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.[1160]
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.[1161] Barbot also remarks that, in the belief of the Guinea negroes, the black Ananse created the first man.[1162]
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.[1163]
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.[1164]
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.[1165]
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.”[1166]