“When a Spider is found upon your clothes, or about your person,” says a writer in the Notes and Queries,[1145] “it signifies that you will shortly receive some money. Old Fuller, who was a native of Northamptonshire, thus quaintly moralizes this superstition: ‘When a Spider is found upon your clothes, we used to say some money is coming toward us. The moral is this: such who imitate the industry of that contemptible creature may, by God’s blessing, weave themselves into wealth and procure a plentiful estate.’”[1146] A South Northamptonshire superstition of the present day is, that, in order to propitiate money-spinners, they must be thrown over the left shoulder.[1147] It is most probable that Euclio, in Plautus’ Aulularia, would not suffer the Spiders to be molested because they were considered to bring good luck. _Staphyla._ Here in our house there’s nothing else for thieves to gain, so filled is it with emptiness and cobwebs. _Euclio._ You hag of hags, I choose those cobwebs to be watched for me.[1148] A superstition prevails among us that if a Spider approaches, either by crawling toward or descending from the ceiling to a person, it forebodes good to such person; and, on the contrary, if the Spider runs hurriedly away, it is an omen of bad luck. But if the Spider be a poisonous one, or a Fly-catcher, and it approaches you, some evil is about to befall you, which to avert you must cross your heart thrice. If you kill a Spider crossing your path, you will have bad luck. A Spider should not be killed in your house, but out of doors; if in the house, our country people say you are “pulling down your house.” If a Spider drops down from its web or from a tree directly in front of a person, such person will see before night a dear friend. A variety of this superstition is, that, if the Spider be white, it foretells the acquaintance of a friend; and if black, an enemy. In the Netherlands, a Spider seen in the morning forebodes good luck; in the afternoon, bad luck.[1149] There is a common saying at Winchester, England, that no Spider will hang its web on the roof of Irish oak in the chapel or cloisters;[1150] and the cicerone, who shows the cathedral church at St. David’s, points out to the visitor that the choir is roofed with Irish oak, which does not harbor Spiders, though cobwebs are plentifully seen in other parts of the cathedral.[1151] This superstition (for it certainly is nothing more)[1152] probably originated with the old story of St. Patrick’s having exorcised and banished all kinds of vermin from Ireland. The same virtue of repelling Spiders is attributed also to chestnut and cedar wood;[1153] and the old roof at Turner’s Court, in Gloucestershire, four miles from Bath, which is of chestnut, is said to be perfectly free from cobwebs;[1154] hence also are the cloisters of New College, and of Christ’s Church, in England, roofed with chestnut.[1155]