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

hence children are sometimes even now debarred from carrying out some of their games, from a vague fear that ill will come of them in the manner indicated.

 

CHAPTER XXI.

 

THE CHILD AS WEATHER-MAKER.

Rain, rain, go away, Come again, another day.—_Children’s Rhyme._

Perhaps the most naive tale in which, the child figures as a weather-maker occurs in the life-story of St. Vincent Ferrier (1357-1419 A.D.), who is credited with performing, in twenty years, no fewer than 58,400 miracles. While the saint was not yet a year old, a great dearth prevailed in Valencia, and one day, while his mother was lamenting over it, “the infant in swaddling-clothes said to her distinctly, ‘Mother, if you wish for rain, carry me in procession.’ The babe was carried in procession, and the rain fell abundantly” (191.356). Brewer informs us that in 1716 “Mrs. Hicks and her daughter (a child nine years of age) were hung at Huntingdon [England], for ‘selling their souls to the devil; and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of soap’” (191. 344). Saints and witches had power to stop rains and lay storms as well as to bring them on.

H. F. Feilberg has given us an interesting account of “weather-making,” a folk-custom still in vogue in several parts of Denmark. It would appear that this strange custom exists in Djursland, Samse, Sejere, Nexele, in the region of Kallundborg. Here “the women ‘make weather’ in February, the men in March, all in a fixed order, usually according to the numbers of the tax-register. The pastor and his wife, each in his and her month, ‘make weather’ on the first of the month, after them the other inhabitants of the village. If the married men are not sufficient to fill out the days of the months, the unmarried ones and the servants are called upon,—the house-servant perhaps ‘making weather’ in the morning, the hired boy in the afternoon, and in like manner the kitchen-maid and the girl-servant” (392 (1891). 56, 58). In this case we have a whole family, household, community of “weather-makers,” old and young, and are really taken back to a culture-stage similar to that of the Caribs and Chibchas of America, with whom the chief was weather-maker as well as ruler of his people (101. 57).

 

The “Bull-Roarer.”

In Mr. Andrew Lang’s Custom and Myth there is an entertaining chapter on “The Bull Roarer,” which the author identifies with the [Greek: rombos] mentioned by Clemens of Alexandria as one of the toys of the infant Dionysus. The “bull-roarer,” known to the modern English boy, the ancient Greek, the South African, the American Indian, etc., is in actual use to-day by children,—Mr. Lang does not seem to be aware of the fact,—as a “wind-raiser,” or “weather-maker.” Mr. Gregor, speaking of northeastern Scotland, says: “During thunder it was not unusual for boys to take a piece of thin wood a few inches wide and about half a foot long, bore a hole in one end of it, and tie a few yards of twine into the hole. The piece of wood was rapidly whirled around the head under the belief that the thunder would cease, or that the thunderbolt would not strike. It went by the name of the ‘thunner-spell’” (246. 153).

Among the Kaffirs, according to Mr. Theal:—

“There is a kind of superstition connected with the nowidu [the South African ‘bull-roarer’], that playing with it invites a gale of wind. Men will, on this account, often prevent boys from using it when they desire calm weather for any purpose” (543. 223).

Dr. Boas tells us that the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia attribute supernatural powers to twins, and believe: “They can make good and bad weather. In order to produce rain they take a small basket filled with water, which they spill into the air. For making clear weather, they use a small stick to the end of which a string is tied. A small flat piece of wood is attached to the end of the string, and this implement is shaken. Storm is produced by strewing down on the ends of spruce branches” (404. 92).

The Nootka Indians have a like belief regarding twins: “They have the power to make good and bad weather. They produce rain by painting their faces with black colour and then washing them, or by merely shaking their heads” (404. 40).

Among some of the Kwakiutl Indians, upon the birth of twins “the father dances for four days after the children have been born, with a large square rattle. The children, by swinging this rattle, can cure disease and procure favourable winds and weather” (404. 62).

In Prussia, when it snows, the folk-belief is “the angels are shaking their little beds,” and Grimm’s story of “Old Mother Frost” has another rendering of the same myth: “What are you afraid of, my child! Stop with me: if you will put all things in order in my house, then all shall go well with you; only you must take care that you make my bed well, and shake tremendously, so that the feathers fly; then it snows upon earth. I am Old Mother Frost.”

An Eskimo legend states that thunder and lightning are caused by an adult person and a child, who went up in the sky long, long ago; they carry a dried seal-skin, which, when rattled, makes the thunder, and torches of tar, which, when waved, cause the lightning.

The Mississaga Indians explain a fierce storm of thunder and lightning by saying that “the young thunder-birds up in the sky are making merry and having a good time.” In like manner, the Dakotas account for the rumbling of thunder, “because the old thunder-bird begins the peal and the young ones take it up and continue.”

In the poetry of the ancient Aryans of Asia the wind is called “the heavenly child,” some idea of which survives in the old pictures in books representing the seasons, and in maps, where infants or cherubs are figured as blowing at the various points of the compass. But to return to rain-making. Grimm has called attention to several instances in Modern Europe where the child figures as “rain-maker.”

 

Girl Rain-Makers.

One of the charms in use in the Rhine country of Germany in the eleventh century, as recorded by Burchard of Worms, was this: “A little girl, completely undressed and led outside the town, had to dig up henbane with the little finger of her right hand, and tie it to the little toe of her right foot; she was then solemnly conducted by the other maidens to the nearest river, and splashed with water” (462. II. 593).

In Servia the rain-maker is well known, and the procedure is as follows: “A girl, called the dodola, is stript naked, but so wrapt up in grass, herbs, and flowers, that nothing of her person is to be seen, not even the face. Escorted by other maidens, dodola passes from house to house; before each house they form a ring, she standing in the middle and dancing alone. The goodwife comes out and empties a bucket of water over the girl, who keeps dancing and whirling all the while; her companions sing songs, repeating after every line the burden oy dodo, oy dodo le.” Following is one of the rain-songs:—

“To God doth our doda call, oy dodo oy dodo le! That dewy rain may fall, oy dodo oy dodo le! And drench the diggers all, oy dodo oy dodo le! The workers great and small, oy dodo oy dodo le! Even those in house and stall, oy dodo oy dodo le!”

Corresponding to the Servian dodola, and thought to be equally efficacious, is the [Greek: pyrperuna] of the Modern Greeks. With them the custom is: “When it has not rained for a fortnight or three weeks, the inhabitants of villages and small towns do as follows. The children choose one of themselves, who is from eight to ten years old, usually a poor orphan, whom they strip naked and deck from head to foot with field herbs and flowers: this child is called pyrperuna. The others lead her round the village, singing a hymn, and every housewife has to throw a pailful of water over the pyrperuna’s head and hand the children a para (1/4 of a farthing)” (462. I. 594).

In a Wallachian song, sung by children when the grain is troubled by drought, occurs the following appeal: “Papaluga (Father Luga), climb into heaven, open its doors, and send down rain from above, that well the rye may grow!” (462. II. 593). This brings us naturally to the consideration of the rain-rhymes in English and cognate tongues.

 

Rain-Rhymes.

Mr. Henderson, treating of the northern counties of England, tells us that when the rain threatens to spoil a boy’s holiday, he will sing out:—

 

“‘Rain, rain, go away, Come again another summer’s day; Rain, rain, pour down, And come no more to our town.’

 

or:—

 

‘Rain, rain, go away, And come again on washing day,’

 

or, more quaintly, yet:—

 

‘Rain, rain, go to Spain; Fair weather, come again,’

 

and, sooner or later, the rain will depart. If there be a rainbow, the juvenile devotee must look at it all the time. The Sunderland version runs thus:—

 

‘Rain, rain, pour down Not a drop in our town, But a pint and a gill All a-back of Building Hill.’”

 

Mr. Henderson remarks that “such rhymes are in use, I believe, in every nursery in England,” and they are certainly well known, in varying forms in America. A common English charm for driving away the rainbow brings the child at once into the domain of the primitive medicine-man. Schoolboys were wont, “on the appearance of a rainbow, to place a couple of straws or twigs across on the ground, and, as they said, ‘cross out the rainbow.’ The West Riding [Yorkshire] receipt for driving away a rainbow is: ‘Make a cross of two sticks and lay four pebbles on it, one at each end’” (469. 24, 25).

Mr. Gregor, for northeastern Scotland, reports the following as being sung or shouted at the top of the voice by children, when a rainbow appears (246. 153, 154):—

 

(1)

“Rainbow, rainbow, Brack an gang hame, The coo’s wi’ a calf, The yow’s wi’ a lam, An’ the coo ‘ill be calvt, Or ye win hame.”

 

(2)

“Rainbow, rainbow, Brack an gang hame; Yir father an yir mither’s aneth the layer-stehm; Yir coo’s calvt, yir mare’s foalt, Yir wife’ll be dead Or ye win hame.”

 

(3)

“Rainbow, rainbow, Brack an gang hame, Yir father and mither’s aneth the grave stehn.”

 

Even more touching is the appeal made by the children in Berwickshire, according to Mr. Henderson (469. 24, 25):—

 

“Rainbow, rainbow, hand awa’ hame, A’ yer bairns are dead but ane, And it lies sick at yon gray stane, And will be dead ere you win hame. Gang owre the Drumaw [a hill] and yont the lea And down by the side o’ yonder sea; Your bairn lies greeting [crying] like to dee, And the big tear-drop is in his e’e.”

 

Sometimes the child-priest or weather-maker has to employ an intermediary. On the island of Rugen and in some other parts of Germany the formula is (466 a. 132):—

 

“Leeve Katriene Lat de stinnen schienen, Lat’n ragen overgahn, Lat de stunnen wedder kam’n.” [“Dear (St.) Catharine, Let the sun shine, Let the rain pass off, Let the sun come again.”]

 

In Eugen the glow-worm is associated with “weather-making.” The children take the little creature up, put it on their hand and thus address it (466 a. 133):—

 

“Sunnskurnken fleeg weech, Bring mi morgen good wader, Lat ‘en ragen overgahn, Lat de sunnen