Child Life in Colonial Days

by Alice Morse Earle

—J. H. Card. Newman, 1874.

The records of childish flower lore contained in this chapter are those of my own childhood; but they are equally the records of the customs of colonial children, for these games and rhymes and plays about flowers have been preserved from generation to generation of New England children. The transmission of this nature lore has been as direct and unaltered in the new world as in Great Britain. Some of these customs, such as the eating of hollyhock cheeses and the blowing of dandelion clocks, came originally, as have other play usages, from England; many were varied in early years by different conditions in the new world, by local fitness and suggestion.

One chapter in Mr. Newell's book upon the Games of American Children dwells upon the conservatism of children. The unquestioning reception of play formulas, which he proves, extended to the flower rhymes and lore which I have recollected and herein set down. These inherited customs are far dearer to children than modern inventions. There is a quaintness of expression, a sentiment of tradition, that the child feels without power of formulating.

Stella (Bradley) Bellows, 1800, circa

If the paradise of the Orientals is a garden, so was a garden of old-fashioned flowers the earthly paradise for a child: the long sunny days brought into life so many delightful playthings to be made through the exercise of that keen instinct of all children, destructiveness. Each year saw the fresh retelling and teaching of child to child of happy flower customs almost intuitively, or through the "knowledge never learned at schools," that curious subtle system of transmission which everywhere exists among children who are blessed enough to spend their summer days in the woods or in a garden. The sober teachings of science in later years can never make up the loss to those who have lived their youth in great cities, and have grown up debarred from this inheritance, knowing not when

"The summer comes with flower and bee."

The dandelion was the earliest flower to stir the children's memories; in New England it is "the firstling of the year." In the days of my childhood we did not wait for the buttercup to open to learn whether we "loved butter"; the soft dimpled chin of each child was held up, as had been those of other children for past decades, to catch the yellow reflection of the first dandelion on the pinky throat.

The dandelion had other charms for the child. When the blooms had grown long-stemmed through seeking the sun from under the dense box borders, what pale green, opal-tinted curls could be made by splitting the translucent stems and immersing them in water, or by placing them in the mouth! I taste still their bitterness! What grace these curls conferred when fastened to our round combs, or hung over our straight braids!—far better than locks of corn silk. And what adorning necklaces and chains like Indian wampum could be made by stringing "dandelion beads," formed by cutting the stems into sections! This is an ancient usage; one German name of the flower is chain-flower. The making of dandelion curls is also an old-time childish custom in Germany. When the dandelion had lost her golden locks, and had grown old and gray, the children still plucked the downy heads, the "clocks" or blowballs, and holding aloft these airy seed vessels, and fortifying the strong young lungs with a deep breath, they blew upon the head "to see whether my mother wants me," or to learn the time o' day.