The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 14

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! preservez-moi, preservez ceux que j'aime, Freres, parents, amis, et ennemis meme Dans le mal triomphants, De jamais voir, Seigneur! l'ete 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 Amelineau (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 enn.o.bling 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 of Californian Indians. Of the Yokaia, Mr. Powers tells us (519. 166):--

"It is their custom to 'feed the spirits of the dead' for the s.p.a.ce of one year, by going daily to places which they were accustomed to frequent while living, where they sprinkle pinole upon the ground. A Yokaia mother who has lost her babe goes every day for a year to some place where her little one played while alive, or to the spot where its body was burned, and milks her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into the air. This is accompanied by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, and sometimes she sings a hoa.r.s.e and melancholy chant, and dances with a wild, ecstatic swaying of the body."

Of the Miwok the same authority says:--

"The squaws wander off into the forest, wringing their arms piteously, beating the air, with eyes upturned, and adjuring the departed one, whom they tenderly call 'dear child,' or 'dear cousin' (whether a relative or not), to return."

Of the Niskwaili Indians, of the State of Was.h.i.+ngton, Dr. Gibbs observes (457. 205):--

"They go out alone to some place a little distant from the lodge or camp, and in a loud, sobbing voice, repeat a sort of stereotyped formula, as, for instance, a mother on the loss of her child:--

'Ah seahb! shed-da bud-dah ah-ta-bud! ad-de-dah!

Ah chief my child dead! alas!'

When in dreams they see any of their deceased friends this lamentation is renewed."

Very beautiful and touching in the extreme is the conduct of the Kabinapek of California:--

"A peculiarity of this tribe is the intense sorrow with which they mourn for their children when dead. Their grief is immeasurable. They not only burn up everything that the baby ever touched, but everything that they possess, so that they absolutely begin life over again--naked as they were born, without an article of property left" (519. 206).

Besides the custom of "feeding the spirits of the dead," just noticed, there exists also among certain of the Californian Indians the practice of "whispering a message into the ear of the dead." Mr. Powers has preserved for us the following most beautiful speech, which, he tells us, was whispered into the ear of a child by a woman of the Karok ere the first shovelful of earth was cast upon it (519. 34): "O, darling, my dear one, good-bye! Never more shall your little hands softly clasp these old withered cheeks, and your pretty feet shall print the moist earth around my cabin never more. You are going on a long journey in the spirit-land, and you must go alone, for none of us can go with you.

Listen then to the words which I speak to you and heed them well, for I speak the truth. In the spirit-land there are two roads. One of them is a path of roses, and it leads to the Happy Western Land beyond the great water, where you shall see your dear mother. The other is a path strewn with thorns and briars, and leads, I know not whither, to an evil and dark land, full of deadly serpents, where you wander forever. O, dear child, choose you the path of roses, which leads to the Happy Western Land, a fair and sunny land, beautiful as the morning. And may the great Kareya [the Christ of these aborigines] help you to walk in it to the end, for your little tender feet must walk alone. O, darling, my dear one, good-bye!"

This whispering to the dead is found in other parts of the world. Mr.

Hose, describing the funeral of a boy, which he witnessed in Borneo, says (475. 198):--

"As the lid of the coffin was being closed, an old man came out on the verandah of the house with a large gong (Tetawak) and solemnly beat it for several seconds. The chief, who was sitting near, informed me that this was done always before closing the lid, that the relations of the deceased might know that the spirit was coming to join them; and upon his arrival in Apo Leggan [Hades] they would probably greet him in such terms as these: 'O grandchild, it was for you the gong was beating, which we heard just now; what have you brought? How are they all up above? Have they sent any messages?'" The new arrival then delivers the messages entrusted to him, and gives the cigarettes--which, rolled up in a banana-leaf, have been placed in his hand--as proof of the truth of what he says. These cigarettes retain the smell of the hand that made them, which the dead relations are thought to be able to recognize.

_Motherhood and Infanticide_.

The intimate relations.h.i.+p recognized as existing between the infant and its mother has been among many primitive peoples a frequent cause of infanticide, or has been held at least to excuse and justify that crime.

Of the natives of Ashanti, Ellis says:--

"Should the mother die in childbirth, and the child itself be born alive, it is customary to bury it with the mother.... The idea seems to be that the child belongs to the mother, and is sent to accompany her to _Srahmanadzi_ [ghost-land], so that her _srahman_ [ghost] may not grieve for it" (438. 234). Post states that in Unyoro, when the mother dies in childbirth, the infant is killed; among the Hottentots it was exposed (if the mother died during the time of suckling, the child was buried alive with her); among the Damara, "when poor women die and leave children behind them, they are often buried with the mother" (127.

I. 287).

According to Collins and Barrington, among certain native tribes of Australia, "when the mother of a suckling dies, if no adoptive parents can be found, the child is placed alive in the arms of the corpse and buried together with it" (125. II. 589). Of the Banians of Bombay, Niebuhr tells us that children under eighteen months old are buried when the mother dies, the corpse of the latter being burned at ebb tide on the sh.o.r.e of the sea, so that the next tide may wash away the ashes (125. II. 581). In certain parts of Borneo: "If a mother died in childbirth, it was the former practice to strap the living babe to its dead mother, and bury them both, together. 'Why should it live?' say they. 'It has been the death of its mother; now she is gone, who will suckle it?'" (481 (1893). 133).

In certain parts of Australia, "children who have caused their mother great pain in birth are put to death" (127. I. 288), and among the Sakalavas of Madagascar, the child of a woman dying in childbed is buried alive with her, the reason given being "that the child may thus be punished for causing the death of its mother" (125. II. 590).

As has been noted elsewhere, not a few primitive peoples have considered that death, in consequence of giving birth to a child, gained for the mother entrance into Paradise. But with some more or less barbarous tribes quite a different idea prevails. Among the Ewe negroes of the slave coast of West Africa, women dying in childbirth become blood-seeking demons; so also in certain parts of Borneo, and on the Sumatran island of Nias, where they torment the living, plague women who are with child, and kill the embryo in the womb, thus causing abortion; in Java, they make women in labour crazy; in Amboina, the Uliase and Kei Islands, and Gilolo, they become evil spirits, torturing women in labour, and seeking to prevent their successful delivery; in Gilolo, the Kei group, and Celebes, they even torment men, seeking to emasculate them, in revenge for the misfortune which has overtaken them (397.19).

Of the Doracho Indians of Central America, the following statement is made: "When a mother, who is still suckling her child, dies, the latter is placed alive upon her breast and burned with her, so that in the future life she may continue to suckle it with her own milk" (125. II.

589). Powers remarks concerning the Korusi (Patwin) Indians of California (519. 222): "When a woman died, leaving her infant very young, the friends shook it to death in a skin or blanket. This was done even with a half-breed child." Of the Nis.h.i.+nam Indians, the same authority informs us: "When a mother dies, leaving a very young infant, custom allows the relatives to destroy it. This is generally done by the grandmother, aunt, or other near relative, who holds the poor innocent in her arms, and, while it is seeking the maternal fountain, presses it to her breast until it is smothered. We must not judge them too harshly for this. They knew nothing of bottle nurture, patent nipples, or any kind of milk whatever, other than the human" (519. 328).

Among the Wintun, also, young infants are known to have been buried when the mother had died shortly after confinement (519. 232).

The Eskimo, Letourneau informs us, were wont to bury the little child with its dead mother, for they believed that unless this were done, the mother herself would call from _Killo_, the other world, for the child she had borne (100. 147, 148).

_The Dead Mother._

To none of the saintly dead, to none of our race who have entered upon the life beyond the grave, is it more meet to pray than to the mother; folk-faith is strong in her power to aid and bless those left behind on earth. That sympathetic relation existing between mother and child when both are living, is often believed to exist when one has departed into the other world. By the name _wa-hde ca-pi_, the Dakota Indians call the feeling the (living) mother has for her absent (living) child, and they a.s.sert that "mothers feel peculiar pain in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s when anything of importance happens to their absent children, or when about to hear from them. This feeling is regarded as an omen." That the mother, after death, should feel the same longing, and should return to help or to nourish her child, is an idea common to the folk-belief of many lands, as Ploss (125. II. 589) and Zmigrodzki have noted.

"Amid the song of the angels," says Zmigrodzki (174. 142), "the plaint of her child on earth reaches the mother's ear, and pierces her heart like a knife. Descend to earth she must and does." In Brittany she is said to go to G.o.d Himself and obtain permission to visit earth. Her flight will be all the easier, if, before burial, her relatives have loosed her hair. In various parts of Germany and Switzerland, the belief is that for six weeks the dead mother will come at night to suckle her child, and a pair of slippers or shoes are always put into the coffin with the corpse, for the mother has to travel over thistles, thorns, and sharp stones to reach her child. Widespread over Europe is this belief in the return of the mother, who has died in giving life to her little one. Till c.o.c.k-crow in the morning she may suckle it, wash it, fondle it; the doors open of themselves for her. If the child is being well treated by its relatives, the mother rejoices, and soon departs; but if it has been neglected, she attends to it, and waits till the last moment, making audible her unwillingness to depart. If the neglect continues, the mother descends to earth once more, and, taking the child with her, returns to heaven for good. And when the mother with her offspring approaches the celestial gates, they fly wide open to receive them. Never, in the folk-faith, was entrance readier granted, never was Milton's concept more completely realized, when

"Heaven open'd wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound, On golden hinges moving."

In a modern Greek folk-song three youths plot to escape from Hades, and a young mother, eager to return to earth to suckle her infant child, persuades them to allow her to accompany them. Charon, however, suddenly appears upon the scene and seizes them just as they are about to flee.

The beautiful young woman then appeals to him: "Let go of my hair, Charon, and take me by the hand. If thou wilt but give my child to drink, I will never try to escape from thee again" (125. II. 589).

The watchful solicitude of the mother in heaven over her children on earth appears also in the Basque country (505. 73), and Ralston, noting its occurrence in Russia, observes (520. 265):--

"Appeals for aid to a dead parent are of frequent occurrence in the songs still sung by the Russian peasantry at funerals or over graves; especially in those in which orphans express their grief, calling upon the grave to open, and the dead to appear and listen and help. So in the Indian story of Punchkin, the seven hungry, stepmother-persecuted princesses go out every day and sit by their dead mother's tomb, and cry, and say, 'Oh, mother, mother, cannot you see your poor children, how unhappy we are,' etc., until a tree grows up out of the grave laden with fruits for their relief. So, in the German tale, Cinderella is aided by the white bird, which dwells in the hazel-tree growing out of her mother's grave."

Crude and savage, but born of a like faith in the power of the dead mother, is the inhuman practice of the people of the Congo, where, it is said, "the son often kills his mother, in order to secure the a.s.sistance of her soul, now a formidable spirit" (388. 81).

Heavy upon her offspring weighs the curse of a mother. Ralston, speaking of the Russian folk-tales, says (520. 363):--

"Great stress is laid in the skazkas and legends upon the terrible power of a parent's curse. The 'hasty word' of a father or a mother will condemn even an innocent child to slavery among devils, and, when it has once been uttered, it is irrevocable," The same authority states, however, that "infants which have been cursed by their mothers before their birth, or which are suffocated during their sleep, or which die from any causes unchristened or christened by a drunken priest, become the prey of demons," and in order to rescue the soul of such a babe from the powers of evil "its mother must spend three nights in a church, standing within a circle traced by the hand of a priest; when the c.o.c.ks crow on the third morning the demons will give her back her dead child."

_Fatherly Affection._

That the father, as well as the mother, feels for his child after death, and appears to him, is an idea found in fairy-story and legend, but nowhere so sweetly expressed as in the beautiful Italian belief that "the kind, dear spirits of the dead relatives and parents come out of the tombs to bring presents to the children of the family,--whatever their little hearts most desire." The proverb,--common at Aci,--_Veni me patri?--Appressu_, "Is my father coming?--By and by," used "when an expected friend makes himself long waited for," is said to have the following origin:--

"There was once a little orphan boy, who, in his anxiety to see his dead father once again, went out into the night when the kind spirits walk, and, in spite of all the fearful beating of his little heart, asked of every one whom he met: _Veni me patri?_ and each one answered: _Appressu_. As he had the courage to hold out to the end, he finally had the consolation of seeing his father and having from him caresses and sweetmeats" (449. 327).