"(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 Tinné, the use of which has now extended to the employés 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 Percé 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 matterAnd 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 itisthe 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 Guaranitubmeans 'father, spawn, eggs,'tupia'eggs,' and eventup-i, the name of the people (the-iis 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 Karaïbi we find exactly the same idea;imuis 'egg,' or 'testicles,' or 'child.'"
Among other cognate tribes we find the same thoughts:—
In the Ipurucoto languageimusignifies "egg."
In the Bakaïrí languageimusignifies "testicles."
In the Tamanako languageimusignifies "father."
In the Makusi languageimusignifies "semen."
In several dialectsimu-rusignifies "child."
Dr. von den Steinen further observes: "Among the Bakaïrí 'child' and 'small' are bothiméri, 'the child of the chief,'píma iméri; 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 littlefather,' and not 'the littlemother'; it is only the father who has made her. In Bakaïrí 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;píma imérimay 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 mediæval 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 rôles 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.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.—Wordsworth.
Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes.—Achim v. Arnim.
Wahre dir den Kindersinn,Kindheit blüht 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 wordworld, as the Anglo-Saxonweorold, Icelandicveröld, and Old High Germanweraltindicate, 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 threeSweet Graces,—Faith, Hope, Charity,"
and the "three Fates" of classic antiquity, the three Norns of Scandinavian mythology, the three Sudiêicky 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 HinduBhavani(moon-goddess); the PersianAnahita; the AssyrianBelit, the spouse ofBel; the PhoenicianAstarte; the EgyptianIsis; the EtruscanMater matuta; the GreekHera Eileithyia, Artemis,; the RomanDiana, Lucina, Juno; the PhrygianCybele; the GermanicFreia, Holla, Gude, Harke; the SlavonicSiwa, Libussa, Zlata Baba("the golden woman"); the ancient MexicanItzcuinam, Yohmaltcitl, Tezistecatl; the Chibchan rainbow-goddessCuchavira; the JapaneseKojasi 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:—
ParcaorPartula, 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, andDea Statina, the goddess, of the child's standing;Fabulinus, the god of the child's speech;AbeonaandAdiona, 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, andVolumnusthe god, of will or wishing;Venilia, the goddess of hope, of "things to come";Deus conus, the god of counsel, the counsel-giver;PeragenororAgenona, the deity of the child's action;Camna, 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 liesA 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 dochZu brauchen den richtigen Titel."
["Hold fast to the words that we equivoques call;For they are indeed the only safe wayTo 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 theeverywhereinto 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 theKindersee("child-lake"),Kinderbaum("child-tree"), andKinderbrunnen("child-fountain") of the Teutonic lands,—offering analogies with the "Tree of Life" and the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" of other ages and peoples; theTitistein, or "little children's stone," and theKindertruog("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 Rügen, 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 Rügen erratic blocks on the seashore are calledAdeborsteine, "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 termedSchwansteine, "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 littleswan-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, Glöckchen,Da unten steht ein Stöckchen,Da oben steht ein golden Haus,Da gucken viele schöne 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 Kükendell fair" (Kükendell 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 (Janblievtohûs) 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 childhoodThat 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 GreekStrigalai, old and ugly owl-women; the RomanCaprimulgus, the nightly goat-milker and child-killer, and the wood-god Silvanus; the CopticBerselia; the Hungarian "water-man," or "water-woman," who changes children for criples or demons; the MoravianVestice, or "wild woman," able to take the form of any animal, who steals away children at the breast, and substitutes changelings for them; the BohemianPolednice, or "noon-lady," who roams around only at noon, and substitutes changelings for real children; the Lithuanian and Old PrussianLaume, a child-stealer, whose breast is the thunderbolt, and whose girdle is the rainbow; the ServianWjeschtitza, 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 Röggenmuhme ( "rye-aunt"), theTremsemutter, who walks about in the cornfields; theKatzenveit, a wood spirit, and a score of bogies calledPopel, 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 Cur 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 Indaciñga (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 Añungite 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 hisHiawatha, speaks of one of the bogies of the eastern Indians:—
"Thus the wrinkled old NokomisNursed 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,kokois a child-word for any terrible being; the mothers say to their children, "beware of thekoko." Champlain and Lescarbot, the early chroniclers of Canada, mention a terrible creature (concerning which tales were told to frighten children) calledgougou, supposed to dwell on an island in the Baie des Chaleurs (200. 239). Among the bogies of the Mayas of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton mentions: thebalams(giant beings of the night), who carry off children; theculcalkin, 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 thehaberfeldtreibenof 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.
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.—Psalmixxviii. 25.
Honey.
Der Mensch ist, was er isst,—"man is what he eats,"—says Feuerbach, and there were food-philosophies long before his time. Among primitive peoples, the food of the child often smacks of the Golden Age. Tennyson, inEleanore, sings:—
"Or, the yellow-banded bees,Through half-open latticesComing in the scented breeze,Fed thee, a child lying alone,With white honey, in fairy gardens cull'd—A glorious child dreaming alone,In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down,With the hum of swarming beesInto dreamful slumber lull'd."
This recalls the story of Cretan Zeus, fed, when an infant, by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Ida with the milk of the goat Amalthæa and honey brought by the bees of the mountain.
In the sacred books of the ancient Hindus we read: "The father puts his mouth to the right ear of the new-born babe, and murmurs three times, 'Speech! Speech!' Then he gives it a name. Then he mixes clotted milk, honey, and butter, and feeds the babe with it out of pure gold" (460.129). Among the ancient Frisians and some other Germanic tribes, the father had the right to put to death or expose his child so long as it had not taken food; but "so soon as the infant had drunk milk and eaten honey he could not be put to death by his parents" (286. 69). The custom of giving the new-born child honey to taste is referred to in German counting-out rhymes, and the ancient Germans used to rub honey in the mouth of the new-born child. The heathen Czechs used to drop honey upon the child's lips, and in the Eastern Church it was formerly the custom to give the baptized child milk and honey to taste (392. II. 35). When the Jewish child, in the Middle Ages, first went to school, one of the ceremonial observances was to have him lick a slate which had been smeared with honey, and upon which the alphabet, two Bible verses, and the words "The Tora shall be my calling" were written; this custom is interestingly explanative of the passage in Ezekiel (iii. 3) where we read "Then I did eat it [the roll of a book given the prophet by God]; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness." There were also given to the child sweet cakes upon which Bible verses were written. Among the Jews of Galicia, before a babe is placed in the cradle for the first time, it is customary to strew into the latter little pieces of honey-comb. Among the Wotjaks we find the curious belief that those who, in eating honey, do not smear their mouth and hands with it, will die. With children of an older growth,—the second Golden Age,—honey and cakes again appear. Magyar maidens at the new moon steal honey and cakes, cook them, and mix a part in the food of the youth of their desires; among the White Russians, the bridal couple are fed honey with a spoon. Even with us "the first sweet month of matrimony," after the "bless you, my children" has been spoken by parents, church, and state, is called the "honey-moon," for our Teutonic ancestors were in the habit of drinking honey-wine or mead for the space of thirty days after marriage (392. IV. 118,211). In wedding-feasts the honey appears again, and, as Westermarck observes, the meal partaken of by the bride and bridegroom practically constitutes the marriage-ceremony among the Navajos, Santal, Malays, Hovas, and other primitive peoples (166. 419).
In Iceland, in ancient times, "the food of sucklings was sweetened by honey," and "in the mouths of weakly children a slice of meat was placed at which they sucked." Among other interesting items from Scandinavia, Ploss (326. II. 182) gives the following: "In Iceland, if the child has been suckled eight (at most, fourteen) days, it is henceforth placed upon the ground; near it is put a vessel with luke-warm whey, in which a reed or a quill is stuck, and a little bread placed before it. If the child should wake and show signs of hunger, he is turned towards the vessel, and the reed is placed in his mouth. When the child is nine months old, it must eat of the same food as its parents do."
In Shropshire, England, the first food given a child is a spoonful of sugar and butter, and, in the Highlands of Scotland, "at the birth of an infant the nurse takes a green stick of ash, one end of which she puts into the fire, and, while it is burning, receives in a spoon the sap that oozes from the other, which she administers to the child as its first food." This recalls the sap of the sacred ash of Scandinavian mythology. Solinus states that the ancient Irish mother "put the first food of her newborn son on the sword of her husband, and, lightly introducing it into his mouth, expressed a wish that he might never meet death otherwise than in war and amid arms," and a like custom is said "to have been kept up, prior to the union, in Annandale and other places along the Scottish border" (460. 129, 131).
Salt.
Among the Negritos of the Philippine Islands, when a child is born, one of the other children immediately gives it to eat some salt on the point of a knife (326. I. 258). The virtues of salt are recognized among many peoples. In the Middle Ages, when mothers abandoned their infants, they used to place beside them a little salt in token that they were unbaptized (326. I. 284); in Scotland, where the new-born babe is "bathed in salted water, and made to taste it three times, because the water was strengthening and also obnoxious to a person with the evil eye," the lady of the house first visited by the mother and child must, with the recital of a charm, put some salt in the little one's mouth. In Brabant, during the baptismal ceremony, the priest consecrates salt, given him by the father, and then puts a grain into the child's mouth, the rest being carefully kept by the father. The great importance of salt in the ceremonies of the Zuñi and related Indians of the Pueblos has been pointed out by Mr. Gushing.
Salt appears also at modern European wedding-feasts and prenuptial rites, as do also rice and meal, which are also among the first foods of some primitive races. Among the Badagas of the Nilgiri Hills, when the child is named (from twenty to thirty days after birth), the maternal uncle places three small bits of rice in its mouth (326. I. 284).
Folk-Medicine.
Among the Tlingit Indians, of Alaska, the new-born infant "is not given the breast until all the contents of its stomach (which are considered the cause of disease) are removed by vomiting, which is promoted by pressing the stomach" (403. 40), and among the Hare Indians, "the infant is not allowed food until four days after birth, in order to accustom it to fasting in the next world" (396. I. 121). The Songish Indians do not give the child anything to eat on the first day (404. 20); the Kolosh Indians, of Alaska, after ten to thirty months "accustom their children to the taste of a sea-animal," and, among the Arctic Eskimo, Kane found "children, who could not yet speak, devouring with horrible greediness, great lumps of walrus fat and flesh." Klutschak tells us how, during a famine, the Eskimo of Hudson's Bay melted and boiled for the children the blood-soaked snow from the spot where a walrus had been killed and cut up (326. II. 181).
In Culdaff, in the county of Donegal, Ireland, "an infant at its birth is forced to swallow spirits, and is immediately afterwards [strange anticipation of Dr. Robinson] suspended by the upper jaw on the nurse's forefinger. Whiskey is here the representative of the Hindu sôma, the sacred juice of the ash, etc., and the administration of alcoholic liquors to children of a tender age in sickness and disease so common everywhere but a few years ago, founded itself perhaps more upon this ancient belief than upon anything else" (401. 180).
The study of the food of sick children is an interesting one, and much of value may be read of it in Zanetti (173), Black (401), and other writers who have treated of folk-medicine. The decoctions of plants and herbs, the preparations of insects, reptiles, the flesh, blood, and ordure of all sorts of beasts (and of man), which the doctrines of signatures and sympathies, the craze ofsimilia similibus, forced down the throat of the child, in the way of food and medicine, are legion in number, and must be read in Folkard and the herbalists, in Bourke (407), Strack, etc.
In some parts of the United States even snail-water and snail-soup are not unknown; in New England, as Mrs. Earle informs us (221. 6), much was once thought of "the admirable and most famous snail-water."
Milk and Honey.
As we have abundantly seen, the first food of the child is the "food of the gods," for so were honey and milk esteemed among the ancient Germans, Greeks, Slavs, Hindus, etc., and of the Paradise where dwelt the Gods, and into which it was fabled children were born, we have some recollection, as Ploss suggests, in the familiar "land flowing with milk and honey," into the possession of which the children of Israel entered after their long wandering in the wilderness (462. II. 696). Of the ancient Hindu god Agni, Letourneau (100. 315) observes: "After being for a long time fed upon melted butter and the alcoholic liquor from the acid asclepias, the sacred Sôma, he first became a glorious child, then a metaphysical divinity, a mediator living in the fathers and living again in the sons." It was the divineSômathat, like the nectar of the Greeks, the elixirs of the Scandinavians, conferred youth and immortality upon those who drank it.
According to Moslem legend, after his birth, Abraham "remained concealed in a cave during fifteen months, and his mother visited him sometimes to nurse him. But he had no need of her food, for Allah commanded water to flow from one of Abraham's fingers, milk from another, honey from the third, the juice of dates from the fourth, and butter from the fifth" (547. 69).
Poison.
In theGesta Romanorum(Cap. XI.) we read of the "Queen of the North," who "nourished her daughter from the cradle upon a certain kind of deadly poison; and when she grew up, she was considered so beautiful, that the sight of her alone affected one with madness." Moreover, her whole nature had become so imbued with poisons that "she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have been poison, her embrace death." Hawthorne's story of "Rappaccini's Daughter,"—"who ever since infancy had grown and blossomed with the plants whose fatal properties she had imbibed with the air she breathed,"—comes from the same original source (390. II. 172). Here we are taken back again to the Golden Age, when even poisons could be eaten without harm.
Priest and Food.
With the giving of the child's food the priest is often associated. In the Fiji Islands, at Vitilevu, on the day when the navel-string falls off, a festival is held, and the food of the child is blest by the priest with prayers for his life and prosperity. In Upper Egypt, a feast is held at the house of the father and the child consecrated by the cadi or a priest, to whom is brought a plate with sugar-candy. The priest chews the candy and lets the sweet juice fall out of his mouth into that of the child, and thus "gives him his name out of his mouth" (326. I. 284).
The over-indulgence of children in food finds parallels at a later period of life, when, as with the people of southern Nubia and the Sahara between Talifet and Timbuktu, men fatten girls before marriage, making them consume huge quantities of milk, butter, etc.
For children, among many primitive peoples, there are numeroustaboosof certain classes and kinds of food, from religious or superstitious motives. Thistaboo-system has not lost all its force even to-day, as no other excuse can reasonably be offered for the refusal of certain harmless food to the young.
Tobacco.
Concerning certain Australian tribes, Lumholtz remarks: "Before the children are big enough to hold a pipe in their mouth they are permitted to smoke, and the mother will share her pipe with the nursing babe" (495. 193). In like manner, among the natives of the Solomon Islands, Mr. Guppy witnessed displays of precocity in this regard: "Bright-looking lads, eight or nine years of age, stood smoking their pipes as gravely as Haununo [a chief] himself; and even the smallest babe in its father's arms caught hold of his pipe and began to suck instinctively" (466.42). With the Jivaro Indians of Ecuador, according to Simson, the child, when three or four years old, is initiated into the mysteries of tobacco-smoking, amid great festivities and ceremonies (533. 388).
Drink of Immortality.
Feeding the dead has been in practice among many primitive peoples. The mother, with some of the Indian tribes of New Mexico, used to drop milk from her breast on the lips of her dead babe; and in many parts of the world we meet with the custom of placing food near the grave, so that the spirits may not hunger, or of placing it in the grave or coffin, so that on its way to the spirit-land the soul of the deceased may partake of some refreshment. Among the ancient natives of Venezuela, "infants who died a few days after their birth, were seated around the Tree of Milk, or Celestial Tree, that distilled milk from the extremity of its branches"; and kindred beliefs are found elsewhere (448. 297).
We have also the tree associated beautifully with the newborn child, as Reclus records concerning the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills, in India: "Immediately the deliverance has taken place—it always happens in the open air—three leaves of the aforementioned tree [under which the mother and father have passed the night] are presented to the father, who, making cups of them, pours a few drops of water into the first, wherewith he moistens his lips; the remainder he decants into the two other leaves; the mother drinks her share, and causes the baby to swallow his. Thus, father, mother, and child, earliest of Trinities, celebrate their first communion, and drink the living water, more sacred than wine, from the leaves of the Tree of Life" (523. 201).
The sacred books of the Hebrews tell us that the race of man in its infancy became like the gods by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and in the legends of other peoples immortality came to the great heroes by drinking of the divine sap of the sacred tree, or partaking of some of its fruit. The ancient Egyptians believed that milk from the breast of the divine mother Isis conferred divinity and immortality upon him who drank of it or imbibed it from the sacred source. Wiedemann aptly compares with this the Greek story of the infancy of Hercules. The great child-hero was the son of the god Jupiter and Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, King of Argos. He was exposed by his mother, but the goddess Athene persuaded Hera to give him her breast (another version says Hermes placed Hercules on the breast of Hera, while she slept) and the infant Hercules drew so lustily of the milk that he caused pain to the goddess, who snatched him away. But Hercules had drunk of the milk of a goddess and had become immortal, and as one of the gods (167. 266).
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,Hath elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar.—Wordsworth.
And rest at last where souls unbodied dwellIn ever-flowing meads of Asphodel.—Homer (Pope's Transl.).
Baptism.
With certain Hindu castes, the new-born child is sprinkled with cold water, "in order that the soul, which, since its last existence, has remained in a condition of dreamy contemplation, may be brought to the consciousness that it has to go through a new period of trial in this corporeal world" (326. II. 13). Perhaps, among the myriad rites and ceremonies of immersion and sprinkling to which the infant is submitted with other primitive peoples, some traces of similar beliefs may be found.
When the new world-religion was winning its way among the gentiles, baptism was the great barrier erected between the babe and the power of ill, spirits of air, earth, and water, survivals of old heathenism antagonistic to Christianity. Before that holy rite was performed, the child lay exposed to all their machinations. Baptism was the armour of the infant against the assaults of Satan and his angels, against the cunning of the wanderers from elfin-land, the fairy-sprites, with their changelings and their impish tricks.
Hence, the souls of still-born and unbaptized children came into the power of these evil ones and were metamorphosed into insects, birds, beasts, and the like, whose peculiar notes and voices betray them as having once been little children, or were compelled to join, the train of the wild huntsman, or mingle in the retinue of some other outcast, wandering sprite or devil; or, again, as some deceitful star, or will-o'-the-wisp, mislead and torment the traveller on moor and in bog and swamp, and guide him to an untimely death amid desert solitudes. Ploss, Henderson, and Swainson have a good deal to say on the subject of Frau Berctha and her train, the Wild Huntsman, the "Gabble Retchet," "Yeth Hounds," etc. Mr. Henderson tells us that, "in North Devon the local name is 'yeth hounds,'heathandheathenbeing both 'yeth' in the North Devon dialect. Unbaptized infants are there buried in a part of the churchyard set apart for the purpose called 'Chrycimers,' i.e. Christianless, hill, and the belief seems to be that their spirits, having no admittance into Paradise, unite in a pack of 'Heathen' or 'yeth' hounds, and hunt the Evil One, to whom they ascribe their unhappy condition" (469. 131, 132). The prejudice against unbaptized children lingers yet elsewhere, as the following extract from a newspaper published in the year 1882 seems to indicate (230. 272):—
"There is in the island of Mull a little burial-ground entirely devoted to unbaptized children, who were thus severed in the grave from those who had been interred in the hope of resurrection to life. Only one adult lies with the little babes—an old Christian woman—whose last dying request it was that she should be buried with the unbaptized children." The Rev. Mr. Thorn has given the facts poetic form and made immortal that mother-heart whose love made holy—if hallowed it needed to be—the lonely burial-ground where rest the infant outcasts:—
"A spot that seems to bear a ban,As if by curse defiled:No mother lies there with her babe,No father by his child."
Among primitive peoples we find a like prejudice against still-born children and children who die very young. The natives of the Highlands of Borneo think that still-born infants go to a special spirit-land calledTenyn lallu, and "the spirits of these children are believed to be very brave and to require no weapon other than a stick to defend themselves against their enemies. The reason given for this idea is, that the child has never felt pain in this world and is therefore very daring in the other" (475. 199). In Annam the spirits of children still-born and of those dying in infancy are held in great fear. These spirits, calledCon Ranh, orCon Lôn(fromlôn, "to enter into life"), are ever seeking "to incorporate themselves in the bodies of others, though, after so doing, they are incapable of life." Moreover, "their names are not mentioned in the presence of women, for it is feared they might take to these, and a newly-married woman is in like manner afraid to take anything from a woman, or to wear any of the clothing of one, who has had such a child. Special measures are necessary to get rid of theCon Ranh" (397. 18-19). The Alfurus, of the Moluccas, "bury children up to their waists and expose them to all the tortures of thirst until they wrench from them the promise to hurl themselves upon the enemies of the village. Then they take them out, but only to kill them on the spot, imagining that the spirits of the victims will respect their last promise" (388. 81). On the other hand, Callaway informs us that the Zulu diviner may divine by theAmatongo(spirit) of infants, "supposed to be mild and beneficent" (417. 176).
Transmigration.
Wordsworth, in that immortal poem, which belongs to the jewels of the treasure-house of childhood, has sung of the birth of man:—
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The soul that rises with us, our life's star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar.Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But, trailing clouds of glory, do we comeFrom God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy,"—
and the humbler bards of many an age, whose names have perished with the races that produced them, have thought and sung of soul-incarnation, metempsychosis, transmigration, and kindred concepts, in a thousand different ways. In their strangely poetical language, the Tupi Indians, of Brazil, term a childpitanga, "suck soul," frompiter, "to suck,"anga, "soul." The Seminole Indians, of Florida, "held the baby over the face of the woman dying in child-birth, so that it might receive her parting spirit" (409. 271). A similar practice (with the father) is reported from Polynesia. In a recently published work on "Souls," by Mrs. Mary Ailing Aber, we read:—
"Two-thirds of all the babies that are born in civilized lands to-day have no souls attached to them. These babies are emanations from their parents,—not true entities; and, unless a soul attaches itself, no ordinary efforts can carry one of them to the twentieth year. Souls do attach themselves to babies after birth sometimes so late as the third year. On the other hand, babies who have souls at birth sometimes lose them because the soul finds a better place, or is drawn away by a stronger influence; but this rarely occurs after the third year."
This somewhatoutrédeclaration of modern spiritualism finds kindred in some of the beliefs of primitive peoples, concerning which there is much in Ploss, Frazer, Bastian, etc.
In one of the Mussulman stories of King Solomon, the Angel of Death descends in human form to take the soul of an aged man, whose wish was to die when he had met the mightiest prophet. He dies talking to the wise Hebrew king. Afterwards the Angel says to Solomon:—
"He [the angel, whose head reaches ten thousand years beyond the seventh heaven, whose feet are five hundred years below the earth, and upon whose shoulders stands the Angel of Death] it is who points out to me when and how I must take a soul. His gaze is fixed on the tree Sidrat Almuntaha, which bears as many leaves inscribed with names as there are men living on the earth.
"At each new birth a new leaf, bearing the name of the newly-born, bursts forth; and when any one has reached the end of his life, his leaf withers and falls off, and at the same instant I am with him to receive his soul….
"As often as a believer dies, Gabriel attends me, and wraps his soul in a green silken sheet, and then breathes it into a green bird, which feeds in Paradise until the day of the resurrection. But the soul of the sinner I take alone, and, having wrapped it in a coarse, pitch-covered, woollen cloth, carry it to the gates of Hell, where it wanders among abominable vapours until the last day" (547. 213, 214).
According to the belief of the Miao-tse, an aboriginal tribe of the province of Canton, in China, the souls of unborn children are kept in the garden of two deities called "Flower-Grandfather" and "Flower-Grandmother," and when to these have been made by a priest sacrifices of hens or swine, the children are let out and thus appear among men. As a charm against barrenness, these people put white paper into a basket and have the priest make an invocation. The white paper represents the deities, and the ceremony is calledkau fa; i.e."Flower Invocation."
In Japan, a certain Lake Fakone, owing its origin to an earthquake, and now surrounded by many temples, is looked upon as the abode of the souls of children about to be born (326. I. 3).
Certain Californian Indians, near Monterey, thought that "the dead retreated to verdant islands in the West, while awaiting the birth of the infants whose souls they were to form" (396. III. 525).