Home › Curious Customs and Beliefs in Modern › Curious Customs and Beliefs in Modern

Curious Customs and Beliefs in Modern

TIMES THE bees must still be told of a death in the family in many parts of Europe and in certain out-of-the-way places in our own country, where in earlier days the custom was general. It afforded material for one of Whittier's most beautiful poems, "Telling the Bees." "Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back, Went, drearily singing, the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black. " Trembling, I listened; the summer sun Had the chill of snow; For I knew she was telling the bees of one Gone on the journey we all must go!"

The song the chore-girl small was singing is this : - "Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!

Mistress Mary is dead and gone!"

This recalls a similar prayer heard in Germany, and which may thus be translated: - "Little bee, our lord is dead; Leave me not in my distress."

In England the custom of telling the bees is still general in the rural districts.

Not long since, a woman in Suffolk, when asked if she had told the bees of the death of a relative, immediately 34° replied, "Oh! yes, when my aunt died, I told every skep 1 myself, and put them into mourning," and in his book, "The Honey Bee," Harris says: - "I have since ascertained the existence of the same superstition in Cornwall, Devonshire, Gloucestershire (where I have seen black crape put round the hive or on a small stick at its side), and Yorkshire."

In the "Bee Journal," under the head of "Norfolk Bee- Superstition" one writes : - "A neighbor of mine had bought a hive of bees at an auction of the goods of a farmer, who had recently died. The bees seemed very sickly, and not likely to thrive; when my neighbor's servant bethought him they had never been put in mourning for their late master. On this he got a piece of crape and tied it to a stick, which he fastened to a hive. After this the bees recovered; and when I saw them they were in a very flourishing state - a result which was unhesitatingly attributed to their having been put into mourning."

An Oxfordshire woman, according to the "Bee Journal," a few years since declared that her grandfather had seventeen hives of bees at the time of his death, and because no one told them of his demise every bee died.

In a "Book about Bees" by Jenyns we find this interesting anecdote. "The Rev. George Raynor, the well-known bee-keeper, has given me the following story : - "An 'old lady' in this parish, whose husband died a short time ago, was 'about to put her bees in mourning' when I dissuaded her, showing her how foolish was the idea that the bee could understand anything about the death.

During the following winter the bees died. "I was never forgiven, although I offered more bees to 1 Hive.

Curious Customs and Beliefs the manes of the departed husband. I was greeted with ""It's all very good o' you, sir, but they ain't like t'other poor dears as is dead and gone!'" In Yorkshire the bees are invited to the funeral.

In the Carolina mountains of the United States the people still "tell the bees" of a death in the family; as one of the mountaineers recently described it, "You knock on each hive, so, and say, 'Lucy is dead.' " In some parts of France the hives are put into mourning when one of the family dies, and the inhabitants of the Pyrenees have a custom of burying an old garment belonging to the deceased under the bench where the beehives stand, and they neither sell, give away nor exchange the bees of the dead.

There is a wide-spread superstition that it is unlucky to buy the bees of a dead man, while in some parts of England, Germany, France, and the United States it is considered necessary to move the hives upon the death of the owner, either to change their place or to turn them around, a custom said also to be practised in China.

The faith with which this belief was held in England is illustrated in the following, quoted by Harris from a book written in 1621: - "Who would believe without superstition (if experience did not make it credible) that most commonly all the bees die in their hives if the master or mistress of the house chance to die, except the hives be presently removed into some other place? And yet I know this hath happened to folk no way stained with superstition."

Sometimes this disturbing of the bees is received illnaturedly and causes trouble at the house of mourning. Jean Paul recounts a mishap of this nature at the funeral of a man of high rank, where the obsequies were being conducted with the greatest state and ceremony when forth rushed the outraged inhabitants of the disturbed hives and fell upon the assembly with such fury that all took to flight. They stood not upon the order of their going but went. In Westphalia there is a pretty custom of telling the bees the happy events of the family as well as the sad ones, and the newly-married couple going to their new home must introduce themselves to the bees, or else their married life will be unfortunate. It seems this custom is rather wide-spread, and the following introduction of the young couple to the bees has a very merry swing. "Imen in, imen ut, hir ist de junge brut.

Imen um, imen an, hir ist de junge man.

Imekes, verlatt se nitt wann se nu mal kinner kritt!"

In the folk-songs of the Poles is a ditty said to be sung at Polish peasant weddings while mead is drunk around the circle: - Industrious as the life of the bee Is the life on the farm, And sweet as honey Is the married state.

In some northern countries honey was used in extravagant profusion at weddings, as Bergius in his book upon sweetmeats relates of the daughter of a certain Swedish person of note who in 1500 A. D. used half a ton of honey at her wedding. And in 1567 at Sigrid Sture's wedding 453 cans of honey were used.

In Brittany the bee hives are decorated with pieces of scarlet cloth at a wedding, the people believing that unless Curious Customs and Beliefs the bees are allowed to partake in the rejoicings they will go away.

For bees to leave their home without good cause portends the near death of their owner. It is also considered unlucky for bees to swarm upon dead wood, as for instance a post, a dead tree, or the dead branch of a living tree. In some places this means that the bees themselves will perish, in others that a death will occur in the family within a year.

It is a common superstition that ill-fortune attends the killing of bees.