22. It is a very ancient superstition that all sudden pains of the body, and other sensations which could not naturally be accounted for, were presages of somewhat that was shortly to happen. Shakspeare alludes to this in the following lines from Macbeth:
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
23. In olden times, the cat sneezing appears to have been considered as a lucky omen to a bride who was to be married the next day.
24. Small spiders, termed money spinners, are held by many to prognosticate good luck, if they are not destroyed or injured, or removed from the person on whom they are first observed. In the “Secret Memoirs” of Mr. Duncan Campbell, 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.” (See [33].)
25. It is extremely unlucky, says Grose, to kill a lady-bug, a swallow, robin redbreast, or wren. There is a particular distich, he adds, in favor of the robin and wren:
“A robin and a wren
Are God Almighty’s cock and hen.”
Persons killing any of the above-named birds or insects, or destroying their nests, will infallibly, within the course of the year, break a bone, or meet with some other dreadful misfortune. On the contrary, it is deemed lucky to have swallows build their nests in the eaves of a house, or in the chimneys.
In an old pastoral published in London, 1770, the following occurs: