Surely there is dignity in a subject treating even of toys that have been in fashion for three thousand years, and have afforded amusement to two-thirds of the human race. The subject was largely discussed in France not many years since, by M. Charles Magnin, a gentleman who, in love with his plaything, had recourse to every source of information, and who brought away from all something worth knowing. M. Magnin shows that the gravest of authors are at issue as to the origin of the puppet race. Charles Nodier, however, traces it to the doll that lies in unconscious felicity in the arms of youthful and precocious maturity. M. Magnin maintains, on the other hand, that the puppet does not spring from the hearth, but from the altar. The rude god whittled out of a gnarled bough is, with him, the undoubted sire of the universe of dolls. The puppet served for pious, before it was suited to domestic, purposes; and it excited awe long before it won laughter or excited admiration. It lived in a wood, and ruled savages. As civilization advanced, it changed its habits, form, and features; and, ceasing to affright man, undertook the happier task of amusing him.
Such is the legendary record of puppets. We must turn over the graphic pages of the ‘Father of History,’ to find the first authentic mention of their employment. The guests at an Egyptian feast, when they grew hilarious, were called back to sober propriety by the exhibition of a little skeleton, and the admonition to reflect upon the lesson it conveyed. The British Museum possesses many of these figures, as well as others which appear to be toys that have been buried with their loved little owners. There is some uncertainty on this point, however; for it is known that on diseased persons it was the custom to place little figures, supposed to represent the deity which had particular influence over the part whereon the image was laid. I believe that the liver was the only portion of the body that had not its peculiar divinity. That obstinate organ has always defied gods and men. “In jecore nigro nascuntur domini;” and over these even the Egyptian Pantheon availed nothing.
Whether the figures in our Museum be actual toys, or counterfeit presentments of very swarthy gods, it is not in every instance easy to determine. From conjecture however we can turn to Herodotus; and certainly that worthy Halicarnassian tells us, in his second book, that in Egypt, on the festival of Osiris, or Bacchus, a puppet figure of the joyous god, a cubit in height, with some indecent mechanism moved by the pulling of a string, was carried in procession by the women. When previously speaking of the figure of Pan, he says, that the deity in question is worshiped under a form known not to be his real one, for a reason, he adds, which he “had rather not mention.” So, in the case of Bacchus, he confines himself to stating that there were “sacred and mysterious reasons” for the same. We are now aware that the unseemly practice was really a species of invocation that the earth might be impregnated with prolific virtue.
We next arrive at articulated figures. The statue of Jupiter Ammon nodded to the attendant priests when he was about to prophesy. So Apollo, at Heliopolis, would not open his lips till his ministers had carried him whither he would go. Aloft on the shoulders of his bearers, he guided them as with reins. On being questioned, he graciously bowed his head, if he approved; or fell back, if he dissented. When placed on the ground of his temple, he was seen to ascend, without aid, till his head touched the roof; and there he remained fixed till prayers brought him down again. It is suggested that the magnet may have been employed to accomplish the feat. How this may have been defies aught but conjecture.
Voluntary motion of inanimate objects was always an evidence of their divinity. When Juno paid her celebrated visit to Vulcan, she found him engaged in the manufacture of tripods, which moved about and performed their office with a bustling air of the most zealous assiduity.
“Full twenty tripods for his hall he framed,
That, placed on living wheels of massy gold,
Wondrous to tell, instinct with spirit, roll’d
From place to place around the blest abodes,
Self-moved, obedient to the beck of gods.”