“And shrilling crickets in the chimney cry’d.”
And in Dryden’s “Œdipus” occurs the subjoined:
“Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death.”
Lady Macbeth, also (“Macbeth,” ii. 2), in replying to the question of her husband after the murder of Duncan, says:
“I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry.”
In “Cymbeline” (ii. 2), also, when Iachimo, at midnight, commences his survey of the chamber where Imogen lies sleeping, his first words refer to the chirping of crickets, rendered all the more audible by the repose which at that moment prevailed throughout the palace:
“The crickets sing, and man’s o’er-labour’d sense
Repairs itself by rest.”
Gilbert White, in his “History of Selborne” (1853, p. 174), remarks that “it is the housewife’s barometer, foretelling her when it will rain; and is prognostic, sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good luck, of the death of a near relation, or the approach of an absent lover. By being the constant companion of her solitary home, it naturally becomes the object of her superstition.”[569]
Its supposed keen sense of hearing is referred to in the “Winter’s Tale” (ii. 1) by Mamillius, who, on being asked by Hermione to tell a tale, replies:
“I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.”