Dr. J. W. Fewkes, in his detailed article on the Flute Observance of the Tusayan Indians of Walpi, an interesting study of primitive dramatization, notes the part played by children in these ceremonies. The principal characters are the "Snake Boy," the "Snake Girl," and some girl carriers of the sacred corn, besides lads as acolytes.
The story of the child as an actor has yet to be written. When the ancient Greeks crowded the theatres to hear and see the masterpieces of dramatic and histrionic genius, their "women, slaves, and children" were for the most part left at home, though we do find that later on in history, front seats were provided for the chief Athenian priestesses. No voices of children were heard in chorus, and childhood found no true interpreter upon the stage. In France, in the middle of the seventeenth century, women appear as actors; in England it was not until long after the death of her greatest dramatist that (in 1660) women could fill a rôle upon the stage without serious hindrance or molestation; in Japan, even now, play-acting is not looked upon as a respectable profession for women. For a long time in England and elsewhere, female parts were taken by children and youths. Here also we meet with companies of child-actors, such as the "Boys of the Grammar School at Westminster," "The Children of Paul's," etc. The influence which produced these survives and flourishes to-day in the fondness of high-school pupils and university students for dramatic performances and recitations, and the number of schools of gesture, elocution, and the like, testifies to the abiding interest of the young in the mimic art. This is also evidenced by the number of child actors and actresses in the theatrical world, and the remarkable precocity of the members of the profession in all lands. In England, the pantomime offers a special outlet for this current of expression, and there the child is a most important factor in stage-life. The precocity of girls in these respects is noteworthy.
The Child as Inventor.
Borrowing his figure of speech from the environment of child-hood, C. J. Weber has said: "Die Gesellschaft ist die Grossmutter der Menschkeit durch ihre Töchter, die Erfindungen,—Society is the grandmother of humanity through her daughters, the inventions," and the familiar proverb—Necessity is the mother of invention—springs from the same source. Isaac Disraeli aptly says: "The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours; and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves,—the creature of habits and infirmities," and not a few of the "golden hours of invention" seem to belong to the golden age of childhood. Even in these "degenerate" days the child appears as an inventor. A contributor to the periodical literature of the day remarks: "Children have taken out a number of patents. The youngest inventor on record is Donald Murray Murphy, of St. John, Canada, who, at the age of six years, obtained from the United States exclusive rights in a sounding toy. Mabel Howard, of Washington, at eleven years, invented an ingenious game for her invalid brother and got a patent for it. Albert Gr. Smith, of Biehwood, Illinois, at twelve years invented and patented a rowing apparatus" (Current Lit., K T., xiv. 1893, p. 138).
The works of Newell (313), Bolton (187), Gomme (243), amply reveal the riot of childish variation and invention in games and plays. Mr. Newell observes: "It would be strange if children who exhibit so much inventive talent [in language] did not contrive new games; and we find accordingly that in many families a great part of the amusements of the children are of their own devising. The earliest age of which the writer has authentic record of such ingenuity is two and a half years" (313. 25). And among the primitive peoples the child is not without like invention; some, indeed, of the games our children play, were invented by the savage young ones, whose fathers have been long forgotten in the mist of prehistoric ages—the sports of their children alone surviving as memorials of their existence.
Theal tells us that the Kaffir children, when not engaged in active exercise, "amuse themselves by moulding clay into little images of cattle, or by making puzzles with strings. Some of them are skilful in forming knots with thongs and pieces of wood, which it taxes the ingenuity of the others to undo. The cleverest of them sometimes practise tricks of deception with grains of maize" (543. 221). The distinguished naturalist, Mr. A. R. Wallace, while on his visit to the Malay Archipelago, thought to show the Dyak boys of Borneo something new in the way of the "cat's cradle," but found that he was the one who needed to learn, for the little brown aborigines were able to show him several new tricks (377. 25).
Miklucho-Maclay notes that among the Papuans of north-eastern New Guinea, while the women showed no tendency to ornament pottery, young boys "found pleasure in imprinting with their nails and a pointed stick a sort of ornamental border on some of the pots" (42. 317).
Paola Lombroso, daughter of Professor Cesare Lombroso, the celebrated criminologist, in her recent study of child psychology, observes: "Games (and plays) are the most original creation of the child, who has been able to create them, adapt them to his needs, making of them a sort of gymnastics which enables him to develop himself without becoming fatigued, and we, with the aid of memory, can hardly now lay hold of that feeling of infinite, intense pleasure." Moreover, these popular traditional plays and games, handed down from one generation to another of children, "show how instinctive are these forms of muscular activity and imitative expression, which have their roots in a true physiological and psychic necessity, being a species of tirocinium for the experience of childhood" (301. 136).
The magnum opus, perhaps, of the child as inventor, is the lyre, the discovery of which, classical mythology attributes to the infant Mercury or Hermes. Four hours after his birth the baby god is said to have found the shell of a tortoise, through the opposite edges of which he bored holes, and, inserting into these cords of linen, made the first stringed instrument. The English poet, Aubrey de Vere, singing of an Athenian girl, thus refers to the quaint myth:—
"She loves to pace the wild sea-shore—
Or drop her wandering fingers o'er
The bosom of some chorded shell:
Her touch will make it speak as well
As infant Hermes made
That tortoise in its own despite
Thenceforth in Heaven a shape star-bright."