Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!
For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost,
If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.
But a kettle of scalding hot water injected,
Infallibly cures the timber affected:
The omen is broken, the danger is over,
The maggot will die, and the sick will recover.
Grose, in his Antiquities, thus expresses this superstition: “The clicking of a Death-watch is an omen of the death of some one in the house wherein it is heard.” Watts says: “We learn to presage approaching death in a family by ravens and little worms, which we therefore call a Death-watch.”[184] Gay, in one of his Pastorals, thus alludes to it:
When Blonzelind expired,.…
The solemn Death-watch click’d the hour she died.[185]