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.[1149]
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;[1150] 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.[1151] This superstition (for it certainly is nothing more)[1152] 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;[1153] 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;[1154] hence also are the cloisters of New College, and of Christ’s Church, in England, roofed with chestnut.[1155]
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.[1156]
It is a very ancient and curious belief that there exists a remarkable enmity between the Spider and serpents,[1157] 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)[1158] 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.”[1159]