Crickets
:
BIRDS AND BEASTS.
It is lucky to have crickets in a house, and to kill one is sure to bring
bad luck after it. If they are very numerous in a house, it is a sign
that peace and plenty reign there. The bakehouse in which their merry
chirp is heard is the place to bake your bread, for it is a certain sign
that the bread baked there will turn out well.
An aged female Welsh friend in Porthywaen told me that it is a sign of
d
ath for crickets to leave a house, and she proved her case by an apt
illustration. She named all the parties concerned in the following
tale:--There were hundreds of crickets in . . . house; they were
'sniving,' swarming, all about the house, and were often to be seen
outside the house, or at least heard, and some of them perched on the
wicket to the garden; but all at once they left the place, and very soon
afterwards the son died. The crickets, she said, knew that a death was
about to take place, and they all left that house, going no one knew
where.
It was not thought right to look at the cricket, much less to hurt it.
The warm fireplace, with its misplaced or displaced stones, was not to be
repaired, lest the crickets should be disturbed, and forsake the place,
and take with them good luck. They had, therefore, many snug, warm holes
in and about the chimneys. Crickets are not so plentiful in Wales as
they once were.