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

are not the same as he; they resemble him, but cannot be looked upon as one and the same with him. From the standpoint of pedagogy, Professor Rauber, from the consideration of these children, feels compelled to declare that “the ABC-school must be replaced by the culture-school.” In other words: “The ABC is not, as so many believe, the beginning of all wisdom. In order to be able to admeasure this sufficiently, prehistoric studies are advisable, nay, necessary. Writing is a very late acquisition of man. In the arrangement of a curriculum for the first years of the culture-school, reading and writing are to be placed at the end of the second school year, but never are they to begin the course … Manual training ought also to be taken up in the schools; it is demanded by considerations of culture-history”

(335.133).

 

Animal Stories.

Professor W. H. Brewer of New Haven, discussing the “instinctive interest of children in bear and wolf stories,” observes (192): “The children of European races take more interest in bear and wolf stories than in stories relating to any other wild animals. Their interest in bears is greater than that in wolves, and in the plays of children bears have a much more conspicuous part. There is a sort of fascination in everything relating to these animals that attracts the child’s attention from a very early age, and ‘Tell me a bear story’ is a common request long before it learns to read.” After rejecting, as unsatisfactory, the theory that would make it a matter of education with each child,—“the conservative traditions of children have preserved more stories about bears and wolves, parents and nurses talk more about them, these animals have a larger place in the literature for children; hence the special interest,”—Professor Brewer expresses his own belief that “the special interest our children show towards these two animals is instinctive, and it is of the nature of an inherited memory, vague, to be sure, yet strong enough to give a bend to the natural inclinations.” He points out that the bear and the wolf are the two animals “which have been and still are the most destructive to human life (and particularly to children) in our latitude and climate,” and that “several of the large breeds of dogs,—the wolf-hound proper, the mastiff (particularly the Spanish mastiff), and even the St. Bernard,—were originally evolved as wolf-dogs for the protection of sheep and children.” His general conclusion is: “The fear inspired by these animals during the long ages of the childhood of our civilization, and the education of the many successive generations of our ancestors in this fear, descends to us as an inherited memory, or, in other words, an instinct. While not strong, it is of sufficient force to create that kind of fascination which stories of bears and wolves have in children before the instincts are covered up and obscured by intellectual education. The great shaggy bear appeals more strongly to the imagination of children, hence its superior value to play ‘boo’ with.”

 

Rabbit and Hare.

The rabbit and the hare figure in many mythologies, and around them, both in the Old World and the New, has grown up a vast amount of folk-lore. The rabbit and the child are associated in the old nursery-rhyme:—

 

“Bye, bye, Baby Bunting, Papa’s gone a-hunting, To get a rabbit-skin, To wrap Baby Bunting in,”

 

which reminds us at once of the Chinook Indians and the Flat Heads of the Columbia, with whom “the child is wrapped in rabbit-skins and placed in this little coffin-like cradle, from which it is not in some instances taken out for several weeks” (306.174).

An Irish belief explains hare-lip as having been caused, before the birth of the child, by the mother seeing a hare. The Chinese think that “a hare or a rabbit sits at the foot of the cassia-tree in the moon, pounding the drugs out of which the elixir of immortality is compounded”

(401. 155).

 

The Ungava Eskimo, according to Turner, have a legend that the hare was once a little child, abused by its elders; “it ran away to dwell by itself. The hare has no tail, because as a child he had none; and he lays back his ears, when he hears a shout, because he thinks people are talking about him” (544. 263).

In a myth of the Menomoni Indians, reported by Dr. W. J. Hoffman, we read that Manabush [the great culture-hero] and a twin brother were born the sons of the virgin daughter of an old woman named Nokómis. His brother and mother died. Nokómis wrapped Manabush in dry, soft grass, and placed a wooden bowl over him. After four days a noise proceeded from the bowl, and, upon removing it, she saw “a little white rabbit with quivering ears.” Afterwards, when grown up, and mourning for the death of his brother, Manabush is said to have hid himself in a large rock near Mackinaw, where he was visited by the people for many years. When he did not wish to see them in his human form, he appeared to them as “a little white rabbit with trembling ears” (389. (1890) 246). Of the white rabbit, the Great Hare, Manabush, Naniboju, etc., more must be read in the mythological essays of Dr. Brinton.

Among the tales of the Ainu of Yezo, Japan, recorded by Professor B. H. Chamberlain, is the following concerning the Hare-god:—

“Suddenly there was a large house on top of a hill, wherein were six persons beautifully arrayed, but constantly quarrelling. Whence they came was not known. Thereupon [the god] Okikurumi came, and said: ‘Oh, you bad hares! you wicked hares! Who should not know your origin? The children in the sky were pelting each other with snowballs, and the snowballs fell into this world of men. As it would have been a pity to waste heaven’s snow, the snowballs were turned into hares, and those hares are you. You who live in this world of mine, this world of human beings, must be quiet. What is it that you are brawling about?’ With these words, Okikurumi seized a fire-brand, and beat each of the six with it in turn. Thereupon all the hares ran away. This is the origin of the hare-god, and for this reason the body of the hare is white, because made of snow, while its ears, which are the part which was charred by the fire, are black” (471. 486).

The Mayas of Yucatan have a legend of a town of hares under the earth

(411. 179).

 

In Germany we meet with the “Easter-Hare” (Oster-Hase). In many parts of that country the custom prevails at or about Easter-tide of hiding in the garden, or in the house, eggs, which, the children are told, have been laid by the “Easter-hare.” Another curious term met with in northeastern Germany is “hare-bread” (Hasenbrod). In Quedlinburg this name is given to bread (previously placed there intentionally by the parents) picked up by children when out walking with their parents or elders. In Lüneburg it is applied to dry bread given a hungry child with an exhortation to patience. In the first case, the little one is told that the hare has lost it, and in the second, that it has been taken away from him. The name “hare-bread” is also given to bread brought home by the parents or elders, when returning from a journey, the children being told that it has been taken away from the hare.

In the shadow-pictures made on the wall for the amusement of children the rabbit again appears, and the hare figures also in children’s games.

 

Squirrel.

According to the belief of certain Indians of Vancouver Island, there once lived “a monstrous old woman with wolfish teeth, and finger-nails like claws.” She used to entice away little children whom she afterwards ate up. One day a mother, who was about to lose her child thus, cried out to the spirits to save her child in any way or form. Her prayer was answered, and “The Great Good Father, looking down upon the Red Mother, pities her; lo! the child’s soft brown skin turns to fur, and there slides from the ogress’s grip, no child, but the happiest, liveliest, merriest little squirrel of all the West,—but bearing, as its descendants still bear, those four dark lines along the back that show where the cruel claws ploughed into it escaping” (396. III. 52-54).

Elsewhere, also, the squirrel is associated with childhood. Familiar is the passage in Longfellow’s Hiawatha, where the hero speaks to the squirrel, who has helped him out of a great difficulty:—

 

“Take the thanks of Hiawatha, And the name which now he gives you; For hereafter, and forever, Boys shall call you adjidaumo, Tail in air the boys shall call you.”

 

Seals.

Those noble and indefatigable missionaries, the Moravians, have more than once been harshly criticised in certain quarters, because, in their versions of the Bible, in the Eskimo language, they saw fit to substitute for some of the figurative expressions employed in our rendering, others more intelligible to the aborigines. In the New Testament Christ is termed the “Lamb of God,” but since, in the Arctic home of the Innuit, shepherds and sheep are alike unknown, the translators, by a most felicitous turn of language, rendered the phrase by “little seal of God,” a figure that appealed at once to every Eskimo, young and old, men and women; for what sheep were to the dwellers on the Palestinian hillsides, seals are to this northernmost of human races. Rink tells us that the Eskimo mother “reserves the finest furs for her newborn infant,” while the father keeps for it “the daintiest morsels from the chase,” and, “to make its eyes beautiful, limpid, and bright, he gives it seal’s eyes to eat” (523. 37).

 

Fish.

Mrs. Bramhall tells us how in Japan the little children, playing about the temples, feed the pet fishes of the priests in the temple-lake. At the temple of the Mikado, at Kioto, she saw “six or eight little boys and girls … lying at full length on the bank of the pretty lake.” The fishes were called up by whistling, and the children fed them by holding over the water their open hands full of crumbs (189. 65). Other inhabitants of the sea and the waters of the earth are brought into early relation with children.

 

Crabs and Crawfishes.

Among the Yeddavanad, of the Congo, a mother tells her children concerning three kinds of crabs: “Eat kallali, and you will become a clever man; eat hullali, and you will become as brave as a tiger; eat mandalli, and you will become master of the house”

(449. 297).

 

In the Chippeway tale of the “Raccoon and the Crawfish,” after the former, by pretending to be dead, has first attracted to him and then eaten all the crawfish, we are told:—

“While he was engaged with the broken limbs, a little female crawfish, carrying her infant sister on her back, came up seeking her relations. Finding they had all been devoured by the raccoon, she resolved not to survive the destruction of her kindred, but went boldly up to the enemy, and said: ‘Here, Aissibun (Raccoon), you behold me and my little sister. We are all alone. You have eaten up our parents and all our friends. Eat us, too!’ And she continued to say: ‘Eat us, too! Aissibun amoon, Aissibun amoon!’ The raccoon was ashamed. ‘No!’ said he,’ I have banqueted on the largest and fattest; I will not dishonour myself with such little prey.’ At this moment, Manabozbo [the culture-hero or demi-god of these Indians] happened to pass by. ‘Tyau,’ said he to the raccoon, ‘thou art a thief and an unmerciful dog. Get