The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 22

"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 h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l.

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 st.u.r.dy 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 s.h.i.+ne."

The reference seems to be to Friedrich Wilhelm Carove, of Coblentz, in whose _Marchen 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 G.o.d; 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 a.s.sociated with ill-luck and death. In Westphalia and Thuringia the superst.i.tion prevails that "any child less than a year old, who is permitted to wreathe himself with flowers, will soon die." In the region about c.o.c.kermouth, in the county of c.u.mberland, 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 c.u.mberland, the herb-robert (_Geranium robertianum_) is called 'death come quickly,' from a like reason, while in parts of Yorks.h.i.+re, 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 than the maize itself. So the American lad playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn to Italy for his inspiration."

In the interesting lists of popular American plant-names, published by Mrs. f.a.n.n.y D. Bergen (400), are found the following in which the child is remembered:--

Babies' breath, _Galium Mollugo._ In Eastern Ma.s.sachusetts.

Babies' breath, _Muscari botryoides._ In Eastern Ma.s.sachusetts.

Babies' feet, _Polygala paucifolia._ In New Hamps.h.i.+re.

Babies' slippers, _Polygala paucifolia._ In Western Ma.s.sachusetts.

Babies' toes, _Polygala paucifolia._ In Hubbardston, Ma.s.s.

Baby blue-eyes, _Nemophila insignis._ In Sta. Barbara, Cal.

Blue-eyed babies, _Houstonia coerulea._ In Springfield, Ma.s.s.

Boys and girls, _Dicentra cucullaria._ In New York.

Boys' love, _Artemisia absinthium._ In Wellfleet, Ma.s.s.

Death-baby, _Phallus sp. (?)._ In Salem, Ma.s.s.

Girls and boys, _Dicentra cucullaria._ In Vermont.

Little boy's breeches, _Dicentra cucullaria._ In Central Iowa.

"Blue-eyed babies" is certainly an improvement upon "Quaker ladies," the name by which the _Houstonia_ is known in some parts of New England; "death-baby" is a term that is given, Mrs. Bergen tells us, "from the fancy that they foretell death in the family near whose house they spring up. I have known of intelligent people rus.h.i.+ng out in terror and beating down a colony of these as soon as they appeared in the yard."

The parents have not been entirely forgotten, as the following names show:--

Mother's beauties, _Calandrina Menziesii_. In Sta. Barbara, Cal.

Mother of thousands, _Tradescantia cra.s.sifolia_ (?). In Boston, Ma.s.s.

Daddy-nuts, _Tilia sp._ (?). In Madison, Wis.

At La Crosse, Wis., the _Lonicera talarica_, is called "twin sisters," a name which finds many a.n.a.logues.

As we have seen, the consideration of children as flowers, plants, trees, traverses many walks of life. Floral imagery has appealed to many primitive peoples, perhaps to none more than to the ancient Mexicans, with whom children were often called flowers, and the Nagualists termed Mother-Earth "the flower that contains everything," and "the flower that eats everything"--being at once the source and end of life (413. 54).

A sweet old German legend has it that the laughter of little children produced roses, and the sweetest and briefest of the "good-night songs"

of the German mothers is this:--

"Guten Abend, gute Nacht!

Mit Rosen bedacht, Mit Naglein besteckt; Morgen fruh, wenn's Gott will, Wirst du wieder geweckt."

CHAPTER XII.

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS, BIRDS, ETC.

My brother, the hare, ... my sisters, the doves.

--_St. Francis of a.s.sisi._

Love of animals is inborn. The child that has had no pets is to be pitied.--_G. Stanley Hall._