Musings on Spiders.

*Arachnophobes Beware!*

It’s been a bit of a slow week on the textile front due to various things, but I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

On Tuesday, I found a garden spider weaving her orb web in the garden early in the morning. I’ve seen a spider making her web before – and walked into a few! - but I’ve never actually taken the time to watch properly, so I stayed to see how she did it. I know she’s a she because she’s fairly big and the females are bigger than the males.

She’d already done the “spokes” and was in the middle of creating the sticky spiral, working from the outside to the inside. I hope you can see her spinning her web in this photo. It was quite a big web!

Just after I took this, a miniscule fly crashed into her web and she immediately scuttled to the centre. The web bounced a bit, which seemed to be too big a movement for the tiny fly, so I’m assuming that the spider was bouncing it to determine where in her web the fly was. Within a few seconds, she went directly to the fly, untangled it from the wheel of silk and took it back to the centre. That left a hole where the fly had been. I couldn’t see whether she ate it or kept it in her mouth to suck the juices from it, but she didn’t stay there, she carried on with her weaving, like a working breakfast. Coffee and toast to go! Sorry if you’re a bit squeamish.

While watching her, the story of Robert the Bruce came to mind, something I haven’t thought about in years. He watched a spider spinning her web in a cave while he was hiding. To be honest, I couldn’t remember who it was who took shelter in the cave so I had to look it up. But, while I was doing that, I found one version of the story that said the spider was trying to climb the cave wall to get to her web at the top. She kept falling down but tried again and again to reach her web and eventually succeeded.

This isn’t the version I remembered, so I kept searching and found another version which said Robert the Bruce watched the spider trying to spin her web. The first strand she sent out to the other side of the cave didn’t reach, nor did the second or third, but she kept trying and on the seventh attempt it worked. This was also not the version I’d heard, but is similar to it.

From what I remember, the story was that Robert the Bruce had gone into hiding after his Scottish army had been defeated by the English. He hid in a cave, thinking about giving up his defence of Scotland and while there he saw a spider spinning her web at the entrance of the cave. (That’s all the same so far, but this is where the versions differ.) She made her web but when it was complete, a strong wind came up and blew it away. She spun another, but it began to rain heavily and the web was washed away. She created web after web but even though it kept getting destroyed, the spider determinedly continued until eventually the sun shone and her web stayed in place. This made Robert the Bruce realise that he shouldn’t give up. He rallied his army, fought the English again and won.

The whole point of the story, of course, is that if you’re determined and keep trying, you’ll succeed in your aim. I did used to wonder why spiders build their webs where they keep being destroyed, but watching this one on Tuesday made me realise how they just keep going. Web gets ruined - never mind, build another one! However many times they need to weave, they weave.

This, in turn, brought to mind the Nelson Mandela quote:

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

It’s something I think I needed to be reminded of this week, so I feel grateful to that little spider for being there. It’s not only a personal thing; with the way the world is at the moment, I really hope the human race can rise from where it is. ❤

There was a heavy rain on Wednesday night and when I looked on Thursday morning, the spider had a new web: there were no holes in it where flies had been caught. Again, yesterday and today, it has rained and last night her web was reduced to a few strands, but she was still there, near some leaves. This is her web today:

She’s woven a new, smaller one and I have no doubt that she will continue weaving.

While I’m on the subject of spiders, and as an extra point of interest, in Anglo Saxon England, they apparently believed that apprentice wizards/shamans journeyed to the Otherworld with a Spider Monster while in a trance to go through their initiation. Another Spider Monster met them when they arrived and the shaman would have to prove he knew his stuff. It’s thought that the spiders represented the Wyrd Sisters who wove the web of life. I read this in The Real Middle Earth, Magic and Mystery in the Dark Ages by Brian Bates.

I used to be arachnophobic and here I am writing about spiders. But as much as I’ve found a new respect for spiders, I don’t think I’d like to go through that initiation! 😉😊