Mr. Editor,--Allow me, in addition to the Note inserted in your 4th
Number, in answer to the Query of LEGOUR, by your correspondent (and I
believe my friend) J.G., to give the following extract from Forby's
_Vocabulary of East Anglia_:--
"Bishop Barnabee-s. The pretty insect more generally called the
Lady-bird, or May-bug. It is one of those highly favoured among
God's harmless creatures which superstition protects from wanton
injury. Some obscurity seems to hang over this popular name
{132} of it. It has certainly no more relation to the companion
of St. Paul than to drunken Barnaby, though some have supposed
it has. It is sometimes called _Bishop Benebee_, which may
possibly have been intended to mean the _blessed bee_; sometimes
_Bishop Benetree_, of which it seems not possible to make any
thing. The name has most probably been derived from the
_Barn-Bishop_; whether in scorn of that silly and profane
mockery, or in pious commemoration of it, must depend on the
time of its adoption, before or since the Reformation; and it is
not worth inquiring. The two words are transposed, and _bee_
annexed as being perhaps thought more seemly in such a
connection than fly-bug or beetle. The dignified ecclesiastics
in ancient times wore brilliant mixtures of colours in their
habits. Bishops had scarlet and black, as this insect has on its
wing-covers. Some remains of the finery of the gravest
personages still exist on our academical robes of ceremony.
There is something inconsistent with the popish episcopal
character in the childish rhyme with which _Bishop Barnabee_ is
thrown up and dismissed when he happens to light on any one's
hand. Unluckily the words are not recollected, nor at present
recoverable; but the purport of them is to admonish him to fly
home, and take care of his wife and children, for that his house
in on fire. Perhaps, indeed, the rhyme has been fabricated long
since the name by some one who did not think of such niceties."