I recently bought this neat little book (only 160 pages). I finally got a chance to really skim through it last night. I was pleased to see they had entries on both The Fox Sisters and Lily Dale in the book and it also covers everything from the term Goth to food for mourners to bees...The entry I found on bees was new to me. I was unaware that in British folklore the bond between humans and bees lasts unto death. Bees were so important to people they were referred to as "the little servants of God" and it was believed they could see the future, thus making it unlucky to kill them.
Most churches kept beehives and would use the wax to make candles used at funeral masses. It was thought the relationship between humans and bees was so strong that bees could be led away by a human death, so survivors would "tell" the bees when a relative died.In the 18th c. in rural England when a person died a relative would tie a crepe band around a resident beehive as failure to do so might risk the bees abandoning the hive.
In learning this I immediately thought of how millions of honey bees are mysteriously dying all over the US right now, in a phenomena which is called Colony collapse disorder.
