In a modern Greek folk-song three youths plot to escape from Hades, and a young mother, eager to return to earth to suckle her infant child, persuades them to allow her to accompany them. Charon, however, suddenly appears upon the scene and seizes them just as they are about to flee. The beautiful young woman then appeals to him: "Let go of my hair, Charon, and take me by the hand. If thou wilt but give my child to drink, I will never try to escape from thee again" (125. II. 589).
The watchful solicitude of the mother in heaven over her children on earth appears also in the Basque country (505. 73), and Ralston, noting its occurrence in Russia, observes (520. 265):—
"Appeals for aid to a dead parent are of frequent occurrence in the songs still sung by the Russian peasantry at funerals or over graves; especially in those in which orphans express their grief, calling upon the grave to open, and the dead to appear and listen and help. So in the Indian story of Punchkin, the seven hungry, stepmother-persecuted princesses go out every day and sit by their dead mother's tomb, and cry, and say, 'Oh, mother, mother, cannot you see your poor children, how unhappy we are,' etc., until a tree grows up out of the grave laden with fruits for their relief. So, in the German tale, Cinderella is aided by the white bird, which dwells in the hazel-tree growing out of her mother's grave."
Crude and savage, but born of a like faith in the power of the dead mother, is the inhuman practice of the people of the Congo, where, it is said, "the son often kills his mother, in order to secure the assistance of her soul, now a formidable spirit" (388. 81).
Heavy upon her offspring weighs the curse of a mother. Ralston, speaking of the Russian folk-tales, says (520. 363):—
"Great stress is laid in the skazkas and legends upon the terrible power of a parent's curse. The 'hasty word' of a father or a mother will condemn even an innocent child to slavery among devils, and, when it has once been uttered, it is irrevocable," The same authority states, however, that "infants which have been cursed by their mothers before their birth, or which are suffocated during their sleep, or which die from any causes unchristened or christened by a drunken priest, become the prey of demons," and in order to rescue the soul of such a babe from the powers of evil "its mother must spend three nights in a church, standing within a circle traced by the hand of a priest; when the cocks crow on the third morning the demons will give her back her dead child."
Fatherly Affection.
That the father, as well as the mother, feels for his child after death, and appears to him, is an idea found in fairy-story and legend, but nowhere so sweetly expressed as in the beautiful Italian belief that "the kind, dear spirits of the dead relatives and parents come out of the tombs to bring presents to the children of the family,—whatever their little hearts most desire." The proverb,—common at Aci,—Veni mè patri?—Appressu, "Is my father coming?—By and by," used "when an expected friend makes himself long waited for," is said to have the following origin:—
"There was once a little orphan boy, who, in his anxiety to see his dead father once again, went out into the night when the kind spirits walk, and, in spite of all the fearful beating of his little heart, asked of every one whom he met: Veni mè patri? and each one answered: Appressu. As he had the courage to hold out to the end, he finally had the consolation of seeing his father and having from him caresses and sweetmeats" (449. 327).
Rev. Mr. Grill speaks highly of the affection for children of the Polynesians. Following is the translation of a song composed and sung by Rakoia, a warrior and chief of Mangaia, in the Hervey Archipelago, on the death of his eldest daughter Enuataurere, by drowning, at the age of fifteen (459. 32):—