Hilda M. Ransome - The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore

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PLATE I.RELIEF FROM THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN OF NE-USER-RE (FIFTH DYNASTY) IN ABUSIR

(By permission of the Director, Egyptian Museum, Berlin)

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2004, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published in 1937 by George Allen & Unwin, London.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ransome, Hilda M.

The sacred bee in ancient times and folklore / Hilda M. Ransome.

p. cm.

Originally published: London : George Allen & Unwin, 1937.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780486122984

1. BeesFolklore. 2. BeesHistory. 3. Bee cultureHistory. 4. HoneyFolklore. I. Title.

GR750.R3 2004
398.24525799dc22

2003068757

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

TO THE READER

The chiefest cause, to read good bookes,
That moves each studious minde
Is hope, some pleasure sweet therein,
Or profit good to finde.
Now what delight can greater be
Than secrets for to knowe
Of Sacred Bees, the Muses Birds,
All which this booke doth showe.

Charles Butler, The Feminine Monarchie, 1609

PREFACE

EDWARD LEARS old man of Tralee was horridly bored by a bee, a regular brute of a bee, which annoyed him by its buzzing. If, therefore, the buzzings of bees are wearying to anyone, they will hardly care for this book, which is full of their humming and buzzing; if, however, they are interested in folklore it may appeal to them, for the bee excited the interest of man from the earliest times; no creature provided him with so much sweet and wholesome food, which he used largely in his ritual, and around none has such a number of beliefs and superstitions arisen.

My thanks are due to those who have encouraged me in my work: to Mr. Donald A. Mackenzie for many helpful notes; to Dr. Rendel Harris, Dr. R. Campbell Thompson; to Professor M. A. Canney, Rev. T. Fish, and the late Miss W. M. Crompton, who read some of the chapters; to Dr. Guppy of the John Rylands Library, Manchester; to Sir W. Mitchell Ramsay; to Sir Arthur Evans for the Cretan illustrations; to Dr. Alfred M. Tozzer of Harvard University; to Senor Hernandez-Pacheco of Madrid; to Dr. Gaster for the folktales from Rumania; to the late Dr. P. C. Lee of Cork; to Dr. L. D. Caskey of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Mass.; to the heads of various departments of the British Museum, and to all those who have so kindly responded to my request for material.

HILDA M. RANSOME

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

CHAPTER I

EARLY TIMES

Honey used by primitive manBee regarded with reverence and aweFossil formsApis adamiticaRock painting of man and bees nest at Bicorp, Spain

OF bees especially the proverb holds good, Truth is stranger than fiction. Among all the members of the insect world bees and ants have aroused greater interest than any others, but it is the bees who have been of paramount use to man. As we look back upon their history we become more and more convinced that it is impossible to over-estimate their value to man in the past.

What veneration and yet what fear these tiny creatures excited in man! They exercise a fascination even on those who fear their sting, and all who tend them have quite a peculiar love and regard for them which they do not feel for other animals, and which is a bond of union between all beekeepers; they feel that they belong to a fraternity which reckons Vergil among their number. From the dawn of human society the nature and origin of the bee have awakened the curiosity and interest of man. For thousands of years honey was the only sweetening material known, and it is quite natural that in ancient times the little busy creature who produced this sweet food should have been regarded with reverence and awe.

Man very early discovered that honey was good for his health, and that a sparkling, fermented drink could be made from it, so it can easily be understood that he came to regard honey as a true giver of life, a substance necessary to existence like water and milk. He held the bee to be a creature of special sanctity connected with those things which seemed to him so mysteriousbirth, death, and reincarnation. Thus have arisen those folktales and customs relating to bees which are found among so many different peoples. The very widespread custom of telling the bees of occurrences which happen in their owners family would not have arisen had they not been credited with almost supernatural powers. This custom still lingers; quite recently a woman in Sussex said that the death of her baby was due to her having omitted to tell the bees of its birth.

The scientific name of the European honey bee is Apis mellifica, the honey-maker, and its history can be traced back to a period long before man appeared on the earth, as there actually have been found in various rocks fossil remains of this

Active, eager, airy thing,
Ever hovering on the wing,

as Aristophanes called the bee nearly two thousand five hundred years ago.

Some of the oldest fossil bees are found in the amber of the Baltic coast, and they so resemble our honey bee that scientists have regarded them as their ancestors. A fossil bee, which is illustrated on Plate II and in though pre-adamitica would have been a more correct name, as this bee lived and gathered honey before there were any men on the earth. Its legs and antennae are missing, but its head, thorax, and abdomen can distinctly be recognized, and also one large eye.

.FOSSIL BEE FROM OEHNINGEN, BADEN

Central Europe was probably the region where the different races of bees developed, for the oldest forms have been found there. All these fossil bees were as fully developed as the honey bees of the present day; that is, they built combs, reared their young, looked after the mother-bee just as they do now, and formed the same industrious state whose organization has been for ages the wonder and admiration of man. Man has done nothing to develop them; he has given them modern appliances which help them to store more surplus honey for him, but the character and work of the bees remain the same, and we can never describe them as really domesticated animals; they often, as beekeepers know to their cost, display independence of character; it has been truly said that Bees never do anything invariably.

PLATE II.FOSSIL BEE FROM OEHNINGEN, BADEN

Now in the Geologischen Institut der Techischen Hochschule in Zrich.

(By kind permission of Professor O. Schneider-Orelli)

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