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Title: The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Studies of the Activities and Influences of The Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day

Author: Alexander F. Chamberlain

Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7966] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 7, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILD AND CHILDHOOD ***

 

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THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD IN FOLK-THOUGHT

STUDIES OF THE ACTIVITIES AND INFLUENCES OF THE CHILD AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES, THEIR ANALOGUES AND SURVIVALS IN THE CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY

 

THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD IN FOLK-THOUGHT (THE CHILD IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE)

BY ALEXANDER FRANCIS CHAMBERLAIN M.A., PH.D.

 

TO

HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER

THEIR SON

 

Dedicates this Book

“Vom Vater hab’ ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Führen; Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur Und Lust zu fabulieren.”—_Goethe_.

 

PREFATORY NOTE.

The present volume is an elaboration and amplification of lectures on “The Child in Folk-Thought,” delivered by the writer at the summer school held at Clark University in 1894. In connection with the interesting topic of “Child-Study” which now engages so much the attention of teachers and parents, an attempt is here made to indicate some of the chief child-activities among primitive peoples and to point out in some respects their survivals in the social institutions and culture-movements of to-day. The point of view to be kept in mind is the child and what he has done, or is said to have done, in all ages and among all races of men.

For all statements and citations references are given, and the writer has made every effort to place himself in the position of those whose opinion he records,—receiving and reporting without distortion or alteration.

He begs to return to his colleagues in the University, especially to its distinguished president, the genius of the movement for “Child-Study” in America, and to the members of the summer school of 1894, whose kind appreciation of his efforts has mainly led to the publication of this work, his sincerest gratitude for the sympathy and encouragement which they have so often exhibited and expressed with regard to the present and allied subjects of study and investigation in the field of Anthropology, pedagogical and psychological.

A. F. CHAMBERLAIN

CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, Mass., April, 1895.

 

CONTENTS.

 

I. CHILD-STUDY

II. THE CHILD’S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER

III. THE CHILD’S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (Continued)

IV. THE CHILD’S TRIBUTE TO THE FATHER

V. THE NAME CHILD

VI. THE CHILD IN THE PRIMITIVE LABORATORY

VII. THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CHILD-LIFE: PARENTAL AFFECTION

VIII. CHILDHOOD THE GOLDEN AGE

IX. CHILDREN’S FOOD

X. CHILDREN’S SOULS

XI. CHILDREN’S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES

XII. CHILDREN’S ANIMALS, BIRDS, ETC.

XIII. CHILD-LIFE AND EDUCATION IN GENERAL

XIV. THE CHILD AS MEMBER AND BUILDER OF SOCIETY

XV. THE CHILD AS LINGUIST

XVI. THE CHILD AS ACTOR AND INVENTOR

XVII. THE CHILD AS POET AND MUSICIAN

XVIII. THE CHILD AS TEACHER AND WISEACRE

XIX. THE CHILD AS JUDGE

XX. THE CHILD AS ORACLE-KEEPER AND ORACLE-INTERPRETER

XXI. THE CHILD AS WEATHER-MAKER

XXII. THE CHILD AS HEALER AND PHYSICIAN

XXIII. THE CHILD AS SHAMAN AND PRIEST

XXIV. THE CHILD AS HERO, ADVENTURER, ETC.

XXV. THE CHILD AS FETICH AND DIVINITY

XXVI. THE CHILD AS GOD: THE CHRIST-CHILD

XXVII. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT PARENTS, FATHER AND MOTHER

XXVIII. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE CHILD, MANKIND, GENIUS

XXIX. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT MOTHER AND CHILD

XXX. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT FATHER AND CHILD

XXXI. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, AND AGE

XXXII. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD

INDEX TO PROVERBS

XXXIII. CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SUBJECT-INDEX TO SECTION A OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

SUBJECT-INDEX TO SECTION B OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX I.—AUTHORITIES

INDEX II.—PLACES, PEOPLES, TRIBES, LANGUAGES

INDEX III.—SUBJECTS

 

CHAPTER I.

 

CHILD-STUDY.

Oneness with Nature is the glory of Childhood; oneness with Childhood is the glory of the Teacher.—_G. Stanley Hall_.

 

Homes ont l’estre comme metaulx, Vie et augment des vegetaulx, Instinct et sens comme les bruts, Esprit comme anges en attributs. [Man has as attributes: Being like metals, Life and growth like plants, Instinct and sense like animals, Mind like angels.]—_Jehan de Meung_.

 

The Child is Father of the Man.—_Wordsworth_.

And he [Jesus] called to him a little child, and set him in the midst of them.—_Matthew_ xviii. 2.

 

It was an Oriental poet who sang:—

“On parent knees, a naked, newborn child, Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled; So live, that, sinking in thy last, long sleep, Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep,”

 

and not so very long ago even the anthropologist seemed satisfied with the approximation of childhood and old age,—one glance at the babe in the cradle, one look at the graybeard on his deathbed, gave all the knowledge desired or sought for. Man, big, burly, healthy, omniscient, was the subject of all investigation. But now a change has come over the face of things. As did that great teacher of old, so, in our day, has one of the ministers of science “called to him a little child and set him in the midst of them,”—greatest in the kingdom of anthropology is assuredly that little child, as we were told centuries ago, by the prophet of Galilee, that he is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. The child, together with woman, who, in so many respects in which the essential human characteristics are concerned, so much resembles him, is now beyond doubt the most prominent figure in individual, as well as in racial, anthropology. Dr. D. G. Brinton, in an appreciative notice of the recent volume on Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis, in which the secondary sexual differences between the male and the female portions of the human race are so well set forth and discussed, remarks: “The child, the infant in fact, alone possesses in their fulness ‘the chief distinctive characters of humanity. The highest human types, as represented in men of genius, present a striking approximation to the child-type. In man, from about the third year onward, further growth is to some extent growth in degeneration and senility.’ Hence the true tendency of the progressive evolution of the race is to become childlike, to become feminine.” (_Psych. Rev._ I. 533.)

As Dr. Brinton notes, in this sense women are leading evolution—Goethe was right: Das Ewigweibliche zieht uns hinan. But here belongs also the child-human, and he was right in very truth who said: “A little child shall lead them.” What new meaning flashes into the words of the Christ, who, after declaring that “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you,” in rebuke of the Pharisees, in rebuke of his own disciples, “called to him a little child and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Even physically, the key to the kingdom of heaven lies in childhood’s keeping.

Vast indeed is now the province of him who studies the child. In Somatology,—the science of the physical characteristics and constitution of the body and its members,—he seeks not alone to observe the state and condition of the skeleton and its integuments during life, but also to ascertain their nature and character in the period of prenatal existence, as well as when causes natural, or unnatural, disease, the exhaustion of old age, violence, or the like, have induced the dissolution of death.

In Linguistics and Philology, he endeavours to discover the essence and import of those manifold, inarticulate, or unintelligible sounds, which, with the long flight of time, develop into the splendidly rounded periods of a Webster or a Gladstone, or swell nobly in the rhythmic beauties of a Swinburne or a Tennyson.

In Art and Technology, he would fain fathom the depths of those rude scribblings and quaint efforts at delineation, whence, in the course of ages, have been evolved the wonders of the alphabet and the marvellous creations of a Rubens and an Angelo.

In Psychology, he seeks to trace, in childish prattlings and lore of the nursery, the far-off beginnings of mythology, philosophy, religion. Beside the stories told to children in explanation of the birth of a sister or a brother, and the children’s own imaginings concerning the little newcomer, he may place the speculations of sages and theologians of all races and of all ages concerning birth, death, immortality, and the future life, which, growing with the centuries, have ripened into the rich and wholesome dogmas of the church.

Ethnology, with its broad sweep over ages and races of men, its searchings into the origins of nations and of civilizations, illumined by the light of Evolution, suggests that in the growth of the child from helpless infancy to adolescence, and through the strong and trying development of manhood to the idiosyncrasies of disease and senescence, we have an epitome in miniature of the life of the race; that in primitive tribes, and in those members of our civilized communities, whose growth upward and onward has been retarded by inherited tendencies which it has been out of their power to overcome, or by a milieu and environment, the control and subjugation of which required faculties and abilities they did not possess, we see, as it were, ethnic children; that in the nursery, the asylum, the jail, the mountain fastnesses of earth, or the desert plains, peopled by races whose ways are not our ways, whose criteria of culture are far below ours, we have a panorama of what has transpired since, alone and face to face with a new existence, the first human beings partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and became conscious of the great gulf, which, after millenniums of struggle and fierce competition, had opened between the new, intelligent, speaking anthropoids and their fellows who straggled so far behind.

Wordsworth has said: “The child is father of the man,” and a German writer has expanded the same thought:—

 

“Die Kindheit von heute Ist die Menschheit von morgen, Die Kindheit von heute Ist die Menschheit von gestern.” [“The childhood of to-day Is the manhood of to-morrow, The childhood of to-day Is the manhood of yesterday.”]