Little Miss Muffet

The well known nursery rhyme goes like this: 

Little Miss Muffet,

Sat on a tuffet

eating her curds and whey.

Along came a spider

who sat down beside her

and frightened little Miss Muffet away.

There is a dark side to this, and it's so disturbing that I was reluctant to post it for ages. It goes back to the early 17th century, and might be earlier. There was a young girl named Patience Muffet who became very ill. Her father was a doctor, and he put dead spiders in medicines that he gave to the sick. His name was Dr Thomas Muffet and he believed that dead spiders was an important ingredient for cures. He gave Patience the spider medicine too!     

What prompted me to post about it was that a similar thing happened to both me and then to my daughter. I was sat down while using the laptop during lunch when an enormous daddy long legs spider came dangling down in front of me. I had to put it outside. The next day, my teenaged daughter was having her breakfast and then a big spider appeared next to her. The experience was freaky and unnerving. 

Some people would say it was luck! They also say it's lucky to tread on poo by accident and also considered "lucky" to have birds' droppings fall on you outside! Having two different spiders come and sit down basically wasn't so much "lucky" at all but a moment of panic. It was more like an encounter with the minions of that evil Middle Earth tarantula queen Shelob.  

She Wolf Night