Spiders in Early Medieval England

In this video, I explore textual and archaeological evidence relating to spiders in early medieval England.

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[SkeletonBill]

This awakened a memory of reading The Hobbit as a child and having no idea why Bilbo was calling the spiders "attercop". It took 25 years but now I know!

[haydenismondo]

“ridiculous” is the perfect adjective for describing how jumping spiders jump, 12/10 scriptwriting

[jared_bowden]

For those curious, the 'cob' in 'cobweb' is indeed related to the word Attercop (source: Online Etymology Dictionary) and means "spiderweb" ('cob' being a shortening of Attercop).
Edit: 'cob' is also related to 'cup' as Attercop means 'poison-cup'. (Interestingly, 'Atter' and 'Adder' are unrelated).

[HaukLanglo]

Atterkop is definitely a word introduced to England by the Vikings. In Norwegian we call spiders "edderkopp". Edder is a modern form of a word "either" which means to be toxic, acid or nasty in old Norse language. Kopp is the same as cup, another Norwegian word adopted by English. So Atterkop is actually Norwegian for "a cup of something nasty".

[cleophea]

nobody but Simon could get me - an arachnophobe - to watch an over 20 min videos with close-up shots of spiders... yet here I am at the end of said video doing absolutely fine and definitely a bit more knowledgeable. great work, as always!:)

[hegedusuk]

What a brilliant video. I mean where else would I find a documentary about something so superficially 'dull' at first glance that is actually fascinating? Seriously very interesting video for the sort of people who find this sort of thing fascinating, such as me.

[milobem]

In Polish folklore the spiders are good creatures. A story my grandma told me: When the Holy Family was escaping from king Herod to Egypt, they hid in a cave for a night. Spiders quickly made a web across the entrance, which convinved the soldiers that no one could be hiding inside. If the spiders saved baby Jesus, they can't be bad.

[dnutwaffle]

After speaking about words used by other germanic languages
"We have other Angles/angles we can look at this from"
Damn near choked on my spit, very well done.

[just.cruzin.]

There's a big boy lives behind my fridge,
I'd never harm him, and if he gets any bigger I'm gonna have to charge him rent😂😊.

[joyousmonkey]

I seem to recall that "cobweb" has the element COB < COPPE = SPIDER, so the ATORCOPPE would be a poisonous spider. In Afrikaans the word for spider is SPINNEKOP, which would appear to be a tautology: SPINNE = spider, and KOP(PE) = spider.

[CrowSkeleton]

Poor spithers...I think the fear of them is definitely a modern cultural thing: your early med. snakes, toads, hares and cats were likewise demonised by the monastic establishment, but I think it's unlikely folk ran away shrieking from those things, even if they crossed themselves or read omens in their presence. The term 'money spider' comes from the specifically pecunary good luck supposed to follow from having one gently drift onto you, even.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to make this and film some spiders, I appreciate both. Didn't know that conker folklore, either!

[ocaollaidhe]

regarding conkers, I played the game when I was younger in the schoolyard (in Ireland, I'm 18) and I've heard the belief about conkers deterring spiders a few times too, though I've never done it myself

[PvtPuplovski]

Great video Simon! You're one of the main reasons I quit working full-time and have enrolled back in school, hopefully going for a Linguistics degree. Just wanted to let you know you inspire a lot of interest in this field, and I appreciate all your videos and the research you put into them. Thank you!

[SuperDuperJo]

Fascinating video! I feel like it is worth mentioning that in the dialect malungsmål from western Dalarna, Sweden, the word for spider is “dzerg”, which is cognate with “dwarf” and standard Swedish “dvärg”. A similar word for spider is apparently found in other dialects of Dalarna as well. I guess it is possible that it somehow is a reference to the size of the animal. But I find it much more appealing that it rather reflects older Germanic folk beliefs, in accordance with what you mention in the video. Thanks for the great content!

[smegheadGOAT]

fantastic, I grew up in South Africa and was surprised when living in the UK that folks would swot away insects that walked in your skin, in SA most insects sting or bite and the worst thing to do would be to absent minded brush away a insect without checking if it was a stinger.

[jared_bowden]

A quick summary of Cavell's dissertation mentioned at 16:53 (it's an interesting read): there's three different literary strains which spiders are portrayed in literature from old England: in Prechristian Latin writings, spiders tend to be described positively as industrious weavers; in Biblical and Christian writings, spiders are strongly associated with fragility, usually with a negative connotation; and in Old English writings that don't show a direct influence from these other two, spiders tend to be described as quite frightening, disgusting, and very dangerous creatures (even through they probably weren't) in a way that isn't too different from the "horror-movie" portrayal of them in modern Western culture. It doesn't go into what might cause these cultural portrayals.

[owlfrog]

1:30 is the kind of audio you absolutely cannot fake and elevates the production value of this video 10x. please never change

[kiminnehalem]

Love spiders!!! Love language evolution!! PERFECT!! Thank you so much.

[ulfhedin]

Gongelwæfra has a Norwegian cognate. One of our words for spider is 'kongro' or in ON 'kangurváfa' which my dictionary tells me comes from "probably a Germanic root *kang 'spin' in the basic meaning of turning. The second part comes from weave".
So the gongul part in the OE word could have another meaning than walking. Maybe it's a spinweaver rather than a walkweaver.
Great video by the way.

[Fairyfink]

i studied mediaeval languages and literature at university many years ago. Thank you for taking me back!