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BEETLE MYTHOLOGY.

Mr. Editor,--I never thought of asking my Low-Norman fellow-rustics
whether the ladybird had a name and a legend in the best preserved of
the northern Romance dialects: on the score of a long absence
(eight-and-twenty years), might not a veteran wanderer plead
forgiveness? Depend upon it, Sir, nevertheless, that should any
reminiscences exist among my chosen friends, the stout-hearted and
industrious tenants of a soil where every croft and paddock is the leaf
of a chronicle, it will be communicated without delay. There is more
than usual attractiveness in the astronomical German titles of this tiny
"red chafer," or _rother kaefer_, SONNEN KAEFER and VNSER FRAWEN
KVHLEIN, the Sun-chafer, and our Lady's little cow. (_Isis_ or _Io?_)

With regard to its provincial English name, _Barnabee_, the correct
interpretation might be found in _Barn-bie_, the burning, or fire-fly, a
compound word of Low-Dutch origin.

We have a small black beetle, common enough in summer, called PÂN,
nearly hemispherical: you must recollect that the _â_ is as broad as you
can afford to make it, and the final _n_ is nasal. Children never
forgot, whenever they caught this beetle, to place it in the palm
of their left hand, when it was invoked as follows:--

"PÂN, PÂN, mourtre mé ten sang,
Et j'te doûrai de bouan vin blianc!"