Curious About Cobwebs

We’re expecting leaf-peeper company this month, so it’s time for me to dust off the old Webster and catch me some cobwebs. Have you ever asked yourself why cobwebs are called “cobwebs”? What is a cob, and why do they need webs? And why are they so closely associated with fall and Halloween?

Our whole house has sprouted cobwebs. We also are bombarded all night with black walnuts going bump in the night. Add the howling of woodland wildlife in our surrounding forest, and we could open up as Haunted House in the Holler.

I looked up the word “cobweb” and found that it comes from the short form of Old English atorcoppe (spider) plus web. As for why we associate them with fall, I have a couple of theories: First, after a full month of doing nothing but harvesting, cooking, and canning, the prospect of catching up on neglected housework is pretty horrifying.

My second theory is that fall was a time of fear when there were no antibiotics for treating pneumonia, tuberculosis, flu, and other potentially deadly wet winter diseases. And the nasty snakebites that were a worry in the warmer months were now replaced by fear of your children being bitten by eensy weensy (and some not so eensy weensy) spiders. There was also the ever-present danger that the foods preserved in summer would either explode or freeze, or wouldn’t last until the first harvest in the spring. Additionally, uncontrollable house fires and rats had a nasty way of depleting resources. Not to mention that being cooped up with your husband indoors all winter could very likely lead to more mouths to feed nine months hence. What was a mother to do?

She could whip out her worry (or rosary) beads and pray. She could go on a wild rat watch and killing spree. She could make more quilts so as not to have to burn a fire while her family slept. She could get into a frenzy of cleaning, trying to keep ahead of the “cobs” and their killing grounds. And she could send her husband into the woods to hunt bear and boar, and out to the woodshed to cut firewood. These things were necessary to feed her family, and kept husband from being under foot and too much with her. I’ve heard a lot of retired women say that they married their husbands for better or worse, but not for lunch. This is probably also from the Old English.

It’s no wonder women got tired of homeschooling their young. Who had time and energy for teaching all those survival skills while trying to entertain a houseful of housebound children all winter, at the same time as fighting disease? It must have been a dad that invented Halloween to make light of all the fears that his household held in fall. And you know how dads like to get the youngsters all riled up just when your whack-a-mole game of calming them seems to be winnable. Telling ghost stories and making scary noises was so much more fun than being given a broom to clean those nasty cobwebs.