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,
"PÂN, PÂN, show me thy blood,
And I will give thee good white wine!"
As he uttered the charm, the juvenile pontiff spat on poor Thammuz, till
a torrent of blood, or what seemed such, "ran purple" over the urchin's
fingers.
Paul-Ernest Jablonski's numerous readers need not be told that the said
beetle is an Egyptian emblem of the everlasting and universal soul, and
that its temple is the equinoctial circle, the upper hemisphere.[1]
As a solar emblem, it offers an instructive object of inquiry to the
judicious gleaners of the old world's fascinating nursery traditions.
Sicilian Diodorus tells us that the earth's lover, Attis (or Adonis),
after his resuscitation, acquired the divine title of PAPAN.[2] To
hazard the inoffensive query, why one of our commonest great beetles is
still allowed to figure under so distinguished a name, will therefore
reflect no discredit upon a cautious student of nearly threescore years.
The very Welsh talked, in William Baxter's time, of "Heaven, as
_bugarth_ PAPAN," the sun's ox-stall or resting-place; and here you
likewise find his beetle-majesty, in a Low-Norman collection of insular
rhymes:--
"Sus l'bord piâsottaient, côte-à-côte,
Les équerbots et leas PAPANS,
Et ratte et rat laissaient leux crotte
Sus les vieilles casses et même dedans."[3]
By the help of Horapollo, Chiflet's gnostic gems, and other repertories
of the same class, one might, peradventure, make a tolerable case in
favour of the mythological identity of the legend of Ladybird--that is,
the _sun-chafer_, or _barn-bie_, the _fire-fly_, "whose house is burnt,
and whose bairns are ten," of course the first ten days of the Egyptian
year[4]--with the mystical stories of the said black or dark blue lords
of radiance, _Pân_ and _Papân_.
The Egyptians revere the beetle as a living and breathing image of the
sun, quoth Porphyry.[5] That will account for this restless delver's
extraordinary talismanic renown. I think the lady-bird is "the speckled
beetle" which was flung in hot water to avert storms.[6] Pignorius gives
us the figure of the beetle, crowned with the sun, and encircled with
the serpent of eternity; while another, an onyx in the collection of
Abraham Gorlæus, threatens to gnaw at a thunderbolt.[7]
Reuven's book on the Egyptian Museum, which I have not seen, notices an
invocation to "the winged beetle, the monarch ([Greek: tyrannos]) of
mid-heaven," concluding with a devout wish that some poor creature "may
be dashed to pieces."
Can any of your readers inform me what is meant by "the blood of the
_Phuôn_?"
Yours truly,
?
St. Martin's, Guernsey, Jan. 9. 1850.
* * * * *
EXTRACTS FROM CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS OF ST. MARGARET'S,
WESTMINSTER--WEIGHT OF BELLS IN ANCIENT TIMES--HISTORY OF A
ROOD-LOFT.
I send you a few Notes, collected out of the Churchwardens' Accounts of
St. Margaret's, Westminster.