CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPIDER.

SUMMARY.

Tuscan superstition relating to the spider; the red sky of evening.--The night, the moon, and the aurora as weavers.--Arachnê.--Âurnavabhas.--Dhatâ and Vidhatâ.--Golden cloths.--The spider and his prey.--The golden veil.--The lake of fire and the witch burnt.--The eagle and the spider.--The sack made of a spider's web.

There is in Tuscany a very interesting superstition relating to the spider: it is believed that if a spider be seen in the evening it must not be burnt, as it is destined to bring good fortune; but when seen in the morning, it must be burnt without being touched. The evening and morning aurora are compared to the spider and the spider's web; the evening aurora must prepare the morning aurora during the night. We have quoted on a previous occasion the Piedmontese proverb, "Rosso di sera, buon tempo si spera" (red at night, we hope for fine weather). If the sun dies in the west without clouds, if the luminous spider shows itself in the western sky, it augurs for the morrow a fine morning and a fine day. In the _Rigvedas_ we have on this subject several interesting data; the aurora weaved during the night (and is therefore called vayantî;[259] sometimes she is helped by Râkâ, the full moon[260]) the robe for her husband. But, in another hymn, she is entreated to shine soon, and not to stretch out or weave her work too long, in order that the sun with his rays may not fall upon it and burn it like a thief.[261] In the legend of Odysseus, Penelopê undoes in the night the work of the day; this is another aspect of the same myth: Penelopê, as aurora, undoes her web at even, to weave it again at morn. The myth of Arachnê (the name of the spider, and of the celebrated Lydian virgin whom Athenê, the aurora, according to Professor Max Müller, taught to spin, and whose father was Idmon, a colourer in purple), whom Athenê, jealous of the skill she had acquired in weaving in purple colours, strikes on the forehead and transforms into a spider, is a variety of the same myth of the weaving aurora. When the spider becomes dark, and when its web is gloomy, then the spider, or son of the spider, or Âurnavabhas, assumes a monstrous form. Âurnavabhas (ûrnavâbhis, ûrnanâbhis, ûrnanabhas, as spider, are already spoken of in the Vedic writings) is the name of the gloomy monster Vritras, killed by the god Indras, the terrible monster which Indras, immediately after his birth, is obliged to kill[262] at the instigation of his mother. In the _Mahâbhâratam_[263] we find two women that spin and weave, Dhatâ and Vidhatâ; they weave upon the loom of the year with black and white threads, _i.e._, they spin the days and the nights. We, therefore, have a beneficent spider and a malignant one.

In the fourth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the young Parmetella marries a black slave, who gives her as servants swans, "Vestute de tela d'oro, che, subeto 'ncignannola da capo a pede, la mesero 'n forma de ragno, che pareva propio na Regina." (The black man becomes a handsome youth during the night, perhaps as the moon; she wishes to see his features, and he disappears; this is a variety of the popular story of the wife's indiscretion.) In the fifth story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, the spider sets its web to catch flies, mosquitoes, and wasps; a wasp, being caught in the web, begs to be released in consideration of the many children that she will leave behind her (the same stratagem that is used by the hen against the fox in the Tuscan story previously mentioned.) The credulous spider lets her go; she then warns wasps, flies, and mosquitoes to keep hidden. The spider then asks help from the grasshopper, the moth, and the bug (nocturnal animals), who announce that the spider is dead, having given up the ghost upon the gibbet, which gibbet was afterwards destroyed (the evening aurora has disappeared into the night). The flies, mosquitoes, and wasps again come out, and fell into the spider's web (into the morning aurora). In the eighteenth story of the sixth book of _Afanassieff_, the beautiful girl who flees from the house of the witch that persecutes her, stretches out a veil, which, by the help of a beautiful young maiden (the moon), she has embroidered with gold; immediately a great sea of fire springs up, into which the old witch falls and is burned; and here we come back to the popular Italian superstition that the spider must be burned in the morning.

The spider is an animal of the earth, but it weaves its web in the air; and as such--as intermediary between the animals of the earth and those of the air--supplies us with a bridge by which we may pass naturally from the first to the second part of the present work.[264] I hope that this bridge will prove as sufficient as the sack in which the young Esthonian hero carries the treasure away from hell, a sack composed of the threads of a spider, so strong that it is impossible to tear them. I wish I had, in the first book, some of the skill of the spider, and that I could weave with a few threads from the labyrinth of Âryan legendary tradition concerning animals a web which, if it be not as luminous as that of Arachnê, may be more durable than that of Penelopê.

FOOTNOTES:

[259] _Rigv._ ii. 38, 4.--In the fifty-fourth story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, the king who has no children makes the maiden seven years old manufacture a fisherman's net in the space of only one night.

[260] In the German legend we have the spinner in the moon. "Die Altmärkische Sage bei Temme 49, 'die Spinnerin im Monde,' wo ein Mädchen von seiner Mutter verwünscht wird, im Monde zu sitzen und zu spinnen, scheint entstellt, da jener Fluch sie nicht wegen Spinnens, sondern Tanzens im Mondschein trifft;" Simrock, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 2te Aufl. p. 23.--Cfr. also the first chapter of this work, and that on the bear, where we read of a girl dancing with the bear in the night.--Perhaps there is also some correspondence between the Vedic word _râkâ_ and _a-rachnê_.

[261] Vy uchâ duhitar divo mâ ciram tanutha apah net tvâ stenam yathâ ripum tapâti sûro arcishâ; _Rigv._ v. 79, 9.

[262] Vritram avâbhinad dânum âurnavâbham; _Rigv._ ii. 11, 18.--Gagnâno nu çatakratur vi prichad iti mâtaram ka ugrâh ke ha çrinvire âd îm çavasy abravîd âurnavâbham ahîçuvam te putra santu nishturah; _Rigv._ viii. 66, 1, 2.

[263] i. 802, 825.

[264] I observe, moreover, how in the Russian fables of Kriloff the same part is attributed to the spider as in the West to the wren (the regulus) and to the beetle. The eagle carries, without knowing it, a spider in its tail upon a tree; the spider then makes its web over it. Bird and spider therefore exchange places.

Second Part.

THE ANIMALS OF THE AIR.