THE children learned the song at Mrs Kiddy’s Barnardiston pre-prep school in Suffolk and it became a party piece. ‘I’m very fond of earwigs, they have such shiny backs, as if the day is raining and they are wearing macs. They hide in gay nasturtiums and all that I can see is just a little pointy tail a-wiggling at me. My granny screams in horror whenever one comes near. She says that it is trying to climb into her ear. But I know that’s all silly, for they are much too wise to choose such a hidey-hole in which to spend their lives.’
Infant voices thus dismissed one of the oldest myths in the insect world—and possibly the first myth to determine an insect’s name, for it comes directly from the Old English for ear (eare) and insect or beetle (wicga). An old name for an old creature—its fossilised ancestry dates back some 208 million years. The name translates literally in most European languages, as in the French perceoreille, the Dutch oorworm and the German ohrwurm, demonstrating that the belief in its invasive quest was continent-wide. It was mentioned in Pliny the Elder’s natural history of AD77, his counsel being to spit into the affected orifice, a kind companion, presumably, being enlisted to administer the cure. Advice in the 11th-century, Anglo-Saxon Old English Herbarium, a translation of a 5th-century Latin text, was to ‘take the big great windelstraw with two edges, which grows on highways, chew it into the ear, and he will soon be off’.
'Several species live in the fur of giant rats in tropical Africa'
Denne historien er fra February 09, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 09, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
