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

i.e. “um Antwort wird gebeten” (an answer is requested), for which A. Treichel records the following renderings: um Ausdauer wird gebeten (perseverance requested); und Abends wird getanzt (and in the evening there is dancing); und Abends wird gegeigt (and in the evening there is fiddling); und Abends wird gegessen (and in the evening there is eating); und Andere werden gelästert (and others are abused) (392. V. 114). This side of the linguistic inventiveness of childhood, with its double-entendre, its puns, its folk-etymologies, its keen discernment of hidden resemblances and analogies, deserves more study than it has apparently received.

The formulae and expressions belonging to such games as marbles are worthy of consideration, for here the child is given an opportunity to invent new words and phrases or to modify and disfigure old ones.

 

Formulae of Defiance, etc.

The formulae of defiance, insult, teasing, etc., rhymed and in prose, offer much of interest. Peculiarities of physical constitution, mental traits, social relationships, and the like, give play to childish fancy and invention. It would be a long list which should include all the material corresponding to such as the following, well known among English-speaking schoolchildren:—

 

1. Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ Pie, Kissed a girl and made her cry! 2. Blue-eyed beauty, Do your mother’s duty! 3. Black eye, pick a pie, Turn around and tell a lie! 4. Nigger, nigger, never-die, Black face and shiny eye!

 

Interesting is the following scale of challenging, which Professor J. P. Fruit reports from Kentucky (430. 229):—

 

“I dare you; I dog dare you; I double dog dare you. I dare you; I black dog dare you; I double black dog dare you.”

 

The language of the school-yard and street, in respect to challenges, fights, and contests of all sorts, has an atmosphere of its own, through which sometimes the most clear-sighted older heads find it difficult to penetrate.

The American Dialect Society is doing good work in hunting out and interpreting many of these contributions of childhood to the great mosaic of human speech, and it is to be hoped that in this effort they will have the co-operation of all the teachers of the country, for this branch of childish activity will bear careful and thorough investigation.

 

Plant-Names.

In the names of some of the plants with which they early come into contact we meet with examples of the ingenuity of children. In Mrs. Bergen’s (400) list of popular American plant-names are included some which come from this source, for example: “frog-plant (_Sedum Telephium_),” from the children’s custom of “blowing up a leaf so as to make the epidermis puff up like a frog”; “drunkards (_Gaulteria procumbens_),” because “believed by children to intoxicate”; “bread-and-butter (_Smilax rotundifolia_),” because “the young leaves are eaten by children”; “velvets (_Viola pedata_),” a corruption of the “velvet violets” of their elders; “splinter-weed (_Antennaria plantaginifolia_),” from “the appearance of the heads”; “ducks (_Cypripedium_),” because “when the flower is partly filled with sand and set afloat on water, it looks like a duck”; “pearl-grass (_Glyceria Canadensis_),” a name given at Waverley, Massachusetts, “by a few children, some years ago.” This list might easily be extended, but sufficient examples have been given to indicate the extent to which the child’s mind has been at work in this field. Moreover, many of the names now used by the older members of the community, may have been coined originally by children and then adopted by the others, and the same origin must probably be sought out for not a few of the folk-etymologies and word-distortions which have so puzzled the philologists.

 

“Physonyms.”

In an interesting paper on “physonyms,”—i.e. “words to which their signification is imparted by certain physiological processes, common to the race everywhere, and leading to the creation of the same signs with the same meaning in totally sundered linguistic stocks”—occurs the following passage (193. cxxxiii.):—

“One of the best known and simplest examples is that of the widespread designation of ‘mother’ by such words as mama, nana, ana; and of ‘father’ by such as papa, baba, tata. Its true explanation has been found to be that, in the infant’s first attempt to utter articulate sounds, the consonants m, p, and t decidedly preponderate; and the natural vowel a, associated with these, yields the child’s first syllables. It repeats such sounds as ma-ma-ma or pa-pa-pa, without attaching any meaning to them; the parents apply these sounds to themselves, and thus impart to them their signification.”

Other physonyms are words of direction and indication of which the radical is k or g; the personal pronouns radical in n, m (first person), k, t, d (second person); and demonstratives and locatives whose radical is s. The frequency of these sounds in the language of children is pointed out also by Tracy in his monograph on the psychology of childhood. In the formation and fixation of the onomatopes with which many languages abound some share must be allotted to the child. A recent praiseworthy study of onomatopes in the Japanese language has been made by Mr. Aston, who defines an onomatope as “the artistic representation of an inarticulate sound or noise by means of an articulate sound” (394. 333). The author is of opinion that from the analogy of the lower animals the inference is to be drawn that “mankind occupied themselves for a long time with their own natural cries before taking the trouble to imitate for purposes of expression sounds not of their own making” (394. 334). The latter process was gradual and extended over centuries. For the child or the “child-man” to imitate the cry of the cock so successfully was an inspiration; Mr. Aston tells us that “the formation of a word like cock-a-doodle-do, is as much a work of individual genius as Hamlet or the Laocoön” (394. 335). Of certain modern aspects of onomatopœia the author observes: “There is a kindred art, viz. that of the exact imitation of animal cries and other sounds, successfully practised by some of our undergraduates and other young people, as well as by tame ravens and parrots. It probably played some part in the development of language, but I can only mention it here”

(394. 333).

 

College Yells.

The “college yells” of the United States and Canada offer an inviting field for study in linguistic atavism and barbaric vocal expression. The New York World Almanac for 1895 contains a list of the “yells” of some three hundred colleges and universities in the United States. Out of this great number, in which there is a plenitude of “Rah! rah! rah!” the following are especially noteworthy:—

Benzonia: Kala, kala, kala! Sst, Boom, Gah! Benzo, Benzon-iah! Whooo!

Buchtel: Ye-ho! Ye-hesa! Hisa! Wow wow! Buchtel!

Dartmouth: Wah, who, wah! wah who wah! da-da-da, Dartmouth! wah who wah! T-i-g-e-r!

Heidelberg: Killi-killick! Rah, rah, Zik, zik! Ha! Ha! Yi! Hoo! Baru! Zoo! Heidelberg!

The “yell” of Ohio Wesleyan University, “O-wee-wi-wow! Ala-ka-zu-ki-zow! Ra-zi-zi-zow! Viva! Viva! O. W. U.!” is enough to make the good man for whom the institution is named turn uneasily in his grave. The palm must, however, be awarded to the University of North Dakota, whose remarkable “yell” is this: “Odz-dzo-dzi! Ri-ri-ri! Hy-ah! Hy-ah! North Dakota! and Sioux War-Cry.” Hardly have the ancestors of Sitting Bull and his people suspected the immortality that awaited their ancient slogan. It is curious that the only “yell” set to proper music is that of the girls of Wellesley College, who sing their cheer, “Tra la la la, Tra la la la, Tra la la la la la la, W-E-L-L-E-S-L-E-Y, Wellesley.”

As is the case with other practices in collegiate life, these “yells” seem to be making their way down into the high and grammar schools, as well as into the private secondary schools, the popularity and excitement of field-sports and games, baseball, foot-ball, etc., giving occasion enough for their frequent employment.

Here fall also the spontaneous shouts and cries of children at work and at play, the Ki-yah! and others of a like nature whose number is almost infinite.

Mr. Charles Ledyard Norton, in his Political Americanisms (New York, 1890), informs us that “the peculiar staccato cheer, ‘rah, rah, rah!’” was probably invented at Harvard in 1864. In the Blaine campaign of 1884 it was introduced into political meetings and processions together with “the custom, also borrowed from the colleges, of spelling some temporarily significant catch-word in unison, as, for instance, ‘S-o-a-p!’ the separate letters being pronounced in perfect time by several hundred voices at once.” The same authority thinks that the idea of calling out “Blaine—Blaine—James G. Blaine!” in cadenced measure after the manner of the drill-sergeants, “Left—left—left—right—left!” an idea which had many imitations and elaborations among the members of both the great political parties, can be traced back to the Columbia College students (p. 120).

 

The Child as an Innovator in Language.

But the role of the child in the development of language is concerned with other things than physonyms and onomatopes. In his work on Brazilian ethnography and philology, Dr. von Martius writes (522. 43): “A language is often confined to a few individuals connected by relationship, forming thus, as it were, a family institute, which isolates those who use it from all neighbouring or distant tribes so completely that an understanding becomes impossible.” This intimate connection of language with the family, this preservation and growth of language, as a family institution, has, as Dr. von Martius points out, an interesting result (522. 44):—

“The Brazilians frequently live in small detachments, being kept apart by the chase; sometimes only a few families wander together; often it is one family alone. Within the family the language suffers a constant remodelling. One of the children will fail to catch precisely the radical sound of a word; and the weak parents, instead of accustoming it to pronounce the word correctly, will yield, perhaps, themselves, and adopt the language of the child. We often were accompanied by persons of the same band; yet we noticed in each of them slight differences in accentuation and change of sound. His comrades, however, understood him, and they were understood by him. As a consequence, their language never can become stationary, but will constantly break off into new dialects.” Upon these words of von Martius (reported by Dr. Oscar Peschel), Dr. Charles Rau comments as follows (522. 44): “Thus it would seem that, among savages, children are to a great extent the originators of idiomatic diversities. Dr. Peschel places particular stress on this circumstance, and alludes to the habit of over-indulgent parents among refined nations of conforming to the humours of their children by conversing with them in a kind of infantine language, until they are several years old. Afterward, of course, the rules of civilized life compel these children to adopt the proper language; but no such necessity exists among a hunter family in the primeval forests of South America; here the deviating form of speech remains, and the foundation of a new dialect is laid.”

 

Children’s Languages.

But little attention has been paid to the study of the language of children among primitive people. In connection with a brief investigation of child-words in the aboriginal tongues of America, Mr. Horatio Hale communicated to the present writer the following observation of M. l’Abbé Cuoq, of Montreal, the distinguished missionary and linguist: “As far as the Iroquois in particular are concerned, it is certain that this language [langage enfantin] is current in every family, and that the child’s relatives, especially the mothers, teach it to their children, and that the latter consequently merely repeat the words of which it is composed” (201. 322). That these “child-words” were invented by children, the Abbé does not seem to