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 school-children:—
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."