The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought - Alexander F. Chamberlain (best way to read an ebook txt) 📗

children mentioned, a sick child, and a babe in the arms of its grandmother, saw the apparition.” The description of the Virgin, as seen by Eugène Barbedette that starlight winter night, is quaint and naïve in the extreme: “She was very tall, robed in blue, and her robe studded with stars. Her shoes were also blue, but had red rosettes. Her face was covered with a black veil, which floated to her shoulders. A crown of gold was on her head, but a red line was observed to run round the crown, symbolic of the blood shed by Christ for the sins of the world. Beneath her feet was a scroll, on which were written these words: ‘Mais priez, mes enfants, Dieu vous exaucera, en peu de temps mon fils se laisse toucher’ (Pray, my children, God will hear you, before long my son will be moved).” Mgr. Guérin thus comments upon the miracle: “In order to make herself manifest to men, the Holy Virgin has chosen rather the simple eyes of childhood; for, like troubled waters, sinful souls would have but ill reflected her celestial image” (191. 26).

 

Flower-and Animal-Oracles.

Mr. Newell has a chapter on “Flower-Oracles” (313. 105-114), in which he gives many illustrations of the practice noted in the lines of that nature-loving mediaeval German singer, with which he prefaces his remarks:—

 

“A spire of grass hath made me gay; It saith I shall find mercy mild. I measured in the selfsame way I have seen practised by a child.” “Come look and listen if she really does: She does, does not, she does, does not, she does. Each time I try, the end so augureth. That comforts me,—‘tis right that we have faith.”

 

The ox-eye daisy, the common daisy, the marguerite, the corn-flower, the dandelion, the rose, the pansy, the clover, and a score of other flowers and plants (to say nothing of bushes and trees) have their leaves and petals pulled off, their seeds counted, their fruit examined, their seedtufts blown away, their markings and other peculiarities deciphered and interpreted to determine the fortune of little questioners, the character of the home they are to live in, the clothes they are to be married in, what they are to ride in, the profession they are to adopt, whether they are to marry, remain single, become monk or nun, whether they are to be drowned or hanged, rich or poor, honest or criminal, whether they are to go to hell, purgatory, or paradise.

The use of drawing straws or blades of grass from the hand to determine who is “it,” or who shall begin the game, the blowing of the dandelion in seed, the counting of apple-pips, or the leaves on a twig, and a hundred other expedients belong to the same category. All these are oracles, whose priest and interpreter is the child; first, in “those sweet, childish days that were as long as twenty days are now,” and then again when love rules the heart and the appeal to the arbitrament of nature—for not alone all mankind but all nature loves a lover—is made in deepest faith and confidence. In the golden age of childhood and in the springtime of love all nature is akin to man. The dandelion is especially favoured as an oracle of children, and of those who are but “children of a larger growth.” To quote from Folkard (448. 309):—

“The dandelion is called the rustic oracle; its flowers always open about 5 A.M. and shut at 8 P.M., serving the shepherd for a clock.

 

‘Leontodons unfold On the swart turf their ray-encircled gold, With Sol’s expanding beam the flowers unclose, And rising Hesper lights them to repose.’—_Darwin_.

 

As the flower is the shepherd’s clock, so are the feathery seedtufts his barometer, predicting calm or storm. These downy seedballs, which children blow off to find out the hour of day, serve for other oracular purposes. Are you separated from the object of your love? Carefully pluck one of the feathery heads; charge each of the little feathers composing it with a tender thought; turn towards the spot where the loved one dwells; blow, and the seedball will convey your message faithfully. Do you wish to know if that dear one is thinking of you? blow again; and if there be left upon the stalk a single aigrette, it is a proof you are not forgotten. Similarly, the dandelion is consulted as to whether the lover lives east, west, north, or south, and whether he is coming or not.

 

‘Will he come? I pluck the flower leaves off, And, at each, cry yes, no, yes; I blow the down from the dry hawkweed, Once, twice—hah! I it flies amiss!’—Scott.”

 

Many interesting details about flower-oracles may be read in the pages of Friend (453) and Folkard (448) and in Mr. Dyer’s chapters on Plants and the Ceremonial Use (435. 145-162), Children’s Rhymes and Games (435. 232-242), etc.

Beasts, birds, and insects are also the child’s oracles. Mr. Callaway tells us that among the Amazulu, when cattle are lost, and the boys see the bird called Isi pungumangati sitting on a tree, “they ask it where the cattle are, and go in the direction in which it points with its head.” The insect known as the mantis, or “praying insect,” is used for a similar purpose (417. 339). In the Sollinger forest (Germany), on St. Matthew’s day, February 24, the following practice is in vogue: A girl takes a girl friend upon her back and carries her to the nearest sheep-pen, at the door of which both knock. If a lamb is the first to bleat, the future husbands of both girls will be young; if an old sheep bleats first, they will both marry old men (391. II. 10).

 

The Child as Oracle in the Primitive Community.

In primitive social economy the services of the child, as an unprejudiced or oracular decider of fates and fortunes, were often in demand. In the community of Pudu-vayal, in the Carnatic (southeastern India), “when the season for cultivation arrives, the arable land in the village is allotted to the several shareholders in the following manner: The names of each lot and each shareholder are written on pieces of the leaf of the palm-tree, such as is used for village records, and the names of each division of land to be allotted are placed in a row. A child, selected for the purpose, draws by lot a leaf with the name of the principal shareholder, and places under it a number, thus,—

1—Tannappa. 2—Nina. 3—Narrappa. 4—Malliyan.

It is thus settled by lottery that Tannappa and his under-share-holders are to cultivate the land of the principal share lotted under No. 1. Tannappa next proceeds to settle in the same way each under-shareholder’s portion included in his principal share, and so on, until the sixty-four shareholders receive each his allotment (461. 32).”

At Haddenham, in the county of Buckingham, England, a somewhat similar practice survived: “The method of deciding the ownership, after the meadow was plotted out, was by drawing lots. This was done by cutting up a common dock-weed into the required number of pieces to represent the lots, a well understood sign being carved on each piece, representing crows’ feet, hog-troughs, and so on. These were placed in a hat and shaken up. Before this could be done, however, notice must be given by one of the men, calling out, at the top of his voice, ‘Harko,’ and using some sort of rigmarole, calling people to witness that the lots were drawn fairly and without favour…. The hat being shaken up, and one of the boys standing by, looking on with the greatest interest, is pitched upon as a disinterested person to draw the lots, and each owner had to ‘sup up’ with the lot that fell to him” (461.270).

In the manor of Aston, in the parish of Bampton, Oxfordshire, a like custom prevailed: “When the grass was fit to cut, the grass stewards and Sixteens [stewards] summoned the freeholders and tenants to a general meeting, and the following ceremony took place: Four of the tenants came forward, each bearing his mark cut on a piece of wood, which, being thrown into a hat, were shaken up and drawn by a boy. The first drawing entitled its owner to have his portion of the common meadow in set one, the second drawn in set two, etc., and thus four of the tenants have obtained their allotments. Four others then came forward, and the same process is repeated until all the tenants have received their allotments” (461. 166).

In Kilkenny, “when the division is made out, lots are prepared. Each man takes a bit of stick or particular stone, well marked; these are enveloped in a ball of clay, and a child or stranger is called to place each ball upon some one of the lots, by which each man’s share is determined” (461. 141).

The Kaffir boy who is to tend the calves in the kraal, while his fellows sport and romp about, is selected by lot: “As many blades of grass as there are boys are taken, and a knot is made on the end of one of them. The biggest boy holds the blades between the fingers and thumb of his closed hand, and whoever draws the blade with the knot has to act as herdsman” (543. 221). Nowadays, children are employed to turn roulette-wheels, sort cards, pick out lottery-tickets, select lucky numbers, set machinery going for the first time, and perform other like actions; for, though men are all “children of fortune,” there is something about real children that brings luck and prospers all enterprises of chance and hazard.

Unconscious action and selection by children have no doubt profoundly influenced individual men and society at times. De Quincey tells us that “the celebrated Dr. Doddridge is said to have been guided in a primary act of choice, influencing his whole after life, by a few chance words from a child reading aloud to his mother.” The story of the conversion of drunken John Stirling by the naïve remark of his four-year-old boy, as the mother was reading Matthew xxv. 31-33, “Will father be a goat, then, mother?” finds parallels in other lives and other lands (191.356). Here may be considered as belonging some of the “guessing-games,” certain of which, in forms remarkably like those in use to-day, were known to the ancients, as Mr. Newell has pointed out, from references in Xenophon and Petronius Arbiter (313. 147-152).

 

Oracular Games.

As we of to-day see in the sports and games of children some resemblance to the realities of life of our ancestors of long ago, and of those primitive peoples who have lingered behind in the march, of culture, so have the folk seen in them some echo, some oracular reverberation, of the deeds of absent elders, some forecast of the things to come.

Among the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia, the following belief is current regarding twins: “While they are children their mother can see by their plays whether her husband, when he is out hunting, will be successful or not. When the twins play about and feign to bite each other, he will be successful; if they keep quiet, he will return empty-handed” (404. 92).

In Saxon Transylvania, “when children play games in which dolls and the like are buried, play church, or sing hymns in the street, it is thought to foretell the approaching death of some one in the place” (392

(1893).18).

 

Similar superstitions attach to others of the games and sports of childhood, in which is reproduced the solemn earnest of an earlier manhood; for, with some peoples, the conviction that what is acted in pantomime must occur at a later date in all its reality, finds ready acceptance, and