The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought by Alexander F. Chamberlain (read full novel txt) 📖

asked why he knocks out two front teeth of the upper jaw of his children, can answer only that, when they were created, the Muranaura, a good spirit, thus disfigured the first child, and, pleased at the sight, commanded that the like should be done to every male or female child for ever after. The Pelew Islanders believe that the perforation of the septum of the nose is necessary for winning eternal bliss; and the Nicaraguans say that their ancestors were instructed by the gods to flatten their children’s heads. Again, in Fiji it is supposed that the custom of tattooing is in conformity with the appointment of the god Dengei, and that its neglect is punished after death. A similar idea prevails among the Kingsmill Islanders and Ainos; and the Greenlanders formerly believed that the heads of those girls who had not been deformed by long stitches made with a needle and black thread between the eyes, on the forehead, and upon the chin, would be turned into train tubs and placed under the lamps in heaven, in the land of souls” (165. 170, 171).

Were all the details of the fairy-tales true, which abound in every land, the cruelty meted out to the child suspected of being a changeling would surpass human belief. Hartland enumerates the following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child’s face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, river, or sea (258. 120-123). These and many more figure in story, and not a few of them seem to have been actually practised upon the helpless creatures, who, like the heathen, were not supposed to call for pity or love. Mr. Hartland cites a case of actual attempt to treat a supposed changeling in a summary manner, which occurred no later than May 17,1884, in the town of Clonmel, Ireland. In the absence of the mother of a three-year-old child (fancied by the neighbours to be a changeling), two women “entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, ‘under the impression that it would break the charm,’”—the only result being, of course, that the infant was very severely burned (258. 121).

On the other hand, children of true Christian origin, infants who afterwards become saints, are subject to all sorts of torment at the hands of Satan and his angels, at times, but come forth, like the “children” of the fiery furnace in the time of Daniel, in imitation of whose story many of the hagiological legends have doubtless been put forth, unscathed from fire, boiling water, roaring torrents, and other perilous or deadly situations (191. 9,122).

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CHILD-LIFE: PARENTAL AFFECTION.

 

These are my jewels.—_Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi)_.

A simple child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?—_Wordsworth_.

Children always turn towards the light.—_Hare_.

That I could bask in Childhood’s sun And dance o’er Childhood’s roses!—_Praed_.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child.—_Shakespeare_.

 

Parental Love.

In his essay on The Pleasures of Home, Sir John Lubbock makes the following statement (494. 102):—

“In the Origin of Civilization, I have given many cases showing how small a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no word for ‘to love,’ so that when the missionaries translated the Bible into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language, without love!”

How unfortunately inaccurate, how entirely unjustifiable, such a declaration is, may be seen from the study of the words for love in two of the Algonkian dialects,—Cree and Chippeway,—which Dr. Brinton has made in one of his essays, The Conception of Love in some American Languages. Let us quote the ipsissima verba (411. 415):—

(1) “In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man.”

(2) “The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love, and to that which the gods have for men.”

(3) “In the Chippeway there is a series of expressions for family love and friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological process which developed the Latin amare from the Sanscrit sam.”

(4) “The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek [Greek: agapæ], we find expressed in both the dialects by derivatives from a root different from any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms kis, keche, or kiji, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy. Concretely, it signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [_kije, kise_], which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent divinity.”

Surely this people cannot be charged with a lack of words for love, whose language enables them so well to express its every shade of meaning. Nay, they have even seen from afar that “God is Love,” as their concept of Michabo tells us they had already perceived that He was “Light.”

 

Motherhood and Fatherhood.

The nobility and the sanctity of motherhood have found recognition among the most primitive of human races. A Mussulman legend of Adam and Eve represents the angel Gabriel as saying to the mother of mankind after the expulsion from Paradise: “Thou shalt be rewarded for all the pains of motherhood, and the death of a woman in childbed shall be accounted as martyrdom” (547. 38). The natives of the Highlands of Borneo hold that to a special hereafter, known as “Long Julan,” go those who have suffered a violent death (been killed in battle, or by the falling of a tree, or some like accident), and women who die in childbirth; which latter become the wives of those who have died in battle. In this Paradise everybody is rich, with no need for labour, as all wants are supplied without work (475. 199).

Somewhat similar beliefs prevailed in ancient Mexico and among the Eskimo.

Even so with the father. Zoroaster said in the book of the law: “I name the married before the unmarried, him who has a household before him who has none, the father of a family before him who is childless” (125. I. 108). Dr. Winternitz observes of the Jews: “To possess children was always the greatest good-fortune that could befall a Jew. It was deemed the duty of every man to beget a son; the Rabbis, indeed, considered a childless man as dead. To the Cabbalists of the Middle Ages, the man who left no posterity behind him seemed one who had not fulfilled his mission in this world, and they believed that he had to return once more to earth and complete it” (385. 5).

Ploss (125. I. 108) and Lallemand (286. 21) speak in like terms of this children-loving people. The Talmud ranks among the dead “the poor, the leprous, the blind, and those who have no children,” and the wives of the patriarchs of old cheerfully adopted as their own the children born to their husband by slave or concubine. To be the father of a large family, the king of a numerous people, was the ideal of the true Israelite. So, also, was it in India and China.

Ploss and Haberlandt have a good deal to say of the ridicule lavished upon old maids and bachelors among the various peoples and races, and Rink has recorded not a few tales on this head from the various tribes of the Eskimo—in these stories, which are of a more or less trifling and outré character, bachelors are unmercifully derided (525.

465).

 

With the Chippeways, also, the bachelor is a butt for wit and sarcasm. A tale of the Mississagas of Skugog represents a bachelor as “having gone off to a certain spot and built a lot of little ‘camps.’ He built fires, etc., and passed his time trying to make people believe he was not alone. He used to laugh and talk, and pretend that he had people living there.” Even the culture-heroes Gluskap and Näniboju are derided in some of the tales for not being married (166. 376).

According to Barbosa (67. 161), a writer of the early part of the sixteenth century, the Nairs, a Dravidian people of the Malabar coast (523. 159), believed that “a maiden who refused to marry and remained a virgin would be shut out of Paradise.” The Fijians excluded from Paradise all bachelors; they were smashed to pieces by the god Nangganangga (166. 137).

In the early chronicles and mythic lore of many peoples there are tales of childless couples, who, in their quaint fashion, praying to the gods, have been blest with the desired offspring. There is, however, no story more pathetic, or more touching, than the Russian folktale cited by Ralston, in which we read concerning an old childless couple (520. 176): “At last the husband went into the forest, felled wood, and made a cradle. Into this his wife laid one of the logs he had cut, and began swinging it, crooning the while a tune beginning:—

 

‘Swing, blockie dear, swing.’

 

After a little time, behold! the block already had legs. The old woman rejoiced greatly, and began swinging anew, and went on swinging until the block became a babe.”

The rude prayers and uncouth aspirations of barbarous and savage peoples, these crude ideas of the uncivilized races of men, when sounded in their deepest depths, are the folk-expression of the sacredness of the complete family, the forerunners of the poet’s prayer:—

 

“Seigneur! préservez-moi, préservez ceux que j’aime, Frères, parents, amis, et ennemis même Dans le mal triomphants, De jamais voir, Seigneur! l’été sans fleurs vermeilles, La cage sans oiseaux, la ruche sans abeilles, La maison sans enfants.”

 

The affection of the ancient Egyptians for their children is noted by Erman. The child is called “mine,” “the only one,” and is “loved as the eyes of its parents”; it is their “beauty,” or “wealth.” The son is the “fair-come” or “welcome”; at his birth “wealth comes.” At the birth of a girl it is said “beauty comes,” and she is called “the lady of her father” (441. 216-230). Interesting details of Egyptian child-life and education may be read in the recently edited text of Amélineau (179), where many maxims of conduct and behaviour are given. Indeed, in the naming of children we have some evidence of motherly and fatherly affection, some indication of the gentle ennobling influence of this emotion over language and linguistic expression. True is it all over the world:—

 

Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen. [Dear children have many names.]

 

The Dead Child.

Parental affection is nowhere more strongly brought out than in the lamentations for the dead among some of the lowest tribes