Accounts of 'discovering' fireflies

July 4, 2022 5:30 PM

I'm wondering if there are any written accounts of people's first encounters with fireflies. Surely the Vikings, landing in Vinland, or the wave of colonials who washed up on the east shores of the Americas, must have suddenly discovered bugs that light up, unlike anything in England or Iceland. Did they view them as magic, as forces of evil or good, or just "huh, bug is weird?" I would like old historical accounts of people encountering fireflies for the first time, if you can suggest any. Thank you.
posted by The otter lady to Science & Nature (4 answers total)

Travelling to the Americas is not necessarily Europeans first exposure to fireflies. The range of Lampyris noctiluca "stretches from Portugal and Ireland in the west, right across Europe, Africa and Asia to China in the east. It also survives further north than any other firefly, almost reaching the Arctic Circle."
posted by EndsOfInvention at 5:55 PM on July 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

An account from an island in what is today Indonesia by Francis Pretty, who was a man-at-arms with Francis Drake's circumnavigation voyage in the late 1570s:

"Amongst these Trees, night by night, through the whole Land, did shew themselves an infinite swarme of fierie Wormes flying in the Ayre, whose bodies being no bigger than our common English Flyes, make such a shew and light, as if every Twigge or Tree had beene a burning Candle."

posted by theory at 6:24 PM on July 4, 2022 [29 favorites]

> bugs that light up, unlike anything in England

Britain does actually have bugs that light up, though dimly: "Lampyris noctiluca is the glow-worm species most often seen in the UK. These nocturnal beetles, known as common glow-worms, are found across Europe and Asia." So fireflies wouldn't necessarily be seen as very strange, much less magic.

As a kid I used to go out hunting to find glow-worms, successfully most times.
posted by anadem at 8:13 PM on July 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

(James and The Giant Peach, based in England, features a glow-worm)
posted by misterbrandt at 9:07 AM on July 5, 2022 [3 favorites]