Here's part of a discussion of "gossamer" taken from word-detective.com :
Onward. I'd never heard the "gaze à Marie" story, but even if Mr. Kacirk is correct and people
have believed it for centuries, it still isn't the origin of "gossamer." The dictionaries are right:
"gossamer," meaning "a fine, filmy substance," comes directly from "goose summer," an
unusually warm period, similar to our "Indian summer," often occurring in mid-November. This
is the same time of year when spiders are wont to spread their delicate webs across lawns and
bushes and when St. Martin's day is traditionally celebrated with a goose dinner.
"Goose summer" ("gossomer" in Middle English) was originally used as a name for these warm
days in England, but beginning in the 14th century "gossamer" came to be applied to filmy spider
webs and similar material, such as fine gauze. The rationale for the transference of meaning is
unclear. Most probably it was simply that the webs were most often seen during "goose
summer," but an association between the fuzzy down plucked from the doomed geese and the
delicate webs drifting through the autumn air may also have played a part.
