The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 18

has expressed a truth of folk-lore, for there is scarcely a place in the "everywhere" whence the children have not been fabled to come. Children are said to come from heaven (Germany, England, America, etc.); from the sea (Denmark); from lakes, ponds, rivers (Germany, Austria, j.a.pan); from moors and sand-hills (northeastern Germany); from gardens (China); from under the cabbage-leaves (Brittany, Alsace), or the parsley-bed (England); from sacred or hollow trees, such as the ash, linden, beech, oak, etc. (Germany, Austria); from inside or from underneath rocks and stones (northeastern Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, etc.). It is worthy of note how the topography of the country, its physiographic character, affects these beliefs, which change with hill and plain, with moor and meadow, seash.o.r.e and inland district. The details of these birth-myths may be read in Ploss (326. I. 2), Sch.e.l.l (343), Sundermann (366).

Specially interesting are the _Kindersee_ ("child-lake"), _Kinderbaum_ ("child-tree"), and _Kinderbrunnen_ ("child-fountain") of the Teutonic lands,--offering a.n.a.logies with the "Tree of Life" and the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" of other ages and peoples; the _t.i.tistein_, or "little children's stone," and the _Kindertruog_ ("child's trough") of Switzerland, and the "stork-stones" of North Germany.

Dr. Haas, in his interesting little volume of folk-lore from the island of Rugen, in the Baltic, records some curious tales about the birth of children. The following practice of the children in that portion of Germany is significant: "Little white and black smooth stones, found on the sh.o.r.e, are called 'stork-stones.' These the children are wont to throw backwards over their heads, asking, at the same time, the stork to bring them a little brother or sister" (466 a. 144). This recalls vividly the old Greek deluge-myth, in which we are told, that, after the Flood, Deucalion was ordered to cast behind him the "bones of his mother." This he interpreted to mean the "stones," which seemed, as it were, the "bones" of "mother-earth." So he and his wife Pyrrha picked up some stones from the ground and cast them over their shoulders, whereupon those thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha, women. Here belongs, also, perhaps, the Wallachian custom, mentioned by Mr. Sessions (who thinks it was "probably to keep evil spirits away"), in accordance with which "when a child is born every one present throws a stone behind him."

On the island of Rugen erratic blocks on the seash.o.r.e are called _Adeborsteine_, "stork-stones," and on such a rock or boulder near Wrek in Wittow, Dr. Haas says "the stork is said to dry the little children, after he has fetched them out of the sea, before he brings them to the mothers. The latter point out these blocks to their little sons and daughters, telling them how once they were laid upon them by the stork to get dry." The great blocks of granite that lie scattered on the coast of Jasmund are termed _Schwansteine_, "swan-stones," and, according to nursery-legend, the children to be born are shut up in them. When a sister or brother asks: "Where did the little _swan-child_"--for so babies are called--"come from?" the mother replies: "From the swan-stone. It was opened with a key, and a little swan-child taken out." The term "swan-child" is general in this region, and Dr. Haas is inclined to think that the swan-myth is older than the stork-myth (466 a. 143, 144).

Curious indeed is the belief of the Hidatsa Indians, as reported by Dr.

Matthews, in the "Makadistati, or house of infants." This is described as "a cavern near Knife River, which, they supposed, extended far into the earth, but whose entrance was only a span wide. It was resorted to by the childless husband or the barren wife. There are those among them who imagine that in some way or other their children come from the Makadistati; and marks of contusion on an infant, arising from tight swaddling or other causes, are gravely attributed to kicks received from his former comrades when he was ejected from his subterranean home"

(433. 516).

In Hesse, Germany, there is a children's song (326. I. 9):--

Bimbam, Glockchen, Da unten steht ein Stockchen, Da oben steht ein golden Haus, Da gucken viele schone Kinder raus.

The current belief in that part of Europe is that "unborn children live in a very beautiful dwelling, for so long as children are no year old and have not yet looked into a mirror, everything that comes before their eyes appears to be gold." Here folk-thought makes the beginnings of human life a real golden age. They are Midases of the eye, not of the touch.

_Children's Questions and Parents' Answers._

Another interesting cla.s.s of "parents' lies" consists in the replies to, or comments upon, the questionings and remarks of children about the ordinary affairs of life. The following examples, selected from Dirksen's studies of East-Frisian Proverbs, will serve to indicate the general nature and extent of these.

1. When a little child says, "I am hungry," the mother sometimes answers, "Eat some salt, and then you will be thirsty, too."

2. When a child, seeing its mother drink tea or coffee, says, "I'm thirsty," the answer may be, "If you're thirsty, go to Jack ter Host; there's a cow in the stall, go sit under it and drink." Some of the variants of this locution are expressed in very coa.r.s.e language (431. I.

22).

3. If a child asks, when it sees that its parent is going out, "Am I not going, too?" the answer is, "You are going along, where n.o.body has gone, to Poodle's wedding," or "You are going along on Stay-here's cart." A third locution is, "You are going along to the Kukendell fair"

(Kukendell being a part of Meiderich, where a fair has never been held).

In Oldenburg the answer is: "You shall go along on Jack-stay-at-home's (Janblievtohus) cart." Sometimes the child is quieted by being told, "I'll bring you back a little silver nothing (enn silwer Nickske)" (431.

I. 33).

4. If, when he is given a slice of bread, he asks for a thinner one, the mother may remark, "Thick pieces make fat bodies" (431. I. 35).

5. When some one says in the hearing of the father or mother of a child that it ought not to have a certain apple, a certain article of clothing, or the like, the answer is, "That is no illegitimate child."

The locution is based upon the fact that illegitimate children do not enjoy the same rights and privileges as those born in wedlock (431. I.

42).

6. Of children's toys and playthings it is sometimes said, when they are very fragile, "They will last from twelve o'clock till midday"

(431.1.43).

7. When any one praises her child in the presence of the mother, the latter says, "It's a good child when asleep" (431. I. 51).

8. In the winter-time, when the child asks its mother for an apple, the latter may reply, "the apples are piping in the tree," meaning that there are no longer any apples on the tree, but the sparrows are sitting there, crying and lamenting. In Meiderich the locution is "Apples have golden stems," _i.e._ they are rare and dear in winter-time (431.

I. 75).

9. When the child says, "I can't sit down," the mother may remark, "Come and sit on my thumb; n.o.body has ever fallen off it" (_i.e._ because no one has ever tried to sit on it) (431. I. 92).

10. When a lazy child, about to be sent out upon an errand, protests that it does not know where the person to whom the message is to be sent lives, and consequently cannot do the errand, the mother remarks threateningly, "I'll show where Abraham ground the mustard," _i.e._ "I give you a good thras.h.i.+ng, till the tears come into your eyes (as when grinding mustard)" (431. I. 105).

11. When a child complains that a sister or brother has done something to hurt him, the mother's answer is, "Look out! He shall have water in the cabbage, and go barefoot to bed" (431. I. 106).

12. Sometimes their parents or elders turn to children and ask them "if they would like to be shown the Bremen geese." If the child says yes, he is seized by the ears and head with both hands and lifted off the ground. In some parts of Germany this is called "showing Rome," and there are variants of the practice in other lands (431. II. 14).

13. When a child complains of a sore in its eye, or on its neck, the answer is: "That will get well before you are a great-grandmother" (431.

II. 50).

14. When one child asks for one thing and another for something else, the mother exclaims petulantly, "One calls out 'lime,' the other 'stones.'" The reference is to the confusion of tongues at Babel, which is a.s.sumed to have been of such a nature that one man would call out "lime," and another "stones" (431. II. 53).

15. When a child asks for half a slice of bread instead of a whole one, the mother may say, "Who doesn't like a whole, doesn't like a half either" (431. II. 43).

16. When a child says, "That is my place, I sat there," the reply is, "You have no place; your place is in the churchyard" (_i.e._ a grave) (431. II. 76).

When the child says "I will," the mother says threateningly, "Your 'will' is in your mother's pocket." It is in her pocket that she carries the rope for whipping the child. Another locution is, "Your will is in the corner" (_i.e._ the corner of the room in which stands the broomstick) (431. II. 81).

These specimens of the interchange of courtesies between the child and its parent or nurse might be paralleled from our own language; indeed, many of the correspondences will suggest themselves at once. The deceits practised in the Golden Age of childhood resemble those practised by the G.o.ds in the Golden Age of the world, when divine beings walked the earth and had intercourse with the sons and daughters of men.

"_Painted Devils_."

Even as the serpent marred the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek its ruin.

Shakespeare has well said:--

"Tis the eye of childhood That fears a painted devil,"

and the chronicle of the "painted devils," bogies, scarecrows, _et id genus omne_, is a long one, whose many chapters may be read in Ploss, Hartland, Henderson, Gregor, etc. Some of the "devils" are mild and almost gentlemen, like their lord and master at times; others are fierce, cruel, and bloodthirsty; their number is almost infinite, and they have the forms of women as well as of men.

Over a large portion of western Europe is found the nursery story of the "Sand-Man," who causes children to become drowsy and sleepy; "the sand-man is coming, the sand-man has put dust in your eyes," are some of the sayings in use. By and by the child gets "so fast asleep that one eye does not see the other," as the Frisian proverb puts it. When, on a cold winter day, her little boy would go out without his warm mittens on, the East Frisian mother says, warningly: _De Fingerbiter is buten_, "the Finger-biter is outside."

Among the formidable evil spirits who war against or torment the child and its mother are the Hebrew Lilith, the long-haired night-flier; the Greek _Strigalai_, old and ugly owl-women; the Roman _Caprimulgus_, the nightly goat-milker and child-killer, and the wood-G.o.d Silva.n.u.s; the Coptic _Berselia_; the Hungarian "water-man," or "water-woman," who changes children for criples or demons; the Moravian _Vestice_, or "wild woman," able to take the form of any animal, who steals away children at the breast, and subst.i.tutes changelings for them; the Bohemian _Polednice_, or "noon-lady," who roams around only at noon, and subst.i.tutes changelings for real children; the Lithuanian and Old Prussian _Laume_, a child-stealer, whose breast is the thunderbolt, and whose girdle is the rainbow; the Servian _Wjescht.i.tza_, or witches, who take on the form of an insect, and eat up children at night; the Russian "midnight spirit," who robs children of rest and sleep; the Wendish "Old mountain-woman"; the German (Brunswick) "corn-woman," who makes off with little children looking for flowers in the fields; the Roggenmuhme ( "rye-aunt"), the _Tremsemutter_, who walks about in the cornfields; the _Katzenveit_, a wood spirit, and a score of bogies called _Popel, Popelmann, Popanz, Butz_, etc.; the Scotch "Boo Man,"

"Bogie Man," "Jenny wi' the Airn Teeth," "Jenny wi' the lang Pock "; the English and American bogies, goblins, ogres, ogresses, witches, and the like; besides, common to all peoples, a host of werwolves and vampires, giants and dwarfs, witches, ogres, ogresses, fairies, evil spirits of air, water, land, inimical to childhood and destructive of its peace and enjoyment. The names, lineage, and exploits of these may be read in Ploss, Grimm, Hartland, etc.

In the time of the Crusades, Richard C?ur de Lion, the hero-king of England, became so renowned among the Saracens that (Gibbon informs us) his name was used by mothers and nurses to quiet their infants, and other historical characters before and after him served to like purpose.

To the children of Rome in her later days, Attila, the great Hun, was such a bogy, as was Na.r.s.es, the Byzantian general (d. 568 A.D.), to the a.s.syrian children. Bogies also were Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490 A.D.), the Hungarian king and general, to the Turks; Tamerlane (Timur), the great Mongolian conqueror (d. 1405 A.D.), to the Persians; and Bonaparte, at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in various parts of the continent of Europe. These, and other historical characters have, in part, taken the place of the giants and bogies of old, some of whom, however, linger, even yet, in the highest civilizations, together with fabulous animals (reminiscent of stern reality in primitive times), with which, less seriously than in the lands of the eastern world, childhood is threatened and cowed into submission.

The Ponka Indian mothers tell their children that if they do not behave themselves the Indacinga (a hairy monster shaped like a human being, that hoots like an owl) will get them; the Omaha bogy is Icibaji; a Dakota child-stealer and bogy is Anungite or "Two Faces" (433. 386, 473). With the Kootenay Indians, of south-eastern British Columbia, the owl is the bogy with which children are frightened into good behaviour, the common saying of mothers, when their children are troublesome, being, "If you are not quiet, I'll give you to the owl" (203).

Longfellow, in his _Hiawatha_, speaks of one of the bogies of the eastern Indians:--

"Thus the wrinkled old Nokomis Nursed the little Hiawatha, Rooked him in his linden cradle, Stilled his fretful wail by saying, 'Hus.h.!.+ the naked bear will get thee!'"

Among the Nip.i.s.sing Algonkian Indians, _koko_ is a child-word for any terrible being; the mothers say to their children, "beware of the _koko_." Champlain and Lescarbot, the early chroniclers of Canada, mention a terrible creature (concerning which tales were told to frighten children) called _gougou_, supposed to dwell on an island in the Baie des Chaleurs (200. 239). Among the bogies of the Mayas of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton mentions: the _balams_ (giant beings of the night), who carry off children; the _culcalkin_, or "neckless priest"; besides giants and witches galore (411. 174, 177).