A lot of old wives tales exist mainly to tell you how to keep spider away and out of your house. You do have the occasional benevolent one like, money spiders, these tiny little spider we have in the UK which are actually a family called Linyphiidae. The superstition goes; if you can have the spider hanging from a web on your finger and spin it round your head 3 times, you’ll come into some money. Or variations there of, like all good folklore it varies from place to place. But I’m not here to talk about Linyphiidae I’m here to tell you about cellar spiders and tinsel.
Allow me to introduce you to a European folk-story. Tinsel is a staple for decorating halls, homes and trees, the possible inspiration for this might be found in an old story told many ways in many countries. It is one of my favourite spider stories because, as you may have deduced I really like spider and have a spot for cellar spider in particular, this story shows you why perhaps, you could allow them a corner of one of your mighty rooms, or perhaps a cupboard under the stares.
So as with many folk tales go we start in a small house with a woman and her children subject to abject poverty. A pine cone falls to the earthen floor of their house and takes root. The children are not the kind to ignore such an opportunity and so care and tend to the slowly growing pine tree with the hope it will be big enough by christmas and they can finally have a christmas tree. Upon the turn on the season and the arrival of christmas the family do indeed have a christmas tree, but being poor as they are they cannot afford decorations for it, and so the children go to bed feeling the bite of sadness and disappointment.
But in the depths of the night a spider stirs. Cellar spiders have been making their home in human made structures for thousands of years by this point, and so of course the house had a few who called it home. And so as favour to the family, for letting them stay, or for giving them a tree, or even to Saint Nicolas himself, the spiders set to work spinning their threads over the tree in the finest of silk. As the woman and her children woke upon christmas morning they saw the delicate strands of silk woven over the tree just as the sunlight crept in through the window, turning the strands to gold and glimmering silver. The joy the woman and her children felt was radiant, and they were lucky enough to never live in poverty again, after that day.
If you want something a little more biological, I also wrote an Autodidactic Dramatics article called ‘How to hang your christmas decorations: A spider’s Guide’ which goes into detail about the spinning of silk from these splendid spiders. For those of you who are less keen on allowing these harmless long legged lads and lasses into your space, at least allow them space in your shed, garage, porch or windowsill, surly there would be room for three.
Wonderfully Weird 