The Gordiidæ in Folk-lore

Abstract

THE sudden appearance of the Gordiidae or hair worms in puddles of water or similar situations has caused the primitive peoples of many countries to evolve a theory of their seemingly mysterious origin. In parts of Scotland they are believed to be the intermediate stage in the development of a horse-hair into an eel; in Iceland and the Faeroes, and also in some of the Malayan islands, they are thought to come down with the rain; in the Malay Peninsula they are said to be the offspring of an unnatural union between an earthworm and a female mantis, and to turn into a fern (Lygodium sp.), the creeping rhizome of which some of them (for example, Chorodes montoni, Camer.) closely resemble. (I found that a very large proportion of the true Mantidae were infested by them in the Malay States.) In the same country, by an application of the principle of the doctrine of signatures, they are used in the manufacture of a hair-wash. I have thought that it might be interesting to trace out the beliefs held about them among different races, but I find references to them extremely scanty in ethnographical or general literature. If any of your correspondents could furnish in formation of the kind I would be extremely grateful, for I believe that an interesting contribution to the biological philosophy of savages might be made by collecting and analysing the different theories held by primitive peoples regarding a small and easily recognised group of animals like the Gordiidae.