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

story, “Malvina, weeping beside the tomb of Fingal, for Oscar and his infant son, is comforted by the maids of Morven, who narrate how they have seen the innocent infant borne on a light mist, pouring upon the fields a fresh harvest of flowers, amongst which rises one with golden disc, encircled with rays of silver, tipped with a delicate tint of crimson.” Such, according to this Celtic legend, was the origin of the daisy (448. 308).

The peasants of Brittany believe that little children, when they die, go straight to Paradise and are changed into beautiful flowers in the garden of heaven (174. 141). Similar beliefs are found in other parts of the world, and a like imagery is met with among our poets. Well known is Longfellow’s little poem “The Reaper and the Flowers,” in which death, as a reaper, reaps not alone the “bearded grain,” but also “the flowers [children] that grow between,” for:—

 

“‘My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,’ The reaper said, and smiled; ‘Dear tokens of the earth are they, Where he was once a child.’”

 

And so:—

 

“The mother gave, in tears and pain, The flowers she most did love; She knew she should find them all again In the field of light above.”

 

According to a myth of the Chippeway Indians, a star once came down from heaven to dwell among men. Upon consulting with a young man in a dream as to where it should live, it was told to choose a place for itself, and, “at first, it dwelt in the white rose of the mountains; but there it was so buried that it could not be seen. It went to the prairie; but it feared the hoof of the buffalo. It next sought the rocky cliff; but there it was so high that the children whom it loved most could not see it.” It decided at last to dwell where it could always be seen, and so one morning the Indians awoke to find the surface of river, lake, and pond covered with thousands of white flowers. Thus came into existence the beautiful water-lilies (440. 68-70).

Perhaps the most beautiful belief regarding children’s flowers is that embodied in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Angel, where the Danish prose-poet tells us: “Whenever a child dies, an angel from heaven comes down to earth and takes the dead child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies away over all the places the child has loved and picks quite a handful of flowers, which he carries up to the Almighty, that they may bloom in heaven more brightly than on earth. And the Father presses all the flowers to His heart; but He kisses the flower that pleases Him best, and the flower is then endowed with a voice and can join in the great chorus of praise” (393.341).

 

Star-Flowers.

Beside this, however, we may perhaps place the following quaint story of “The Devils on the Meadows of Heaven,” of which a translation from the German of Rudolph Baumbach, by “C. F. P.,” appears in the Association Record (October, 1892), published by the Young Women’s Christian Association of Worcester, Mass.:—

“As you know, good children, when they die, come to Heaven and become angels. But if you perhaps think they do nothing the sweet, long day but fly about and play hide-and-seek behind the clouds, you are mistaken. The angel-children are obliged to go to school like the boys and girls on the earth, and on week days must be in the angel-school three hours in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. There they write with golden pens on silver slates, and instead of ABC-books they have story-books with gay-coloured pictures. They do not learn geography, for of what use in Heaven is earth-knowledge; and in eternity one doesn’t know the multiplication table at all. Dr. Faust is the angel-school teacher. On earth he was an A.M., and on account of a certain event which does not belong here, he is obliged to keep school in Heaven three thousand years more before the long vacation begins for him. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons the little angels have holiday; then they are taken to walk on the Milky Way by Dr. Faust. But Sunday they are allowed to play on the great meadow in front of the gate of Heaven, and that they joyfully anticipate during the whole week.

“The meadow is not green, but blue, and on it grow thousands and thousands of silver and golden flowers. They shine in the night and we men call them stars.

“When the angels are sporting about before the gate of Heaven, Dr. Faust is not present, for on Sunday he must recover from the toil of the past week. St. Peter, who keeps watch at the Heavenly gate, then takes charge. He usually sees to it that the play goes on properly, and that no one goes astray or flies away; but if one ever gets too far away from the gate, then he whistles on his golden key, which means ‘Back!’

“Once—it was really very hot in Heaven—St. Peter fell asleep. When the angels noticed this, they ceased swarming hither and thither and scattered over the whole meadow. But the most enterprising of them went out on a trip of discovery, and came at last to the place where the world is surrounded by a board fence. First they tried to find a crack somewhere through which they might peep, but as they found no gap, they climbed up the board fence and hung dangling and looking over. Yonder, on the other side, was hell, and before its gate a crowd of little devils were just running about. They were coal-black, and had horns on their heads and long tails behind. One of them chanced to look up and noticed the angels, and immediately begged imploringly that they would let them into Heaven for a little while; they would behave quite nice and properly. This moved the angels to pity, and because they liked the little black fellows, they thought they might perhaps allow the poor imps this innocent pleasure.

“One of them knew the whereabouts of Jacob’s ladder. This they dragged to the place from the lumber-room (St. Peter had, luckily, not waked up), lifted it over the fence of boards, and let it down into hell. Immediately the tailed fellows clambered up its rounds like monkeys, the angels gave them their hands, and thus came the devils upon Heaven’s meadows.

“At first they behaved themselves in a quite orderly manner. Modestly they stepped along and carried their tails on their arms like trains, as the devil grandmother, who sets great value on propriety, had taught them. But it did not last long; they became frolicsome, turned wheels and somersaults, and shrieked at the same time like real imps. The beautiful moon, who was looking kindly out of a window in Heaven, they derided, thrust out their tongues and made faces (German: long noses) at her, and finally began to pluck up the flowers which grew on the meadow and throw them down on the earth. Now the angels grew frightened and bitterly repented letting their evil guests into Heaven. They begged and threatened, but the devils cared for nothing, and kept on in their frolic more madly. Then, in terror, the angels waked up St. Peter and penitently confessed to him what they had done. He smote his hands together over his head when he saw the mischief which the imps had wrought. ‘March in!’ thundered he, and the little ones, with drooping wings, crept through the gate into Heaven. Then St. Peter called a few sturdy angels. They collected the imps and took them where they belonged.

“The little angels did not escape punishment. Three Sundays in succession they were not allowed in front of Heaven’s gate, and, if they were taken to walk, they were obliged to first unbuckle their wings and lay aside their halos; and it is a great disgrace for an angel to go about without wings and halo.

“But the affair resulted in some good, after all. The flowers which the devils had torn up and thrown upon the earth took root and increased from year to year. To be sure, the star-flower lost much of its heavenly beauty, but it is still always lovely to look at, with its golden-yellow disk, and its silvery white crown of rays.

“And because of its Heavenly origin, a quite remarkable power resides in it. If a maiden, whose mind harbours a doubt, pulls off, one by one, the white petals of the flower-star, whispering meanwhile a certain sentence at the fall of the last little petal, she is quite sure of what she desires to know.”

The very name Aster is suggestive of star-origin and recalls the lines of Longfellow:—

 

“Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth’s firmament do shine.”

 

The reference seems to be to Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, of Coblentz, in whose Märchen ohne Ende, a forget-me-not is spoken of as “twinkling as brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth” (390. II. 149).

Another contribution to floral astrology is the brief poem of H. M. Sweeny in the Catholic World for November, 1892:—

 

“The Milky Way is the foot-path Of the martyrs gone to God; Its stars are the flaming jewels To show us the way they trod.

“The flowers are stars dropped lower, Our daily path to light, In daylight to lead us upward As those jewels do at night.”

 

Flower-oracles are discussed in another section, and the “language of flowers” of which the poet tells,—

 

“In Eastern lands they talk in flowers, And they tell in a garland their loves and cares; Each blossom that blooms in their garden bower On its leaves a mystic language bears,”

 

must be studied in Dyer, Friend, and Folkard, or in the various booklets which treat of this entertaining subject.

Though in Bohemia it is believed that “seven-year-old children will become beautiful by dancing in the flax,” and in some parts of Germany “when an infant seems weakly and thrives slowly, it is placed naked upon the turf on Midsummer Day, and flax-seed is sprinkled over it; the idea being, that, as the flax-seed grows, so the child will gradually grow stronger” (435. 278, 279); flowers and plants are sometimes associated with ill-luck and death. In Westphalia and Thuringia the superstition prevails that “any child less than a year old, who is permitted to wreathe himself with flowers, will soon die.” In the region about Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, England, the red campion (_Lychnis diurna_) is known as “mother-die,” the belief being that, if children gather it, some misfortune is sure to happen to the parents. Dyer records also the following: “In West Cumberland, the herb-robert (_Geranium robertianum_) is called ‘death come quickly,’ from a like reason, while in parts of Yorkshire, the belief is that the mother of a child who has gathered the germander speedwell (_Veronica chamoedrys_) will die ere the year is out” (435. 276).

 

Children’s Plant-Names.

Mr. H. C. Mercer, discussing the question of the presence of Indian corn in Italy and Europe in early times, remarks (_Amer. Naturalist_, Vol. XXVIII., 1894, p. 974):—

“An etymology has been suggested for the name Grano Turco [Turkish grain], in the antics of boys when bearded and moustached with maize silk, they mimic the fierce looks of Turks in the high ‘corn.’ We cannot think that the Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less American in its origin