Dr. F. Boas says of the Eskimo of Baffin Land (402. 572): "Children tell one another fables and sing short songs, especially comic and satirical ones." The heroes of the Basque legend of Aquelarre are thus described by Miss Monteiro (505. 22):—
"Izar and Lanoa were two orphan children; the first was seven years of age, and the latter nine. These poor children, true wandering bards, frequented the mountains, earning a livelihood by singing ballads and national airs in sweet, infantile voices, in return for a bed of straw and a cupful of meal. Throughout the district these children were known and loved on account of their sad state, as well as for their graceful forms and winning ways."
Mr. Chatelain, in his recent work on African folk-tales, says of the natives of Angola: "No Angola child finds difficulty at any time in producing extemporaneous song."
Dr. Gatschet, in his study of the Klamath Indians, gives examples of many songs composed and sung by young people, especially girls; and many other Indian tribes, Algonkian, Iroquois, etc., possess such as well. When Darwin reached Tahiti, his arrival was "sung by a young girl in four improvised strophes, which her fellow-maidens accompanied in a pretty chorus"; and among the song-loving people of the islands of the South Sea, the poetic talent develops quite early in both sexes. Among the aborigines of Peake River, in Australia, when a youth—at puberty—has undergone the ceremony of tattooing, and, his wounds having healed, is about to return to his fellows, "a young girl selected for the purpose, sings in her own way a song which she has composed, and, amid dancing, merriment, and feasting, the youth is welcomed back to his family and his kin" (326. 11. 241). Throughout the Orient woman is a dancer and a singer. India has her bayaderes and nautch-girls, whose dancing and singing talents are world-known.
The Gypsies, too, that wander-folk of the world, are famed for their love-songs and fortune-telling rhymes, which the youth and girlhood among them so often know how to make and use. Crawford, who has translated the Kalevala, the great epic of the Finns, tells us, "The natural speech of this people is poetry. The young men and maidens, the old men and matrons, in their interchange of ideas unwittingly fall into verse" (423. I. xxvi.). Among the young herdsmen and shepherdesses of the pastoral peoples of Europe and Asia, the same precocity of song prevails. With songs of youth and maiden, the hills and valleys of Greece and Italy resound as of old. In his essay on the Popular Songs of Tuscany, Mr. J. A. Symonds observes (540. 600, 602): "Signor Tigri records by name a little girl called Cherubina, who made Rispetti by the dozen, as she watched her sheep upon the hills." When Signor Tigri asked her to dictate to him some of her songs, she replied: "Oh Signore! ne dico tanti quando li canto! … ma ora … bisognerebbe averli tutti in visione; se no, proprio non vengono,—Oh Sir! I say so many, when I sing … but now … one must have them all before one's mind … if not, they do not come properly." World-applicable as the boy grows out of childhood—with some little change of season with the varying clime—are the words of Tennyson:—
"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of
love,"
and everywhere, if poetry and song be not indeed the very offspring of love, they are at least twin-born with it.
Lombroso, in his discussion of the man of genius, gives many examples of precocious poetical and musical talent: Dante (who at nine years of age wrote sonnets), Tasso (wrote at ten years of age), Wieland (who wrote an epic at 16), Lope de Vega (who wrote verses at 12), Calderoii (at 13), Metastasio (who composed at 10), Handel (who wrote a mass at 13, and was director of opera at 19), Eichhorn, Mozart, and Eibler (all three of whom gave concerts at 6), Beethoven (who wrote sonatas at 13), Weber (who wrote his first opera at 14), Cherubini (who wrote a mass at 15), etc. (300.15).
Among English poets whose precocity was marked, we find the most noteworthy to be Robert Browning, whose first poetic effusion is ascribed to his fourth year. It is now known, however, that poetry is much more common among children than was at first supposed, and early compositions are not to be expected from geniuses alone, but often from the scions of the ruder commonalty.
In her interesting study of individual psychology, Dr. Caroline Miles informs us that out of ninety-seven answers to the question, "Did you express yourself in any art-form before eighteen years of age?" fourteen stated that the person replying used verses alone, fourteen used stories and poetry, three used poetry and drawing or painting, two used poetry and painting. Dr. Miles notes that "those who replied 'no' seemed to take pride in the fact that they had been guilty of no such youthful folly." This is in line with the belief parents sometimes express that the son or daughter who poetizes early is "loony." Some who were not ashamed of these child-expressions volunteered information concerning them, and we learn: "Most interesting was one who wrote a tragedy at ten, which was acted on a little stage for the benefit of her friends; from ten to thirteen, an epic; at thirteen, sentimental and religious poems" (310. 552, 553).