing on the hearth was a good omen, a token of coming
riches to the family.
If a bee came up in a straight line to a person's face, it was regarded
as a forerunner of important news.
If a servant wilfully killed a spider, she would certainly, it was said,
break a piece of crockery or glass during that day.
Spiders were, as they are still, generally detested in a house, and were
often very roughly dislodged; but yet their lives were protected by a
very old superstition. There is an old English proverb--
"If you wish to live and thrive,
Let the spider run alive."
When my mother saw a spider's web in the house she swept it away very
roughly, but the spider was not wilfully killed. If it was not seen it
was considered all right, but if it fell on the floor or was seen
running along the wall, it was brushed out of the room; none of us were
allowed to put our foot on it, or wilfully kill it. This care for the
life of the spider is probably due to the influence of an old legend
that a spider wove its web over the place where the baby Christ was hid,
thus preserving his life by screening him from sight of those who sought
to kill him.
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