knife in the blood of the slaughtered sheep. The knife is again dipped in the blood, and the child measured to the waist, when the cane is cut to that height. He is afterwards measured to the knee with similar results. The same ceremony is performed on all the children successively. The meaning of this, if indeed any meaning can be attached to it, seems to be the symbolical removal of all evils to which the children might be exposed,–first from the head to the waist, then from the waist to the knees, and finally, from the knees to the sole of the foot.”
The general question of the measurement of sick persons (not especially children), and of the payment of an image or a rod of precious metal of the height of a given person, or the height of his waist, shoulders, knee, etc., of the person, in recompense for some insult or injury, has been treated of by Grimm, Gaidoz, and Haberlandt. Gaidoz remarks (236. 74): “It is well known that in Catholic countries it is customary to present the saints with votive offerings in wax, which are representative of the sicknesses for which the saints are invoked; a wax limb, or a wax eye, for instance, are representative of a sore limb or of a sore eye, the cure of which is expected from the saint. Wax bodies were offered in the same way, as we learn from a ludicrous story told by Henri Estienne, a French writer of the sixteenth century. The story is about a clever monk who made credulous parents believe he had saved their child by his prayers, and he says to the father, ‘Now your son is safe, thanks to God; one hour ago I should not have thought you would have kept him alive. But do you know what you are to do? You ought to have a wax effigy of his own size made for the glory of God, and put it before the image of the holy Ambrose, at whose intercession our Lord did this favour to you.'” Even poorer people were in the habit of offering wax candles of the height or of the weight of the sick person.
In 1888, M. Letourneau (299) called attention to the measurement of the neck as a test of puberty, and even of the virginity of maidens. In Brittany, “According to popular opinion, there is a close relation between the volume of the neck and puberty, sometimes even the virginity of girls. It is a common sight to see three young girls of uncertain age measure in sport the circumference of the neck of one of them with a thread. The two ends of this thread are placed between the teeth of the subject, and the endeavour is made to make the loop of the thread pass over the head. If the operation succeeds, the young girl is declared ‘bonne a marier.'” MM. Hanoteau and Letourneau state that among the Kabyles of Algeria a similar measurement is made of the male sex. In Kabylia, where the attainment of the virile state brings on the necessity of paying taxes and bearing arms, families not infrequently endeavour to conceal the puberty of their young men. If such deceit is suspected, recourse is had to the test of neck-measurement. Here again, as in Brittany, if the loop formed by the thread whose two ends are held in the teeth passes over the head, the young man is declared of age, and enrolled among the citizens, whilst his family is punished by a fine. M. Manouvrier also notes that the same test is also employed to discover whether an adolescent is to be compelled to keep the fast of Rhamadan.
_Measurements of Limbs and Body._
M. Mahoudeau cites from Tillaux’s _Anatomie topographique,_ and MM. Perdrizet and Gaidoz in _Melusine_ for 1893, quote from the _Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturette et cabalistique du Petit Albert_ (1743) extracts relating to this custom, which is also referred to by the Roman writers C. Valerius, Catullus, Vossius, and Scaliger. The subject is an interesting one, and merits further investigation. Ellis (42. 233) has something to say on the matter from a scientific point of view. Grimm has called attention to the very ancient custom of measuring a patient, “partly by way of cure, partly to ascertain if the malady were growing or abating.” This practice is frequently mentioned in the German poems and medical books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In one case a woman says of her husband, “I measured him till he forgot everything,” and another, desirous of persuading hers that he was not of sound mind, took the measure of his length and across his head. In a Zurich Ms. of 1393, “measuring” is included among the unchristian and forbidden things of sorcery. In the region about Treves, a malady known as night-grip (_Nachtgriff_) is ascertained to be present by the following procedure: “Draw the sick man’s belt about his naked body lengthwise and breadthwise, then take it off and hang it on a nail with the words ‘O God, I pray thee, by the three virgins, Margarita, Maria Magdalena, and Ursula, be pleased to vouchsafe a sign upon the sick man, if he have the nightgrip or no’; then measure again, and if the belt be shorter than before, it is a sign of the said sickness.” In the Liegnitz country, in 1798, we are told there was hardly a village without its _messerin_ (measuress), an old woman, whose _modus operandi_ was this: “When she is asked to say whether a person is in danger from consumption, she takes a thread and measures the patient, first from head to heel, then from tip to tip of the outspread arms; if his length be less than his breadth then he is consumptive; the less the thread will measure his arms, the farther has the disease advanced; if it reaches only to the elbow, there is no hope for him. The measuring is repeated from time to time; if the thread stretches and reaches its due length again, the danger is removed. The wise woman must never ask money for her trouble, but take what is given.” In another part of Germany, “a woman is stript naked and measured with a piece of red yarn spun on a Sunday.” Sembrzycki tells us that in the Elbing district, and elsewhere in that portion of Prussia, the country people are firmly possessed by the idea that a decrease in the measure of the body is the source of all sorts of maladies. With an increase of sickness the hands and feet are believed to lose more and more their just proportional relations one with another, and it is believed that one can determine how much measure is yet to be lost, how long the patient has yet to live. This belief has given rise to the proverbial phrase _das Maas verlieren_–“to lose one’s measure” (462. III. 1163-5).
Not upon adults alone, however, were these measurements carried out, but upon infants, children, and youths as well. Even in the New World, among the more conservative of the population of Aryan origin, these customs still nourish, as we learn from comparatively recent descriptions of trustworthy investigators. Professor J. Howard Gore, in the course of an interesting article on “The Go-Backs,” belief in which is current among the dwellers in the mountain regions of the State of Virginia, tells us that when some one has suggested that “the baby has the ‘go-backs,'” the following process is gone through: “The mother then must go alone with the babe to some old lady duly instructed in the art or science of curing this blighting disease. She, taking the infant, divests it of its clothing and places it on its back. Then, with a yarn string, she measures its length or height from the crown of the head to the sole of the heel, cutting off a piece which exactly represents this length. This she applies to the foot, measuring off length by length, to see if the piece of yarn contains the length of the foot an exact number of times. This operation is watched by the mother with the greatest anxiety, for on this coincidence of measure depends the child’s weal or woe. If the length of the string is an exact multiple of the length of the foot, nothing is wrong, but if there is a remainder, however small, the baby has the go-backs, and the extent of the malady is proportional to this remainder. Of course in this measuring, the elasticity of the yarn is not regarded, nor repetitions tried as a test of accuracy” (244. 108). Moreover, “the string with which the determination was made must be hung on the hinge of a gate on the premises of the infant’s parents, and as the string by gradual decay passes away, so passes away the ‘go-backs.’ But if the string should be lost, the ailment will linger until a new test is made and the string once more hung out to decay. Sometimes the cure is hastened by fixing the string so that wear will come upon it.”
Professor Gore aptly refers to the Latin proverb _ex pede Herculem_, which arose from the calculation of Pythagoras, who from the _stadium_ of 6000 feet laid out by Hercules for the Olympian games, by using his own foot as the unit, obtained the length of the foot of the mighty hero, whence he also deduced his height. We are not told, however, as the author remarks, whether or not Hercules had the “go-backs.”
Among the white settlers of the Alleghanies between southwestern Georgia and the Pennsylvania line, according to Mr. J. Hampden Porter, the following custom is in vogue: “Measuring an infant, whose growth has been arrested, with an elastic cord that requires to be stretched in order to equal the child’s length, will set it right again. If the spell be a wasting one, take three strings of similar or unlike colours, tie them to the front door or gate in such a manner that whenever either are opened there is some wear and tear of the cords. As use begins to tell upon them, vigour will recommence” (480. VII. 116). Similar practices are reported from Central Europe by Sartori (392 (1895). 88), whose article deals with the folk-lore of counting, weighing, and measuring.
_Tests of Physical Efficiency._
That certain rude tests of physical efficiency, bodily strength, and power of endurance have been and are in use among primitive peoples, especially at the birth of children, or soon after, or just before, at, or after, puberty, is a well-known fact, further testified to by the occurrence of these practices in folk-tales and fairy-stories. Lifting stones, jumping over obstacles, throwing stones, spears, and the like, crawling or creeping through holes in stones, rocks, or trees, have all been in vogue, and some of them survive even to-day in England and in other parts of Europe as popular tests of puberty and virginity. Mr. Dyer, in his _Church Lore Gleanings_, mentions the “louping,” or “petting” stone at Belford, in Northumberland (England), a stone “placed in the path outside the church porch, over which the bridal pair with their attendants must leap”–the belief is that “the bride must leave all her pets and humours behind her when she crosses it.” At High-Coquetdale, according to Mr. Henderson, in 1868, a bride was made to jump over a stick held by two groomsmen at the church door (436. 125). Another very curious practice is connected with St. Wilfrid’s “needle” at Ripon Cathedral–said to be an imitation of the Basilican transenna. Through this passage maidens who were accused of unchastity crept in order to prove their innocence. If they could not pass through, their guilt was presumed. It is also believed that “poor palsied folk crept through in the expectation of being healed.” At Boxley Church in Kent, there was a “small figure of St. Rumbold, which only those could lift who had never sinned in thought or deed” (436. 312, 313).
At a marriage among the Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island, the groom’s party essay feats like these: “Heavy weights are lifted; they try who is the best jumper. A blanket with a hole in the centre is hung up, and men walk up to it blindfolded from a distance of about twenty steps. When they get near it they must point with their fingers towards the blanket, and try to hit the hole. They also climb a pole, on top of which an eagle’s nest, or something representing an eagle’s nest, is placed. The winner of each game receives a number of blankets from the girl’s father. When the games are at an end, the groom’s father distributes blankets among the other party” (404. 43). This reminds us of the games at picnics and social gatherings of our own people.
In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for January, 1895, S. O. Addy, in an article entitled “English Surnames and Heredity,” points out how the etymologies give us some indications of the physical characteristics of the persons on whom the names were conferred. In primitive times and among the lower races names are even of more importance in this respect.
Clark says: “I have seen a baby not two days old snugly tied up in one of these little sacks; the rope tied to the pommel of the saddle, the sack hanging down alongside of the pony, and mother and child comfortably jogging along, making a good day’s march in bitter cold winter weather, easily keeping up with a column of cavalry which was after hostile Indians. After being carefully and firmly tied in the cradle, the child, as a rule, is only taken out to be cleaned in the morning, and again in the evening just before the inmates of a lodge go to sleep; sometimes also in the middle of the day, but on the march only morning and evening” (420. 57).
In his account of the habits of the Tarahumari Indians, Lumholtz observes: “Heat never seems to trouble them. I have seen young babies sleeping with uncovered heads on the backs of their mothers, exposed to the fierce heat of the summer sun.” The same writer tells us that once he pulled six hairs at once from a sleeping child, “without causing the least disturbance,” and only when twenty-three had been extracted at once did the child take notice, and then only scratched its head and slept on (107. 297).
Colonel Dodge notes the following practice in vogue among the wild Indians of the West:–
“While the child, either boy or girl, is very young, the mother has entire charge, control, and management of it. It is soon taught not to cry by a very summary process. When it attempts to ‘set up a yell,’ the mother covers its mouth with the palm of her hand, grasps its nose between her thumb and forefinger, and holds on until the little one is nearly suffocated. It is then let go, to be seized and smothered again at the first attempt to cry. The baby very soon comprehends that silence is the best policy” (432.187).
Of the Indians of Lower California, who learn to stand and walk before they are a year old, we are told on the authority of the missionary Baegert: “When they are born they are cradled in the shell of a turtle or on the ground. As soon as the child is a few months old, the mother places it perfectly naked astraddle on her shoulders, its legs hanging down on both sides in front. In this guise the mother roves about all day, exposing her helpless charge to the hot rays of the sun and the chilly winds that sweep over the inhospitable country” (306. 185).
_Sleep._
Curious indeed are some of the methods in use among primitive peoples to induce sleep. According to Mr. Fraser, the natives of a village near the banks of the Girree, in the Himalayan region of India, had the following custom (_Quart. Rev._ XXIV. 109):–
“The mother, seizing the infant with both arms and aided by the knees, gives it a violent whirling motion, that would seem rather calculated to shake the child in pieces than to produce the effect of soft slumber; but the result was unerring, and in a few seconds the child was fast asleep.”
Somewhat akin to this procedure is the practice our modern mothers and nurses have of swinging the baby through a sort of semicircle in their arms, accompanying it with the familiar song,–
“This way,
And that way,” etc.
This song and action, their dolls doing duty as children, have been introduced into the kindergarten, and even figure now in “doll-drills” on the stage, and at church festivals and society entertainments.
Of the same village the author goes on to say:–
“Several straw sheds are constructed on a bank, above which a cold clear stream is led to water their fields, and a small portion of this, probably of three fingers’ breadth, is brought into the shed by a hollow stick or piece of bark, and falls from this spout into a small drain, which carries it off about two feet below. The women bring their children to these huts in the heat of the day, and having lulled them to sleep and wrapt their bodies and feet warm in a blanket, they place them on a small bench or tray horizontally, in such a way that the water shall fall upon the crown of the head, just keeping the whole top wet with its stream. We saw two under this operation, and several others came in while we remained, to place their children in a similar way. Males and females are equally used thus, and their sleep seemed sound and unruffled.”
_”Heroic Treatment.”_
The Andamanese baby “within a few hours of its birth has its head shaved and painted with _kovob_–(an ochre-mixture), while its diminutive face and body are adorned with a design in _tiela-og_–(white clay); this latter, as may be supposed, is soon obliterated, and requires therefore to be constantly renewed.” We are further informed that before shaving an infant, “the mother usually moistens the head with milk which she presses from her breast,” while with older children and adults water serves for this purpose (498. 114).
The “heroic treatment,” meted out by primitive peoples to children, as they approach puberty, has been discussed in detail by Ploss, Kulischer, Daniels. Religion and the desire to attract the affection or attention of the other sex seem to lie very close to the fundamental reasons for many of these practices, as Westermarck points out in his chapter on the “Means of Attraction.” (166. 165-212). A divine origin is often ascribed to these strange mutilations. “The Australian Dieyerie, on being asked why he knocks out two front teeth of the upper jaw of his children, can answer only that, when they were created, the Muranaura, a good spirit, thus disfigured the first child, and, pleased at the sight, commanded that the like should be done to every male or female child for ever after. The Pelew Islanders believe that the perforation of the septum of the nose is necessary for winning eternal bliss; and the Nicaraguans say that their ancestors were instructed by the gods to flatten their children’s heads. Again, in Fiji it is supposed that the custom of tattooing is in conformity with the appointment of the god Dengei, and that its neglect is punished after death. A similar idea prevails among the Kingsmill Islanders and Ainos; and the Greenlanders formerly believed that the heads of those girls who had not been deformed by long stitches made with a needle and black thread between the eyes, on the forehead, and upon the chin, would be turned into train tubs and placed under the lamps in heaven, in the land of souls” (165. 170, 171).
Were all the details of the fairy-tales true, which abound in every land, the cruelty meted out to the child suspected of being a changeling would surpass human belief. Hartland enumerates the following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child’s face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, river, or sea (258. 120-123). These and many more figure in story, and not a few of them seem to have been actually practised upon the helpless creatures, who, like the heathen, were not supposed to call for pity or love. Mr. Hartland cites a case of actual attempt to treat a supposed changeling in a summary manner, which occurred no later than May 17,1884, in the town of Clonmel, Ireland. In the absence of the mother of a three-year-old child (fancied by the neighbours to be a changeling), two women “entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, ‘under the impression that it would break the charm,'”–the only result being, of course, that the infant was very severely burned (258. 121).
On the other hand, children of true Christian origin, infants who afterwards become saints, are subject to all sorts of torment at the hands of Satan and his angels, at times, but come forth, like the “children” of the fiery furnace in the time of Daniel, in imitation of whose story many of the hagiological legends have doubtless been put forth, unscathed from fire, boiling water, roaring torrents, and other perilous or deadly situations (191. 9,122).
CHAPTER VII.
THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CHILD-LIFE: PARENTAL AFFECTION.
These are my jewels.–_Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi)_.
A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?–_Wordsworth_.
Children always turn towards the light.–_Hare_.
That I could bask in Childhood’s sun And dance o’er Childhood’s roses!–_Praed_.
Grief fills the room up of my absent child.–_Shakespeare_.
_Parental Love_.
In his essay on _The Pleasures of Home_, Sir John Lubbock makes the following statement (494. 102):–
“In the _Origin of Civilization_, I have given many cases showing how small a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no word for ‘to love,’ so that when the missionaries translated the Bible into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language, without love!”
How unfortunately inaccurate, how entirely unjustifiable, such a declaration is, may be seen from the study of the words for love in two of the Algonkian dialects,–Cree and Chippeway,–which Dr. Brinton has made in one of his essays, _The Conception of Love in some American Languages_. Let us quote the _ipsissima verba_ (411. 415):–
(1) “In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, _sak_. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man.”
(2) “The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love, and to that which the gods have for men.”
(3) “In the Chippeway there is a series of expressions for family love and friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological process which developed the Latin _amare_ from the Sanscrit _sam_.”
(4) “The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek [Greek: _agapa_], we find expressed in both the dialects by derivatives from a root different from any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms _kis_, _keche_, or _kiji_, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy. Concretely, it signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [_kije, kise_], which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent divinity.”
Surely this people cannot be charged with a lack of words for love, whose language enables them so well to express its every shade of meaning. Nay, they have even seen from afar that “God is Love,” as their concept of Michabo tells us they had already perceived that He was “Light.”
_Motherhood and Fatherhood_.
The nobility and the sanctity of motherhood have found recognition among the most primitive of human races. A Mussulman legend of Adam and Eve represents the angel Gabriel as saying to the mother of mankind after the expulsion from Paradise: “Thou shalt be rewarded for all the pains of motherhood, and the death of a woman in child-bed shall be accounted as martyrdom” (547. 38). The natives of the Highlands of Borneo hold that to a special hereafter, known as “Long Julan,” go those who have suffered a violent death (been killed in battle, or by the falling of a tree, or some like accident), and women who die in child-birth; which latter become the wives of those who have died in battle. In this Paradise everybody is rich, with no need for labour, as all wants are supplied without work (475. 199).
Somewhat similar beliefs prevailed in ancient Mexico and among the Eskimo.
Even so with the father. Zoroaster said in the book of the law: “I name the married before the unmarried, him who has a household before him who has none, the father of a family before him who is childless” (125. I. 108). Dr. Winternitz observes of the Jews: “To possess children was always the greatest good-fortune that could befall a Jew. It was deemed the duty of every man to beget a son; the Rabbis, indeed, considered a childless man as dead. To the Cabbalists of the Middle Ages, the man who left no posterity behind him seemed one who had not fulfilled his mission in this world, and they believed that he had to return once more to earth and complete it” (385. 5).
Ploss (125. I. 108) and Lallemand (286. 21) speak in like terms of this children-loving people. The Talmud ranks among the dead “the poor, the leprous, the blind, and those who have no children,” and the wives of the patriarchs of old cheerfully adopted as their own the children born to their husband by slave or concubine. To be the father of a large family, the king of a numerous people, was the ideal of the true Israelite. So, also, was it in India and China.
Ploss and Haberlandt have a good deal to say of the ridicule lavished upon old maids and bachelors among the various peoples and races, and Rink has recorded not a few tales on this head from the various tribes of the Eskimo–in these stories, which are of a more or less trifling and _outre_ character, bachelors are unmercifully derided (525. 465).
With the Chippeways, also, the bachelor is a butt for wit and sarcasm. A tale of the Mississagas of Skugog represents a bachelor as “having gone off to a certain spot and built a lot of little ‘camps.’ He built fires, etc., and passed his time trying to make people believe he was not alone. He used to laugh and talk, and pretend that he had people living there.” Even the culture-heroes Gluskap and Naniboju are derided in some of the tales for not being married (166. 376).
According to Barbosa (67. 161), a writer of the early part of the sixteenth century, the Nairs, a Dravidian people of the Malabar coast (523. 159), believed that “a maiden who refused to marry and remained a virgin would be shut out of Paradise.” The Fijians excluded from Paradise all bachelors; they were smashed to pieces by the god Nangganangga (166. 137).
In the early chronicles and mythic lore of many peoples there are tales of childless couples, who, in their quaint fashion, praying to the gods, have been blest with the desired offspring. There is, however, no story more pathetic, or more touching, than the Russian folk-tale cited by Ralston, in which we read concerning an old childless couple (520. 176): “At last the husband went into the forest, felled wood, and made a cradle. Into this his wife laid one of the logs he had cut, and began swinging it, crooning the while a tune beginning:–
‘Swing, blockie dear, swing.’
After a little time, behold! the block already had legs. The old woman rejoiced greatly, and began swinging anew, and went on swinging until the block became a babe.”
The rude prayers and uncouth aspirations of barbarous and savage peoples, these crude ideas of the uncivilized races of men, when sounded in their deepest depths, are the folk-expression of the sacredness of the complete family, the forerunners of the poet’s prayer:–
“Seigneur! preservez-moi, preservez ceux que j’aime, Freres, parents, amis, et ennemis meme
Dans le mal triomphants,
De jamais voir, Seigneur! l’ete sans fleurs vermeilles, La cage sans oiseaux, la ruche sans abeilles, La maison sans enfants.”
The affection of the ancient Egyptians for their children is noted by Erman. The child is called “mine,” “the only one,” and is “loved as the eyes of its parents”; it is their “beauty,” or “wealth.” The son is the “fair-come” or “welcome”; at his birth “wealth comes.” At the birth of a girl it is said “beauty comes,” and she is called “the lady of her father” (441. 216-230). Interesting details of Egyptian child-life and education may be read in the recently edited text of Amelineau (179), where many maxims of conduct and behaviour are given. Indeed, in the naming of children we have some evidence of motherly and fatherly affection, some indication of the gentle ennobling influence of this emotion over language and linguistic expression. True is it all over the world:–
Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen.
[Dear children have many names.]
_The Dead Child_.
Parental affection is nowhere more strongly brought out than in the lamentations for the dead among some of the lowest tribes of Californian Indians. Of the Yokaia, Mr. Powers tells us (519. 166):–
“It is their custom to ‘feed the spirits of the dead’ for the space of one year, by going daily to places which they were accustomed to frequent while living, where they sprinkle pinole upon the ground. A Yokaia mother who has lost her babe goes every day for a year to some place where her little one played while alive, or to the spot where its body was burned, and milks her breasts into the air. This is accompanied by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, and sometimes she sings a hoarse and melancholy chant, and dances with a wild, ecstatic swaying of the body.”
Of the Miwok the same authority says:–
“The squaws wander off into the forest, wringing their arms piteously, beating the air, with eyes upturned, and adjuring the departed one, whom they tenderly call ‘dear child,’ or ‘dear cousin’ (whether a relative or not), to return.”
Of the Niskwaili Indians, of the State of Washington, Dr. Gibbs observes (457. 205):–
“They go out alone to some place a little distant from the lodge or camp, and in a loud, sobbing voice, repeat a sort of stereotyped formula, as, for instance, a mother on the loss of her child:–
‘Ah seahb! shed-da bud-dah ah-ta-bud! ad-de-dah! Ah chief my child dead! alas!’
When in dreams they see any of their deceased friends this lamentation is renewed.”
Very beautiful and touching in the extreme is the conduct of the Kabinapek of California:–
“A peculiarity of this tribe is the intense sorrow with which they mourn for their children when dead. Their grief is immeasurable. They not only burn up everything that the baby ever touched, but everything that they possess, so that they absolutely begin life over again–naked as they were born, without an article of property left” (519. 206).
Besides the custom of “feeding the spirits of the dead,” just noticed, there exists also among certain of the Californian Indians the practice of “whispering a message into the ear of the dead.” Mr. Powers has preserved for us the following most beautiful speech, which, he tells us, was whispered into the ear of a child by a woman of the Karok ere the first shovelful of earth was cast upon it (519. 34): “O, darling, my dear one, good-bye! Never more shall your little hands softly clasp these old withered cheeks, and your pretty feet shall print the moist earth around my cabin never more. You are going on a long journey in the spirit-land, and you must go alone, for none of us can go with you. Listen then to the words which I speak to you and heed them well, for I speak the truth. In the spirit-land there are two roads. One of them is a path of roses, and it leads to the Happy Western Land beyond the great water, where you shall see your dear mother. The other is a path strewn with thorns and briars, and leads, I know not whither, to an evil and dark land, full of deadly serpents, where you wander forever. O, dear child, choose you the path of roses, which leads to the Happy Western Land, a fair and sunny land, beautiful as the morning. And may the great Kareya [the Christ of these aborigines] help you to walk in it to the end, for your little tender feet must walk alone. O, darling, my dear one, good-bye!”
This whispering to the dead is found in other parts of the world. Mr. Hose, describing the funeral of a boy, which he witnessed in Borneo, says (475. 198):–
“As the lid of the coffin was being closed, an old man came out on the verandah of the house with a large gong (Tetawak) and solemnly beat it for several seconds. The chief, who was sitting near, informed me that this was done always before closing the lid, that the relations of the deceased might know that the spirit was coming to join them; and upon his arrival in Apo Leggan [Hades] they would probably greet him in such terms as these: ‘O grandchild, it was for you the gong was beating, which we heard just now; what have you brought? How are they all up above? Have they sent any messages?'” The new arrival then delivers the messages entrusted to him, and gives the cigarettes–which, rolled up in a banana-leaf, have been placed in his hand–as proof of the truth of what he says. These cigarettes retain the smell of the hand that made them, which the dead relations are thought to be able to recognize.
_Motherhood and Infanticide_.
The intimate relationship recognized as existing between the infant and its mother has been among many primitive peoples a frequent cause of infanticide, or has been held at least to excuse and justify that crime. Of the natives of Ashanti, Ellis says:–
“Should the mother die in childbirth, and the child itself be born alive, it is customary to bury it with the mother…. The idea seems to be that the child belongs to the mother, and is sent to accompany her to _Srahmanadzi_ [ghost-land], so that her _srahman_ [ghost] may not grieve for it” (438. 234). Post states that in Unyoro, when the mother dies in childbirth, the infant is killed; among the Hottentots it was exposed (if the mother died during the time of suckling, the child was buried alive with her); among the Damara, “when poor women die and leave children behind them, they are often buried with the mother” (127. I. 287).
According to Collins and Barrington, among certain native tribes of Australia, “when the mother of a suckling dies, if no adoptive parents can be found, the child is placed alive in the arms of the corpse and buried together with it” (125. II. 589). Of the Banians of Bombay, Niebuhr tells us that children under eighteen months old are buried when the mother dies, the corpse of the latter being burned at ebb tide on the shore of the sea, so that the next tide may wash away the ashes (125. II. 581). In certain parts of Borneo: “If a mother died in childbirth, it was the former practice to strap the living babe to its dead mother, and bury them both, together. ‘Why should it live?’ say they. ‘It has been the death of its mother; now she is gone, who will suckle it?'” (481 (1893). 133).
In certain parts of Australia, “children who have caused their mother great pain in birth are put to death” (127. I. 288), and among the Sakalavas of Madagascar, the child of a woman dying in childbed is buried alive with her, the reason given being “that the child may thus be punished for causing the death of its mother” (125. II. 590).
As has been noted elsewhere, not a few primitive peoples have considered that death, in consequence of giving birth to a child, gained for the mother entrance into Paradise. But with some more or less barbarous tribes quite a different idea prevails. Among the Ewe negroes of the slave coast of West Africa, women dying in childbirth become blood-seeking demons; so also in certain parts of Borneo, and on the Sumatran island of Nias, where they torment the living, plague women who are with child, and kill the embryo in the womb, thus causing abortion; in Java, they make women in labour crazy; in Amboina, the Uliase and Kei Islands, and Gilolo, they become evil spirits, torturing women in labour, and seeking to prevent their successful delivery; in Gilolo, the Kei group, and Celebes, they even torment men, seeking to emasculate them, in revenge for the misfortune which has overtaken them (397.19).
Of the Doracho Indians of Central America, the following statement is made: “When a mother, who is still suckling her child, dies, the latter is placed alive upon her breast and burned with her, so that in the future life she may continue to suckle it with her own milk” (125. II. 589). Powers remarks concerning the Korusi (Patwin) Indians of California (519. 222): “When a woman died, leaving her infant very young, the friends shook it to death in a skin or blanket. This was done even with a half-breed child.” Of the Nishinam Indians, the same authority informs us: “When a mother dies, leaving a very young infant, custom allows the relatives to destroy it. This is generally done by the grandmother, aunt, or other near relative, who holds the poor innocent in her arms, and, while it is seeking the maternal fountain, presses it to her breast until it is smothered. We must not judge them too harshly for this. They knew nothing of bottle nurture, patent nipples, or any kind of milk whatever, other than the human” (519. 328).
Among the Wintun, also, young infants are known to have been buried when the mother had died shortly after confinement (519. 232).
The Eskimo, Letourneau informs us, were wont to bury the little child with its dead mother, for they believed that unless this were done, the mother herself would call from _Killo_, the other world, for the child she had borne (100. 147, 148).
_The Dead Mother._
To none of the saintly dead, to none of our race who have entered upon the life beyond the grave, is it more meet to pray than to the mother; folk-faith is strong in her power to aid and bless those left behind on earth. That sympathetic relation existing between mother and child when both are living, is often believed to exist when one has departed into the other world. By the name _wa-hde ca-pi_, the Dakota Indians call the feeling the (living) mother has for her absent (living) child, and they assert that “mothers feel peculiar pain in their breasts when anything of importance happens to their absent children, or when about to hear from them. This feeling is regarded as an omen.” That the mother, after death, should feel the same longing, and should return to help or to nourish her child, is an idea common to the folk-belief of many lands, as Ploss (125. II. 589) and Zmigrodzki have noted.
“Amid the song of the angels,” says Zmigrodzki (174. 142), “the plaint of her child on earth reaches the mother’s ear, and pierces her heart like a knife. Descend to earth she must and does.” In Brittany she is said to go to God Himself and obtain permission to visit earth. Her flight will be all the easier, if, before burial, her relatives have loosed her hair. In various parts of Germany and Switzerland, the belief is that for six weeks the dead mother will come at night to suckle her child, and a pair of slippers or shoes are always put into the coffin with the corpse, for the mother has to travel over thistles, thorns, and sharp stones to reach her child. Widespread over Europe is this belief in the return of the mother, who has died in giving life to her little one. Till cock-crow in the morning she may suckle it, wash it, fondle it; the doors open of themselves for her. If the child is being well treated by its relatives, the mother rejoices, and soon departs; but if it has been neglected, she attends to it, and waits till the last moment, making audible her unwillingness to depart. If the neglect continues, the mother descends to earth once more, and, taking the child with her, returns to heaven for good. And when the mother with her offspring approaches the celestial gates, they fly wide open to receive them. Never, in the folk-faith, was entrance readier granted, never was Milton’s concept more completely realized, when
“Heaven open’d wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound, On golden hinges moving.”
In a modern Greek folk-song three youths plot to escape from Hades, and a young mother, eager to return to earth to suckle her infant child, persuades them to allow her to accompany them. Charon, however, suddenly appears upon the scene and seizes them just as they are about to flee. The beautiful young woman then appeals to him: “Let go of my hair, Charon, and take me by the hand. If thou wilt but give my child to drink, I will never try to escape from thee again” (125. II. 589).
The watchful solicitude of the mother in heaven over her children on earth appears also in the Basque country (505. 73), and Ralston, noting its occurrence in Russia, observes (520. 265):–
“Appeals for aid to a dead parent are of frequent occurrence in the songs still sung by the Russian peasantry at funerals or over graves; especially in those in which orphans express their grief, calling upon the grave to open, and the dead to appear and listen and help. So in the Indian story of Punchkin, the seven hungry, stepmother-persecuted princesses go out every day and sit by their dead mother’s tomb, and cry, and say, ‘Oh, mother, mother, cannot you see your poor children, how unhappy we are,’ etc., until a tree grows up out of the grave laden with fruits for their relief. So, in the German tale, Cinderella is aided by the white bird, which dwells in the hazel-tree growing out of her mother’s grave.”
Crude and savage, but born of a like faith in the power of the dead mother, is the inhuman practice of the people of the Congo, where, it is said, “the son often kills his mother, in order to secure the assistance of her soul, now a formidable spirit” (388. 81).
Heavy upon her offspring weighs the curse of a mother. Ralston, speaking of the Russian folk-tales, says (520. 363):–
“Great stress is laid in the skazkas and legends upon the terrible power of a parent’s curse. The ‘hasty word’ of a father or a mother will condemn even an innocent child to slavery among devils, and, when it has once been uttered, it is irrevocable,” The same authority states, however, that “infants which have been cursed by their mothers before their birth, or which are suffocated during their sleep, or which die from any causes unchristened or christened by a drunken priest, become the prey of demons,” and in order to rescue the soul of such a babe from the powers of evil “its mother must spend three nights in a church, standing within a circle traced by the hand of a priest; when the cocks crow on the third morning the demons will give her back her dead child.”
_Fatherly Affection._
That the father, as well as the mother, feels for his child after death, and appears to him, is an idea found in fairy-story and legend, but nowhere so sweetly expressed as in the beautiful Italian belief that “the kind, dear spirits of the dead relatives and parents come out of the tombs to bring presents to the children of the family,–whatever their little hearts most desire.” The proverb,–common at Aci,–_Veni me patri?–Appressu_, “Is my father coming?–By and by,” used “when an expected friend makes himself long waited for,” is said to have the following origin:–
“There was once a little orphan boy, who, in his anxiety to see his dead father once again, went out into the night when the kind spirits walk, and, in spite of all the fearful beating of his little heart, asked of every one whom he met: _Veni me patri?_ and each one answered: _Appressu_. As he had the courage to hold out to the end, he finally had the consolation of seeing his father and having from him caresses and sweetmeats” (449. 327).
Rev. Mr. Grill speaks highly of the affection for children of the Polynesians. Following is the translation of a song composed and sung by Rakoia, a warrior and chief of Mangaia, in the Hervey Archipelago, on the death of his eldest daughter Enuataurere, by drowning, at the age of fifteen (459. 32):–
“My first-born; where art thou?
Oh that my wild grief for thee,
Pet daughter, could be assuaged!
Snatched away in time of peace.
Thy delight was to swim,
Thy head encircled with flowers,
Interwoven with fragrant laurel
And the spotted-leaved jessamine.
Whither is my pet gone–
She who absorbed all my love–
She whom I had hoped
To fill with ancestral wisdom?
Red and yellow pandanus drupes
Were sought out in thy morning rambles, Nor was the sweet-scented myrtle forgotten.
Sometimes thou didst seek out
Fugitives perishing in rocks and caves.
Perchance one said to thee,
‘Be mine, be mine, forever;
For my love to thee is great.’
Happy the parent of such a child!
Alas for Enuataurere! Alas for Enuataurere!
Thou wert lovely as a fairy!
A husband for Enuataurere!
Each envious youth exclaims:
‘Would that she were mine!’
Enuataurere now trips o’er the ruddy ocean. Thy path is the foaming crest of the billow.
Weep for Enuataurere–
For Enuataurere.”
This song, though, published in 1892, seems to have been composed about the year 1815, at a _fete_ in honour of the deceased. Mr. Gill justly calls attention to the beauty of the last stanza but one, where “the spirit of the girl is believed to follow the sun, tripping lightly over the crest of the billows, and sinking with the sun into the underworld (Avaiki), the home of disembodied spirits.”
Among others of the lower races of men, we find the father, expressing his grief at the loss of a child, as tenderly and as sincerely as, if less poetically than, the Polynesian chief, though often the daughter is not so well honoured in death as is the son. Our American Indian tribes furnish not a few instances of such affectionate lamentation.
Much too little has been made of the bright side of child-life among the lower races. But from even the most primitive of tribes all traces of the golden age of childhood are not absent. Powers, speaking of the Yurok Indians of California, notes “the happy cackle of brown babies tumbling on their heads with the puppies” (519. 51), and of the Wintun, in the wild-clover season, “their little ones frolicked and tumbled on their heads in the soft sunshine, or cropped the clover on all-fours like a tender calf” (519. 231). Of the Pawnee Indians, Irving says (478. 214): “In the farther part of the building about a dozen naked children, with faces almost hid by their tangled hair, were rolling and wrestling upon the floor, occasionally causing the lodge to re-echo with their childish glee.” Mr. im Thurn, while among the Indians of Guiana, had his attention “especially attracted by one merry little fellow of about five years old, whom I first saw squatting, as on the top of a hill, on top of a turtle-shell twice as big as himself, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and solemnly smoking a long bark cigarette” (477. 39). Of the wild Indians of the West, Colonel Dodge tells us: “The little children are much petted and spoiled; tumbling and climbing, unreproved, over the father and his visitors in the lodge, and never seem to be an annoyance or in the way” (432. 189). Mr. MacCauley, who visited the Seminole Indians of Florida, says: “I remember seeing, one day, one jolly little fellow, lolling and rollicking on his mother’s back, kicking her and tugging away at the strings of beads which hung temptingly between her shoulders, while the mother, hand-free, bore on one shoulder a log, which, a moment afterwards, still keeping her baby on her back as she did so, she chopped into small wood for the camp-fire.” (496. 498).
There is a Zuni story of a young maiden, “who, strolling along, saw a beautiful little baby boy bathing in the waters of a spring; she was so pleased with his beauty that she took him home, and told her mother that she had found a lovely little boy” (358. 544). Unfortunately, it turned out to be a serpent in the end.
_Kissing_.
As Darwin and other authorities have remarked, there are races of men upon the face of the earth, in America, in Africa, in Asia, and in the Island world, who, when first seen of white discoverers, knew not what it meant to kiss (499. 139). The following statement will serve for others than the people to whom it refers: “The only kiss of which the Annamite woman is cognizant is to place her nose against the man’s cheek, and to rub it gently up and down, with a kind of canine sniff.”
Mantegazza tells us that Raden-Saleh, a “noble and intelligent” Javanese painter, told him that, “like all Malays, he considered there was more tenderness in the contact of the noses than of the lips,” and even the Japanese, the English of the extreme Orient, were once ignorant of the art of kissing (499. 139).
Great indeed is the gulf between the Javanese artist and the American, Benjamin West, who said: “A kiss from my mother made me a painter.” To a kiss from the Virgin Mother of Christ, legend says, St. Chrysostom owed his “golden mouth.” The story runs thus: “St. Chrysostom was a dull boy at school, and so disturbed was he by the ridicule of his fellows, that he went into a church to pray for help to the Virgin. A voice came from the image: ‘Kiss me on the mouth, and thou shalt be endowed with all learning.’ He did this, and when he returned to his schoolfellows they saw a golden circle about his mouth, and his eloquence and brilliancy astounded them” (347. 621).
Among the natives of the Andaman Islands, Mr. Man informs us, “Kisses are considered indicative of affection, but are only bestowed upon infants” (498. 79).
_Tears_.
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some divine despair, Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking at the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.”
Thus sang the great English laureate, and to the simple folk–the treasure-keepers of the lore of the ages–his words mean much.
Pliny, the Elder, in his _Natural History_, makes this statement: “Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she [Nature] abandon to cries and lamentations;” the writer of the _Wisdom of Solomon_, in the Apocrypha, expresses himself in like manner: “When I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice I uttered was crying, as all others do.” Burton, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_, bluntly resumes both: “He is born naked, and falls a-whining at the first.”
The Spaniards have a proverb, brusque and cynical:–
“Des que naei llore, y cada dia nace porque. [I wept as soon as I was born, and every day explains why.]”
A quaint legend of the Jewish Rabbis, however, accounts for children’s tears in this fashion:–
“Beside the child unborn stand two angels, who not only teach it the whole Tora [the traditional interpretation of the Mosaic law], but also let it see all the joys of Paradise and all the torments of Hell. But, since it may not be that a child should come into the world endowed with such knowledge, ere it is born into the life of men an angel strikes it on the upper lip, and all wisdom vanishes. The dimple on the upper lip is the mark of the stroke, and this is why new-born babes cry and weep” (385. 6).
Curiously enough, as if to emphasize the relativity of folk-explanations, a Mussulman legend states that it is “the touch of Satan” that renders the child “susceptible of sin from its birth,” and that is the reason why “all children cry aloud when they are born” (547. 249).
Henderson tells us that in the north and south of England “nurses think it lucky for the child to cry at its baptism; they say that otherwise the baby shows that it is too good to live.” But there are those also who believe that “this cry betokens the pangs of the new birth,” while others hold that it is “the voice of the Evil Spirit as he is driven out by the baptismal water” (469. 16).
Among the untaught peasantry of Sicily, the sweet story goes that “Mary sends an angel from Heaven one day every week to play with the souls of the unbaptized children [in hell]; and when he goes away, he takes with him, in a golden chalice, all the tears which the little innocents have shed all through the week, and pours them into the sea, where they become pearls” (449. 326).
Here again we have a borrowing from an older myth. An Eastern legend has it that when Eden was lost, Eve, the mother of all men, wept bitterly, and “her tears, which flowed into the ocean, were changed into costly pearls, while those which fell on the earth brought forth all beautiful flowers” (547. 34). In the classic myth, the pearl is said to have been born of the tears of Venus, just as a Greek legend makes _alektron_ come from the tears of the sisters of Phaethon, the daughters of the sun, and Teutonic story turns the tears of the goddess Freyja into drops of gold (462. III. 1218).
In the _Kalevala_ we read how, after the wonderful harping of Wainamoinen, the great Finnish hero, which enchanted beasts, birds, and even fishes, was over, the musician shed tears of gratitude, and these, trickling down his body and through his many garments, were transmuted into pearls of the sea.
Shakespeare, in _King Henry V_., makes Exeter say to the King,–
“But all my mother came into mine eyes, And gave me up to tears,”–
and the tears of the mother-god figures in the folk-lore of many lands. The vervain, or verbena, was known as the “Tears of Isis,” as well as the “Tears of Juno,”–a name given also to an East Indian grass (_Coix lacryma_). The lily of the valley, in various parts of Europe, is called “The Virgin’s Tears,” “Tears of Our Lady,” “Tears of St. Mary.” Zmigrodzki notes the following belief as current in Germany: “If the mother weeps too much, her dead child comes to her at night, naked and trembling, with its little shirt in its hand, and says: ‘Ah, dearest mother, do not weep! See! I have no rest in the grave; I cannot put on my little shirt, it is all wet with your tears.'” In Cracow, the common saying is, “God forbid that the tears of the mother should fall upon the corpse of her child.” In Brittany the folk-belief is that “the dead child has to carry water up a hill in a little bucket, and the tears of the mother increase its weight” (174. 141).
The Greeks fabled Eos, the dawn-goddess, to have been so disconsolate at the death of Memnon, her son, that she wept for him every morning, and her tears are the dewdrops found upon the earth. In the mythology of the Samoans of the Pacific, the Heaven-god, father of all things, and the Earth-goddess, mother of all things, once held each other in firm embrace, but were separated in the long ago. Heaven, however, retains his love for earth, and, mourning for her through the long nights, he drops many tears upon her bosom,–these, men call dewdrops. The natives of Tahiti have a like explanation for the thick-falling rain-drops that dimple the surface of the ocean, heralding an approaching storm,–they are tears of the heaven-god. The saying is:–
“Thickly falls the small rain on the face of the sea, They are not drops of rain, but they are tears of Oro.” (Tylor, Early Hist. of Mankind, p. 334.)
An Indian tribe of California believe that “the rain is the falling tears of Indians sick in heaven,” and they say that it was “the tears of all mankind, weeping for the loss of a good young Indian,” that caused the deluge, in which all were drowned save a single couple (440. 488).
Oriental legend relates, that, in his utter loneliness after the expulsion from Paradise, “Adam shed such an abundance of tears that all beasts and birds satisfied their thirst therewith; but some of them sunk into the earth, and, as they still contained some of the juices of his food in Paradise, produced the most fragrant trees and spices.” We are further told that “the tears flowed at last in such torrents from Adam’s eyes, that those of his right started the Euphrates, while those of his left set the Tigris in motion” (547. 34).
These are some of the answers of the folk to the question of Shakespeare:–
“What’s the matter,
That this distempered messenger of wet, The many-coloured Iris, rounds thine eye?”
And many more are there that run along the lines of Scott’s epigrammatic summation:–
“A child will weep a bramble’s smart, A maid to see her sparrow part,
A stripling for a woman’s heart:
But woe betide a country, when
She sees the tears of bearded men.”
_Cradles._
According to Mr. Powers: “The conspicuous painstaking which the Modok squaw expends upon her baby-basket is an index of her maternal love. And indeed the Modok are strongly attached to their offspring,–a fact abundantly attested by many sad and mournful spectacles witnessed in the closing scenes of the war of 1873. On the other hand, a California squaw often carelessly sets her baby in a deep, conical basket, the same in which she carries her household effects, leaving him loose and liable to fall out. If she makes a baby-basket, it is totally devoid of ornament; and one tribe, the Miwok, contemptuously call it ‘the dog’s nest.’ It is among Indians like these that we hear of infanticide” (519. 257).
The subject of children’s cradles, baby-baskets, baby-boards, and the methods of manipulating and carrying the infant in connection therewith, have been treated of in great detail by Ploss (325), Pokrovski, and Mason (306), the second of whom has written especially of the cradles in use among the various peoples of European and Asiatic Eussia, with a general view of those employed by other races, the last with particular reference to the American aborigines. The work is illustrated, as is also that of Ploss, with many engravings. Professor Mason thus briefly sums up the various purposes which the different species of cradle subserve (306. 161-162):–
“(1) It is a mere nest for the helpless infant.
“(2) It is a bed so constructed and manipulated as to enable the child to sleep either in a vertical or a horizontal position.
“(3) It is a vehicle in which the child is to be transported, chiefly on the mother’s back by means of a strap over the forehead, but frequently dangling like a bundle at the saddle-bow. This function, of course, always modifies the structure of the cradle, and, indeed, may have determined its very existence among nomadic tribes.
“(4) It is indeed a cradle, to be hung upon the limbs to rock, answering literally to the nursery-rhyme:–
‘Rock-a-bye baby upon the tree-top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough bends, the cradle will fall, Down will come baby, and cradle, and all.’
“(5) It is also a playhouse and baby-jumper. On many–nearly all–specimens may be seen dangling objects to evoke the senses, foot-rests by means of which the little one may exercise its legs, besides other conveniences anticipatory of the child’s needs.
“(6) The last set of functions to which the frame is devoted are those relating to what we may call the graduation of infancy, when the papoose crawls out of its chrysalis little by little, and then abandons it altogether. The child is next seen standing partly on the mother’s cincture and partly hanging to her neck, or resting like a pig in a poke within the folds of her blanket.”
Professor Mason sees in the cradle-board or frame “the child of geography and of meteorology,” and in its use “a beautiful illustration of Bastian’s theory of ‘great areas.'” In the frozen North, for example, “the Eskimo mother carries her infant in the hood of her parka whenever it is necessary to take it abroad. If she used a board or a frame, the child would perish with the cold.”
The varieties of cradles are almost endless. We have the “hood” (sometimes the “boot”) of the Eskimo; the birch-bark cradle (or hammock) of several of the northern tribes (as in Alaska, or Cape Breton); the “moss-bag” of the eastern Tinne, the use of which has now extended to the employes of the Hudson’s Bay Company; the “trough-cradle” of the Bilqula; the Chinook cradle, with its apparatus for head-flattening; the trowel-shaped cradle of the Oregon coast; the wicker-cradle of the Hupas; the Klamath cradle of wicker and rushes; the Pomo cradle of willow rods and wicker-work, with rounded portion for the child to sit in; the Mohave cradle, with ladder-frame, having a bed of shredded bark for the child to lie upon; the Yaqui cradle of canes, with soft bosses for pillows; the Nez Perce cradle-board with buckskin sides, and the Sahaptian, Ute, and Kootenay cradles which resemble it; the Moki cradle-frame of coarse wicker, with an awning; the Navajo cradle, with wooden hood and awning of dressed buckskin; the rude Comanche cradle, made of a single stiff piece of black-bear skin; the Blackfoot cradle of lattice-work and leather; the shoe-shaped Sioux cradle, richly adorned with coloured bead-work; the Iroquois cradle (now somewhat modernized), with “the back carved in flowers and birds, and painted blue, red, green, and yellow.” Among the Araucanians of Chili we meet with a cradle which “seems to be nothing more than a short ladder, with cross-bars,” to which the child is lashed. In the tropical regions and in South America we find the habit of “carrying the children in the shawl or sash, and bedding them in the hammock.” Often, as in various parts of Africa, the woman herself forms the cradle, the child clinging astride her neck or hips, with no bands or attachments whatever. Of woman as carrier much may be read in the entertaining and instructive volume of Professor Mason (113). The primitive cradle, bed, and carrier, was the mother.
_Father and Child._
With many of the more primitive races, the idea so tritely expressed in our familiar saying, “He is a chip of the old block,”–_patris est filius_, “he is the son of his father,”–and so beautifully wrought out by Shakespeare,–
“Behold, my lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip, The trick of his frown, his forehead; nay, the valley, The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles, The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger,”
has a strong hold, making itself felt in a thousand ways and fashions. The many rites and ceremonies, ablutions, fastings, abstentions from certain foods and drinks, which the husband has to undergo and submit to among certain more or less uncivilized peoples, shortly before, or after, or upon, the occasion of the birth of a child, or while his wife is pregnant, arise, in part at least, from a firm belief in the influence of parent upon child and the intimate sympathy between them even while the latter is yet unborn. Of the Indians of British Guiana, Mr. im Thurn says, they believe that if the father should eat the flesh of the capybara, the child would have large protruding teeth like that animal, while if he should eat that of the labba, the child’s skin would be spotted. “Apparently there is also some idea that for the father to eat strong food, to wash, to smoke, to handle weapons, would have the same result as if the new-born baby ate such food, washed, smoked, or played with edged tools.” The connection between the father and the child, the author thinks, is thought by these Indians to be much closer than that existing between the mother and her offspring (477. 218). Much has been written about, and many explanations suggested for, this ancient and widespread custom. The investigations of recent travellers seem to have cast some light upon this difficult problem in ethnology.
Dr. Karl von den Steinen (536. 331-337) tells us that the native tribes of Central Brazil not only believe that the child is “the son of the father,” but that it _is_ the father. To quote his own significant words: “The father is the patient in so far as he feels himself one with the new-born child. It is not very difficult to see how he arrives at this conclusion. Of the human egg-cell and the Graafian follicle the aborigine is not likely to know anything, nor can he know that the mother lodges the thing corresponding to the eggs of birds. For him the man is the bearer of the eggs, which, to speak plainly and clearly, lays in the mother, and which she hatches during the period of pregnancy. In the linguistic material at hand we see how this very natural attempt to explain generation finds expression in the words for ‘father’, ‘testicle,’ and ‘egg.’ In Guarani _tub_ means ‘father, spawn, eggs,’ _tupia_ ‘eggs,’ and even _tup-i_, the name of the people (the _-i_ is diminutive) really signifies ‘little father,’ or ‘eggs,’ or ‘children,’ as you please; the ‘father’ is ‘egg,’ and the ‘child’ is ‘the little father.’ Even the language declares that the ‘child’ is nothing else than the ‘father.’ Among the Tupi the father was also accustomed to take a new name after the birth of each new son; to explain this, it is in no way necessary to assume that the ‘soul’ of the father proceeds each time into the son. In Karaibi we find exactly the same idea; _imu_ is ‘egg,’ or ‘testicles,’ or ‘child.'”
Among other cognate tribes we find the same thoughts:–
In the Ipurucoto language _imu_ signifies “egg.”
In the Bakairi language _imu_ signifies “testicles.”
In the Tamanako language _imu_ signifies “father.”
In the Makusi language _imu_ signifies “semen.”
In several dialects _imu-ru_ signifies “child.”
Dr. von den Steinen further observes: “Among the Bakairi ‘child’ and ‘small’ are both _imeri_, ‘the child of the chief,’ _pima imeri_; we can translate as we please, either ‘the child of the chief,’ or ‘the little chief,’ and in the case of the latter form, which we can use more in jest of the son, we are not aware that to the Indian the child is really nothing more than the little chief, the miniature of the big one. Strange and hardly intelligible to us is this idea when it is a girl that is in question. For the girl, too, is ‘the little _father_,’ and not ‘the little _mother_’; it is only the father who has made her. In Bakairi there are no special words for ‘son’ and ‘daughter,’ but a sex-suffix is added to the word for child when a distinction is necessary; _pima imeri_ may signify either the son or the daughter of the chief. The only daughter of the chief is the inheritrix of possession and rank, both of which pass over with her own possession to the husband.” The whole question of the “Couvade” and like practices finds its solution in these words of the author: “The behaviour of the mother, according as she is regarded as more or less suffering, may differ much with the various tribes, while the conduct of the father is practically the same with all She goes about her business, if she feels strong enough, suckles her child, etc. Between the father and the child there is no mysterious correlation; the child is a multiplication of him; the father is duplicated, and in order that no harm may come to the helpless, irrational creature, a miniature of himself, he must demean himself as a child” (536. 338).
The close relationship between father and child appears also in folk-medicine, where children (or often adults) are preserved from, or cured of, certain ailments and diseases by the application of blood drawn from the father.
In Bavaria a popular remedy against cramps consisted in “the father pricking himself in the finger and giving the child in its mouth three drops of blood out of the wound,” and at Rackow, in Neu Stettin, to cure epilepsy in little children, “the father gives the child three drops of blood out of the first joint of his ring-finger” (361. 19). In Annam, when a physician cures a small-pox patient, it is thought that the pocks pass over to his children, and among the Dieyerie of South Australia, when a child has met with an accident, “all the relatives are beaten with sticks or boomerangs on the head till the blood flows over their faces. This is believed to lessen the pain of the child” (397. 60, 205).
Among some savage and uncivilized peoples, the father is associated closely with the child from the earliest days of its existence. With the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, it is the father who, “from the day of its birth onwards presses the skull and body of the child to give them the proper form,” and among the Macusi Indians of Guiana, the father “in early youth, pierces the ear-lobe, the lower lip, and the septum of the nose,” while with the Pampas Indians of the Argentine, in the third year of the child’s life, the child’s ears are pierced by the father in the following fashion: “A horse has its feet tied together, is thrown to the ground, and held fast. The child is then brought out and placed on the horse, while the father bores its ears with a needle” (326.1.296,301).
With some primitive peoples the father evinces great affection for his child. Concerning the natives of Australia whom he visited, Lumholtz observes: “The father may also be good to the child, and he frequently carries it, takes it in his lap, pats it, searches its hair, plays with it, and makes little boomerangs which he teaches it to throw. He, however, prefers boys to girls, and does not pay much attention to the latter” (495.193). Speaking of another region of the world where infanticide prevailed,–the Solomon Islands,–Mr. Guppy cites not a few instances of parental regard and affection. On one occasion “the chief’s son, a little shapeless mass of flesh, a few months old, was handed about from man to man with as much care as if he had been composed of something brittle.” Of chief Gorai and his wife, whose child was blind, the author says: “I was much struck with the tenderness displayed in the manner of both the parents towards their little son, who, seated in his mother’s lap, placed his hand in that of his father, when he was directed to raise his eyes towards the light for my inspection” (466. 47).
Of the Patwin Indians of California, who are said to rank among the lowest of the race, Mr. Powers tells us: “Parents are very easygoing with their children, and never systematically punish them, though they sometimes strike them in momentary anger. On the Sacramento they teach them how to swim when a few weeks old by holding them on their hands in the water. I have seen a father coddle and teeter his baby in an attack of crossness for an hour with the greatest patience, then carry him down to the river, laughing good-naturedly, gently dip the little brown smooth-skinned nugget in the waves clear under, and then lay him on the moist, warm sand. The treatment was no less effectual than harmless, for it stopped the perverse, persistent squalling at once” (519. 222). Such demonstrations of tenderness have been supposed to be rare among the Indians, but the same authority says again: “Many is the Indian I have seen tending the baby with far more patience and good-nature than a civilized father would display” (519. 23). Concerning the Eskimo, Eeclus observes: “All over Esquimaux Land fathers and mothers vie with one another in spoiling their offspring, never strike, and rarely rebuke them” (523. 37).
Among the Indians of British Guiana, according to Mr. im Thurn, both mother and father are “very affectionate towards the young child.” The mother “almost always, even when working, carries it against her hip, slung in a small hammock from her neck or shoulder,” while the father, “when he returns from hunting, brings it strange seeds to play with, and makes it necklaces and other ornaments.” The young children themselves “seem fully to reciprocate the affection of their parents; but as they grow older, the affection on both sides seems to cool, though, in reality, it perhaps only becomes less demonstrative” (477. 219).
Everywhere we find evidence of parental affection and love for children, shining sometimes from the depths of savagery and filling with sunshine at least a few hours of days that seem so sombre and full of gloom when viewed afar off.
Mr. Scudder has treated at considerable length the subject of “Childhood in Literature and Art” (350), dealing with it as found in Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Early Christian, English, French, German, American, literature, in mediaval art, and in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales. Of Greek the author observes: “There is scarcely a child’s voice to be heard in the whole range of Greek poetic art. The conception is universally of the child, not as acting, far less as speaking, but as a passive member of the social order. It is not its individual so much as its related life which is contemplated.” The silent presence of children in the roles of the Greek drama is very impressive (350. 21). At Rome, though childhood is more of a “vital force” than in Greece, yet “it is not contemplated as a fine revelation of nature.” Sometimes, in its brutal aspects, “children are reckoned as scarcely more than cubs,” yet with refinement they “come to represent the more spiritual side of the family life.” The folktale of Romulus and Remus and Catullus’ picture of the young Torquatus represent these two poles (350. 32). The scant appearances of children in the Old Testament, the constant prominence given to the male succession, are followed later on by the promise which buds and flowers in the world-child Jesus, and the childhood which is the new-birth, the golden age of which Jewish seers and prophets had dreamt. In early Christianity, it would appear that, with the exception of the representation in art of the child, the infant Christ, “childhood as an image had largely faded out of art and literature” (350. 80). The Renaissance “turned its face toward childhood, and looked into that image for the profoundest realization of its hopes and dreams” (350. 102), and since then Christianity has followed that path. And the folk were walking in these various ages and among these different peoples humbly along the same road, which their geniuses travelled. Of the great modern writers and poets, the author notes especially Wordsworth, through whom the child was really born in our literature, the linker together of the child and the race; Rousseau, who told of childhood as “refuge from present evil, a mournful reminiscence of a lost Paradise, who (like St. Pierre) preached a return to nature, and left his own offspring to the tender mercy of a foundling asylum”; Luther, the great religious reformer, who was ever “a father among his children”; Goethe, who represents German intellectualism, yet a great child-artist; Froebel, the patron saint of the kindergarten; Hans Andersen, the “inventor” of fairy-tales, and the transformer of folk-stories, that rival the genuine, untouched, inedited article; Hawthorne, the child-artist of America.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHILDHOOD THE GOLDEN AGE.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.–_Wordsworth_.
Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes.–_Achim v. Arnim_.
Wahre dir den Kindersinn,
Kindheit bluht in Liebe bin,
Kinderzeit ist heil’ge Zeit,
Heidenkindheit–Christenheit.
–_B. Goltz_.
Happy those early days, when I Shined in my angel infancy. –_Henry Vaughan_.
Childhood shall be all divine.–_B. W. Proctor_.
But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess, Once in their life, fair Eden’s simpleness.–_H. Coleridge_.
But to the couch where childhood lies, A more delicious trance is given,
Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered heaven.–_W. M. Praed_.
O for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon!–_Whittier_.
_Golden Age_.
The English word _world_, as the Anglo-Saxon _weorold_, Icelandic _verold_, and Old High German _weralt_ indicate, signified originally “age of man,” or “course of man’s life,” and in the mind of the folk the life of the world and the life of man have run about the same course. By common consent the golden age of both was at the beginning, _ab ovo_. With Wordsworth, unlettered thousands have thought:–
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!”
_Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes_, “childhood is a moment of God,” said Achim Ton Arnim, and Hartley Coleridge expresses the same idea in other words:–
“But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess, Once in their life, fair Eden’s simpleness.”
This belief in the golden age of childhood,–_die heilige Kinderzeit_, the heaven of infancy,–is ancient and modern, world-wide, shared in alike by primitive savage and nineteenth-century philosopher. The peasant of Brittany thinks that children preserve their primal purity up to the seventh year of their age, and, if they die before then, go straight to heaven (174. 141), and the great Chinese philosopher, linking together, as others have done since his time, the genius and the child, declared that a man is great only as he preserves the pure ideas of his childhood, while Coleridge, in like fashion tells us: “Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the power of manhood.”
Everywhere we hear the same refrain:–
“Aus der Jugendzeit, aus der Jugendzeit, Klingt ein Lied immerdar;
O wie liegt so weit, o wie liegt so weit, Was mein einst war!”
The Paradise that man lost, the Eden from which he has been driven, is not the God-planted Garden by the banks of Euphrates, but the “happy days of angel infancy,” and “boyhood’s time of June,” the childhood out of which in the fierce struggle–for existence the race has rudely grown, and back to which, for its true salvation, it must learn to make its way again. As he, who was at once genius and child, said, nearly twenty centuries ago: “Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.”
When we speak of “the halcyon days of childhood,” we recall an ancient myth, telling how, in an age when even more than now “all Nature loved a lover,” even the gods watched over the loves of Ceyx and Halcyone. Ever since the kingfisher has been regarded as the emblem, of lasting fidelity in love. As Ebers aptly puts it: “Is there anywhere a sweeter legend than that of the Halcyons, the ice-birds who love each other so tenderly that, when the male becomes enfeebled by age, his mate carries him on her outspread wings whithersoever he wills; and the gods desiring to reward such faithful love cause the sun to shine more kindly, and still the winds and waves on the ‘Halcyon Days’ during which these birds are building their nests and brooding over their young” (390. II. 269).
Of a special paradise for infants, something has been said elsewhere. Of Srahmanadzi, the other world, the natives of Ashanti say: “There an old man becomes young, a young man a boy, and a boy an infant. They grow and become old. But age does not carry with it any diminution of strength or wasting of body. When they reach the prime of life, they remain so, and never change more” (438. 157).
The Kalmucks believe that some time in the future “each child will speak immediately after its birth, and the next day be capable of undertaking its own management” (518. I. 427). But that blissful day is far off, and the infant human still needs the overshadowing of the gods to usher him into the real world of life.
_Guardian Angels and Deities._
Christ, speaking his memorable words about little children to those who had inquired who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven, uttered the warning: “See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.” In the hagiology of the Christian churches, and in the folk-lore of modern Europe, the idea contained in our familiar expression “guardian angel” has a firm hold; by celestial watchers and protectors the steps of the infant are upheld, and his mind guided, until he reaches maturity, and even then the guardian spirit often lingers to guide the favoured being through all the years of his life (191. 8). The natives of Ashanti believe that special spirits watch over girls until they are married, and in China there is a special mother-goddess who guards and protects childhood.
Walter Savage Landor has said:–
“Around the child bend all the three Sweet Graces,–Faith, Hope, Charity,”
and the “three Fates” of classic antiquity, the three Norns of Scandinavian mythology, the three Sudieicky or fate-goddesses of the Czechs of Bohemia, the three fate- and birth-goddesses of the other Slavonic peoples, the three [Greek: _Moirai_] of Modern Greece, the three Phatite of Albania, the three white ladies, three virgins, three Mary’s, etc., of German legend of to-day, have woven about them a wealth of quaint and curious lore (326. I. 42-47).
The survival of the old heathen belief alongside the Christian is often seen, as, e.g., at Palermo, in Sicily, where “the mother, when she lifts the child out of the cradle, says aloud: _’Nuome di Dio_, In God’s name,’ but quickly adds sotto voce: _’Cu licenzi, signuri mui_, By your leave, Ladies.'” The reference is to the “three strange ladies,” representing the three Fates, who preside over the destiny of human beings.
Ploss has discussed at length the goddesses of child-birth and infancy, and exhibited their relations to the growing, fertilizing, regenerative powers of nature, especially the earth, sun, moon, etc.; the Hindu _Bhavani_ (moon-goddess); the Persian _Anahita_; the Assyrian _Belit_, the spouse of _Bel_; the Phoenician _Astarte_; the Egyptian _Isis_; the Etruscan _Mater matuta_; the Greek _Hera Eileithyia, Artemis_,; the Roman _Diana, Lucina, Juno_; the Phrygian _Cybele_; the Germanic _Freia, Holla, Gude, Harke_; the Slavonic _Siwa, Libussa, Zlata Baba_ (“the golden woman”); the ancient Mexican _Itzcuinam, Yohmaltcitl, Tezistecatl_; the Chibchan rainbow-goddess _Cuchavira_; the Japanese _Kojasi Kwanon_, and hundreds more.
The number of gods and goddesses presiding over motherhood and childhood is legion; in every land divine beings hover about the infant human to protect it and assure the perpetuity of the race. In ancient Rome, besides the divinities who were connected with generation, the embryo, etc., we find, among others, the following tutelary deities of childhood:–
_Parca_ or _Partula_, the goddess of child-birth; _Diespiter_, the god who brings the infant to the light of day; _Opis_, the divinity who takes the infant from within the bosom of mother-earth; _Vaticanus_, the god who opens the child’s mouth in crying; _Cunina_, the protectress of the cradle and its contents; _Rumina_, the goddess of the teat or breast; _Ossipaga_, the goddess who hardens and solidifies the bones of little children; _Carna_, the goddess who strengthens the flesh of little children; _Diva potina_, the goddess of the drink of children; _Diva edusa_, the goddess of the food of children; _Cuba_, the goddess of the sleep of the child; _Levana_, the goddess who lifts the child from the earth; _Statanus_, the god, and _Dea Statina_, the goddess, of the child’s standing; _Fabulinus_, the god of the child’s speech; _Abeona_ and _Adiona_, the protectresses of the child in its goings out and its comings in; _Deus catus pater_, the father-god who “sharpens” the wits of children; _Dea mens_, the goddess of the child’s mind; _Minerva_, the goddess who is the giver of memory to the child; _Numeria_, the goddess who teaches the child to count; _Voleta_, the goddess, and _Volumnus_ the god, of will or wishing; _Venilia_, the goddess of hope, of “things to come”; _Deus conus_, the god of counsel, the counsel-giver; _Peragenor_ or _Agenona_, the deity of the child’s action; _Camona_, the goddess who teaches the child to sing, etc. (398.188).
Here the child is overshadowed, watched over, taught and instructed by the heavenly powers:–
“But to the couch where childhood lies A more delicious trance is given,
Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered heaven.”
In line with the poet’s thought, though of a ruder mould, is the belief of the Iroquois Indians recorded by Mrs. Smith: “When a living nursing child is taken out at night, the mother takes a pinch of white ashes and rubs it on the face of the child so that the spirits will not trouble, because they say that a child still continues to hold intercourse with the spirit-world whence it so recently came” (534. 69).
_Birth-Myths_.
President Hall has treated of “The Contents of Children’s Minds on Entering School” (252), but we yet lack a like elaborate and suggestive study of “The Contents of Parents’ Minds on Entering the Nursery.” We owe to the excellent investigation carried on by Principal Russell and his colleagues at the State Normal School in Worcester, Mass., “Some Records of the Thoughts and Reasonings of Children” (194), and President Hall has written about “Children’s Lies” (252a), but we are still without a correspondingly accurate and extensive compilation of “The Thoughts and Reasonings of Parents,” and a plain, unbiassed register of the “white lies” and equivoques, the fictions and epigrammatic myths, with which parents are wont to answer, or attempt to answer, the manifold questions of their tender offspring. From time immemorial the communication between parent (and nurse) and child, between the old of both sexes and little children, far from being yea and nay, has been cast in the mould of the advice given in the German quatrain:–
“Ja haltet die Aequivocabula nur fest, Sind sie doch das einzige Mittel,
Dem Kind die Wahrheit zu bergen und doch Zu brauchen den richtigen Titel.”
[“Hold fast to the words that we equivoques call; For they are indeed the only safe way
To keep from the children the truth away, Yet use the right name after all.”]
Around the birth of man centres a great cycle of fiction and myth. The folk-lore respecting the provenience of children may be divided into two categories. The first is represented by our “the doctor brought it,” “God sent it,” and the “van Moor” of the peasantry of North Friesland, which may signify either “from the moor,” or “from mother.” The second consists of renascent myths of bygone ages, distorted, sometimes, it is true, and recast. As men, in the dim, prehistoric past, ascribed to their first progenitors a celestial, a terrestrial, a subterranean, a subaqueous origin, a coming into being from animals, birds, insects, trees, plants, rocks, stones, etc.,–for all were then akin,–so, after long centuries have rolled by, father, mother, nurse, older brother or sister, speaking of the little one in whom they see their stock renewed, or their kinship widened, resurrect and regild the old fables and rejuvenate and reanimate the lore that lay sunk beneath the threshold of racial consciousness. Once more “the child is father of the man”; his course begins from that same spring whence the first races of men had their remotest origins. George Macdonald, in the first lines of his poem on “Baby” (337. 182):–
“Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the _everywhere_ into here,”
has expressed a truth of folk-lore, for there is scarcely a place in the “everywhere” whence the children have not been fabled to come. Children are said to come from heaven (Germany, England, America, etc.); from the sea (Denmark); from lakes, ponds, rivers (Germany, Austria, Japan); from moors and sand-hills (northeastern Germany); from gardens (China); from under the cabbage-leaves (Brittany, Alsace), or the parsley-bed (England); from sacred or hollow trees, such as the ash, linden, beech, oak, etc. (Germany, Austria); from inside or from underneath rocks and stones (northeastern Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, etc.). It is worthy of note how the topography of the country, its physiographic character, affects these beliefs, which change with hill and plain, with moor and meadow, seashore and inland district. The details of these birth-myths may be read in Ploss (326. I. 2), Schell (343), Sundermann (366). Specially interesting are the _Kindersee_ (“child-lake”), _Kinderbaum_ (“child-tree”), and _Kinderbrunnen_ (“child-fountain”) of the Teutonic lands,–offering analogies with the “Tree of Life” and the “Fountain of Eternal Youth” of other ages and peoples; the _Titistein_, or “little children’s stone,” and the _Kindertruog_ (“child’s trough”) of Switzerland, and the “stork-stones” of North Germany.
Dr. Haas, in his interesting little volume of folk-lore from the island of Rugen, in the Baltic, records some curious tales about the birth of children. The following practice of the children in that portion of Germany is significant: “Little white and black smooth stones, found on the shore, are called ‘stork-stones.’ These the children are wont to throw backwards over their heads, asking, at the same time, the stork to bring them a little brother or sister” (466 a. 144). This recalls vividly the old Greek deluge-myth, in which we are told, that, after the Flood, Deucalion was ordered to cast behind him the “bones of his mother.” This he interpreted to mean the “stones,” which seemed, as it were, the “bones” of “mother-earth.” So he and his wife Pyrrha picked up some stones from the ground and cast them over their shoulders, whereupon those thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha, women. Here belongs, also, perhaps, the Wallachian custom, mentioned by Mr. Sessions (who thinks it was “probably to keep evil spirits away”), in accordance with which “when a child is born every one present throws a stone behind him.”
On the island of Rugen erratic blocks on the seashore are called _Adeborsteine_, “stork-stones,” and on such a rock or boulder near Wrek in Wittow, Dr. Haas says “the stork is said to dry the little children, after he has fetched them out of the sea, before he brings them to the mothers. The latter point out these blocks to their little sons and daughters, telling them how once they were laid upon them by the stork to get dry.” The great blocks of granite that lie scattered on the coast of Jasmund are termed _Schwansteine_, “swan-stones,” and, according to nursery-legend, the children to be born are shut up in them. When a sister or brother asks: “Where did the little _swan-child_”–for so babies are called–“come from?” the mother replies: “From the swan-stone. It was opened with a key, and a little swan-child taken out.” The term “swan-child” is general in this region, and Dr. Haas is inclined to think that the swan-myth is older than the stork-myth (466 a. 143, 144).
Curious indeed is the belief of the Hidatsa Indians, as reported by Dr. Matthews, in the “Makadistati, or house of infants.” This is described as “a cavern near Knife River, which, they supposed, extended far into the earth, but whose entrance was only a span wide. It was resorted to by the childless husband or the barren wife. There are those among them who imagine that in some way or other their children come from the Makadistati; and marks of contusion on an infant, arising from tight swaddling or other causes, are gravely attributed to kicks received from his former comrades when he was ejected from his subterranean home” (433. 516).
In Hesse, Germany, there is a children’s song (326. I. 9):–
Bimbam, Glockchen,
Da unten steht ein Stockchen,
Da oben steht ein golden Haus,
Da gucken viele schone Kinder raus.
The current belief in that part of Europe is that “unborn children live in a very beautiful dwelling, for so long as children are no year old and have not yet looked into a mirror, everything that comes before their eyes appears to be gold.” Here folk-thought makes the beginnings of human life a real golden age. They are Midases of the eye, not of the touch.
_Children’s Questions and Parents’ Answers._
Another interesting class of “parents’ lies” consists in the replies to, or comments upon, the questionings and remarks of children about the ordinary affairs of life. The following examples, selected from Dirksen’s studies of East-Frisian Proverbs, will serve to indicate the general nature and extent of these.
1. When a little child says, “I am hungry,” the mother sometimes answers, “Eat some salt, and then you will be thirsty, too.”
2. When a child, seeing its mother drink tea or coffee, says, “I’m thirsty,” the answer may be, “If you’re thirsty, go to Jack ter Host; there’s a cow in the stall, go sit under it and drink.” Some of the variants of this locution are expressed in very coarse language (431. I. 22).
3. If a child asks, when it sees that its parent is going out, “Am I not going, too?” the answer is, “You are going along, where nobody has gone, to Poodle’s wedding,” or “You are going along on Stay-here’s cart.” A third locution is, “You are going along to the Kukendell fair” (Kukendell being a part of Meiderich, where a fair has never been held). In Oldenburg the answer is: “You shall go along on Jack-stay-at-home’s (Janblievtohus) cart.” Sometimes the child is quieted by being told, “I’ll bring you back a little silver nothing (enn silwer Nickske)” (431. I. 33).
4. If, when he is given a slice of bread, he asks for a thinner one, the mother may remark, “Thick pieces make fat bodies” (431. I. 35).
5. When some one says in the hearing of the father or mother of a child that it ought not to have a certain apple, a certain article of clothing, or the like, the answer is, “That is no illegitimate child.” The locution is based upon the fact that illegitimate children do not enjoy the same rights and privileges as those born in wedlock (431. I. 42).
6. Of children’s toys and playthings it is sometimes said, when they are very fragile, “They will last from twelve o’clock till midday” (431.1.43).
7. When any one praises her child in the presence of the mother, the latter says, “It’s a good child when asleep” (431. I. 51).
8. In the winter-time, when the child asks its mother for an apple, the latter may reply, “the apples are piping in the tree,” meaning that there are no longer any apples on the tree, but the sparrows are sitting there, crying and lamenting. In Meiderich the locution is “Apples have golden stems,” _i.e._ they are rare and dear in winter-time (431. I. 75).
9. When the child says, “I can’t sit down,” the mother may remark, “Come and sit on my thumb; nobody has ever fallen off it” (_i.e._ because no one has ever tried to sit on it) (431. I. 92).
10. When a lazy child, about to be sent out upon an errand, protests that it does not know where the person to whom the message is to be sent lives, and consequently cannot do the errand, the mother remarks threateningly, “I’ll show where Abraham ground the mustard,” _i.e._ “I give you a good thrashing, till the tears come into your eyes (as when grinding mustard)” (431. I. 105).
11. When a child complains that a sister or brother has done something to hurt him, the mother’s answer is, “Look out! He shall have water in the cabbage, and go barefoot to bed” (431. I. 106).
12. Sometimes their parents or elders turn to children and ask them “if they would like to be shown the Bremen geese.” If the child says yes, he is seized by the ears and head with both hands and lifted off the ground. In some parts of Germany this is called “showing Rome,” and there are variants of the practice in other lands (431. II. 14).
13. When a child complains of a sore in its eye, or on its neck, the answer is: “That will get well before you are a great-grandmother” (431. II. 50).
14. When one child asks for one thing and another for something else, the mother exclaims petulantly, “One calls out ‘lime,’ the other ‘stones.'” The reference is to the confusion of tongues at Babel, which is assumed to have been of such a nature that one man would call out “lime,” and another “stones” (431. II. 53).
15. When a child asks for half a slice of bread instead of a whole one, the mother may say, “Who doesn’t like a whole, doesn’t like a half either” (431. II. 43).
16. When a child says, “That is my place, I sat there,” the reply is, “You have no place; your place is in the churchyard” (_i.e._ a grave) (431. II. 76).
When the child says “I will,” the mother says threateningly, “Your ‘will’ is in your mother’s pocket.” It is in her pocket that she carries the rope for whipping the child. Another locution is, “Your will is in the corner” (_i.e._ the corner of the room in which stands the broomstick) (431. II. 81).
These specimens of the interchange of courtesies between the child and its parent or nurse might be paralleled from our own language; indeed, many of the correspondences will suggest themselves at once. The deceits practised in the Golden Age of childhood resemble those practised by the gods in the Golden Age of the world, when divine beings walked the earth and had intercourse with the sons and daughters of men.
“_Painted Devils_.”
Even as the serpent marred the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek its ruin.
Shakespeare has well said:–
“Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil,”
and the chronicle of the “painted devils,” bogies, scarecrows, _et id genus omne_, is a long one, whose many chapters may be read in Ploss, Hartland, Henderson, Gregor, etc. Some of the “devils” are mild and almost gentlemen, like their lord and master at times; others are fierce, cruel, and bloodthirsty; their number is almost infinite, and they have the forms of women as well as of men.
Over a large portion of western Europe is found the nursery story of the “Sand-Man,” who causes children to become drowsy and sleepy; “the sand-man is coming, the sand-man has put dust in your eyes,” are some of the sayings in use. By and by the child gets “so fast asleep that one eye does not see the other,” as the Frisian proverb puts it. When, on a cold winter day, her little boy would go out without his warm mittens on, the East Frisian mother says, warningly: _De Fingerbiter is buten_, “the Finger-biter is outside.”
Among the formidable evil spirits who war against or torment the child and its mother are the Hebrew Lilith, the long-haired night-flier; the Greek _Strigalai_, old and ugly owl-women; the Roman _Caprimulgus_, the nightly goat-milker and child-killer, and the wood-god Silvanus; the Coptic _Berselia_; the Hungarian “water-man,” or “water-woman,” who changes children for criples or demons; the Moravian _Vestice_, or “wild woman,” able to take the form of any animal, who steals away children at the breast, and substitutes changelings for them; the Bohemian _Polednice_, or “noon-lady,” who roams around only at noon, and substitutes changelings for real children; the Lithuanian and Old Prussian _Laume_, a child-stealer, whose breast is the thunderbolt, and whose girdle is the rainbow; the Servian _Wjeschtitza_, or witches, who take on the form of an insect, and eat up children at night; the Russian “midnight spirit,” who robs children of rest and sleep; the Wendish “Old mountain-woman”; the German (Brunswick) “corn-woman,” who makes off with little children looking for flowers in the fields; the Roggenmuhme ( “rye-aunt”), the _Tremsemutter_, who walks about in the cornfields; the _Katzenveit_, a wood spirit, and a score of bogies called _Popel, Popelmann, Popanz, Butz_, etc.; the Scotch “Boo Man,” “Bogie Man,” “Jenny wi’ the Airn Teeth,” “Jenny wi’ the lang Pock “; the English and American bogies, goblins, ogres, ogresses, witches, and the like; besides, common to all peoples, a host of werwolves and vampires, giants and dwarfs, witches, ogres, ogresses, fairies, evil spirits of air, water, land, inimical to childhood and destructive of its peace and enjoyment. The names, lineage, and exploits of these may be read in Ploss, Grimm, Hartland, etc.
In the time of the Crusades, Richard Cour de Lion, the hero-king of England, became so renowned among the Saracens that (Gibbon informs us) his name was used by mothers and nurses to quiet their infants, and other historical characters before and after him served to like purpose. To the children of Rome in her later days, Attila, the great Hun, was such a bogy, as was Narses, the Byzantian general (d. 568 A.D.), to the Assyrian children. Bogies also were Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490 A.D.), the Hungarian king and general, to the Turks; Tamerlane (Timur), the great Mongolian conqueror (d. 1405 A.D.), to the Persians; and Bonaparte, at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in various parts of the continent of Europe. These, and other historical characters have, in part, taken the place of the giants and bogies of old, some of whom, however, linger, even yet, in the highest civilizations, together with fabulous animals (reminiscent of stern reality in primitive times), with which, less seriously than in the lands of the eastern world, childhood is threatened and cowed into submission.
The Ponka Indian mothers tell their children that if they do not behave themselves the Indacinga (a hairy monster shaped like a human being, that hoots like an owl) will get them; the Omaha bogy is Icibaji; a Dakota child-stealer and bogy is Anungite or “Two Faces” (433. 386, 473). With the Kootenay Indians, of south-eastern British Columbia, the owl is the bogy with which children are frightened into good behaviour, the common saying of mothers, when their children are troublesome, being, “If you are not quiet, I’ll give you to the owl” (203). Longfellow, in his _Hiawatha_, speaks of one of the bogies of the eastern Indians:–
“Thus the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rooked him in his linden cradle,
Stilled his fretful wail by saying, ‘Hush! the naked bear will get thee!'”
Among the Nipissing Algonkian Indians, _koko_ is a child-word for any terrible being; the mothers say to their children, “beware of the _koko_.” Champlain and Lescarbot, the early chroniclers of Canada, mention a terrible creature (concerning which tales were told to frighten children) called _gougou_, supposed to dwell on an island in the Baie des Chaleurs (200. 239). Among the bogies of the Mayas of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton mentions: the _balams_ (giant beings of the night), who carry off children; the _culcalkin_, or “neckless priest”; besides giants and witches galore (411. 174, 177).
Among the Gualala Indians of California, we find the “devil-dance,” which Powers compares to the _haberfeldtreiben_ of the Bavarian peasants,–an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth “an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, he dashes at the squaws, capering, dancing, whooping; and they and the children flee for life, keeping several hundred yards between him and themselves.” It is believed that, if they were even to touch his stick, their children would die (519. 194).
Among the Patwin, Nishinam, and Pomo Indians, somewhat similar practices are in vogue (519. 157, 160, 225). From the golden age of childhood, with its divinities and its demons, we may now pass to the consideration of more special topics concerning the young of the races of men.
CHAPTER IX.
CHILDREN’S FOOD.
Der Mensch ist, was er isst.–_Feuerbach_.
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.–_Coleridge_.
Man did eat angels’ food.–_Psalm_ ixxviii. 25.
_Honey_.
_Der Mensch ist, was er isst_,–“man is what he eats,”–says