[We trust our correspondent will favour us with the further communications he proposes on this very interesting point.]
BEETLE MYTHOLOGY.
Mr. Editor,—I never thought of asking my Low-Norman fellow-rustics whether the ladybird had a name and a legend in the best preserved of the northern Romance dialects: on the score of a long absence (eight-and-twenty years), might not a veteran wanderer plead forgiveness? Depend upon it, Sir, nevertheless, that should any reminiscences exist among my chosen friends, the stout-hearted and industrious tenants of a soil where every croft and paddock is the leaf of a chronicle, it will be communicated without delay. There is more than usual attractiveness in the astronomical German titles of this tiny "red chafer," or rother kaefer, SONNEN KAEFER and VNSER FRAWEN KVHLEIN, the Sun-chafer, and our Lady's little cow. (Isis or Io?)
With regard to its provincial English name, Barnabee, the correct interpretation might be found in Barn-bie, the burning, or fire-fly, a compound word of Low-Dutch origin.
We have a small black beetle, common enough in summer, called PÂN, nearly hemispherical: you must recollect that the â is as broad as you can afford to make it, and the final n is nasal. Children never forgot, whenever they caught this beetle, to place it in the palm of their left hand, when it was invoked as follows:—
"PÂN, PÂN, mourtre mé ten sang,
Et j'te doûrai de bouan vin blianc!"
which means, being interpreted,