REPLY1849
BISHOP BARNABY
By J.G. (Southwold)
Mr. Editor,—Legour asks, why the people in Suffolk call a lady-bird "Bishop Barnaby?" I give the following from the late Major Moor's Suffolk Words. "Bishop-Barney. The golden bug. See Barnabee. In Tasser's Ten Unwelcome Guests in the Dairy, he enumerates 'the Bishop that burneth' (pp. 142. 144.), in an ambiguous way, which his commentator does not render at all clear. I never heard of this calumniated insect being an unwelcome guest in the dairy; but Bishop-Barney, or Burney, and Barnabee, or Burnabee, and Bishop-that-burneth, seem, in the absence of explanation to be nearly related—in sound…
Topics: Language and Dialects, Insect Folklore, Nursery Rhymes
Locations: Suffolk