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THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD IN FOLK-THOUGHT

STUDIES OF THE ACTIVITIES AND INFLUENCES OF THE CHILD AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES, THEIR ANALOGUES AND SURVIVALS IN THE CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY

THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD IN FOLK-THOUGHT (THE CHILD IN PRIMITIVE CULTURE)

BY ALEXANDER FRANCIS CHAMBERLAIN M.A., PH.D.

TO

HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER

THEIR SON

Dedicates this Book

"Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen;
Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur
Und Lust zu fabulieren."—Goethe.

PREFATORY NOTE.

The present volume is an elaboration and amplification of lectures on "The Child in Folk-Thought," delivered by the writer at the summer school held at Clark University in 1894. In connection with the interesting topic of "Child-Study" which now engages so much the attention of teachers and parents, an attempt is here made to indicate some of the chief child-activities among primitive peoples and to point out in some respects their survivals in the social institutions and culture-movements of to-day. The point of view to be kept in mind is the child and what he has done, or is said to have done, in all ages and among all races of men.

For all statements and citations references are given, and the writer has made every effort to place himself in the position of those whose opinion he records,—receiving and reporting without distortion or alteration.

He begs to return to his colleagues in the University, especially to its distinguished president, the genius of the movement for "Child-Study" in America, and to the members of the summer school of 1894, whose kind appreciation of his efforts has mainly led to the publication of this work, his sincerest gratitude for the sympathy and encouragement which they have so often exhibited and expressed with regard to the present and allied subjects of study and investigation in the field of Anthropology, pedagogical and psychological.

A. F. CHAMBERLAIN

CLARK UNIVERSITY,
WORCESTER, Mass., April, 1895.

CONTENTS.

I. CHILD-STUDY

II. THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER

III. THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (Continued)

IV. THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE FATHER

V. THE NAME CHILD

VI. THE CHILD IN THE PRIMITIVE LABORATORY

VII. THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CHILD-LIFE: PARENTAL AFFECTION

VIII. CHILDHOOD THE GOLDEN AGE

IX. CHILDREN'S FOOD

X. CHILDREN'S SOULS

XI. CHILDREN'S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES

XII. CHILDREN'S ANIMALS, BIRDS, ETC.

XIII. CHILD-LIFE AND EDUCATION IN GENERAL

XIV. THE CHILD AS MEMBER AND BUILDER OF SOCIETY

XV. THE CHILD AS LINGUIST

XVI. THE CHILD AS ACTOR AND INVENTOR

XVII. THE CHILD AS POET AND MUSICIAN

XVIII. THE CHILD AS TEACHER AND WISEACRE

XIX. THE CHILD AS JUDGE

XX. THE CHILD AS ORACLE-KEEPER AND ORACLE-INTERPRETER

XXI. THE CHILD AS WEATHER-MAKER

XXII. THE CHILD AS HEALER AND PHYSICIAN

XXIII. THE CHILD AS SHAMAN AND PRIEST

XXIV. THE CHILD AS HERO, ADVENTURER, ETC.

XXV. THE CHILD AS FETICH AND DIVINITY

XXVI. THE CHILD AS GOD: THE CHRIST-CHILD

XXVII. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT PARENTS, FATHER AND MOTHER

XXVIII. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE CHILD, MANKIND, GENIUS

XXIX. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT MOTHER AND CHILD

XXX. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT FATHER AND CHILD

XXXI. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, AND AGE

XXXII. PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD

INDEX TO PROVERBS

XXXIII. CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

SUBJECT-INDEX TO SECTION A OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

SUBJECT-INDEX TO SECTION B OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX I.—AUTHORITIES

INDEX II.—PLACES, PEOPLES, TRIBES, LANGUAGES

INDEX III.—SUBJECTS

CHAPTER I.

CHILD-STUDY.

Oneness with Nature is the glory of Childhood; oneness with Childhood is the glory of the Teacher.—G. Stanley Hall.

Homes ont l'estre comme metaulx,
Vie et augment des vegetaulx,
Instinct et sens comme les bruts,
Esprit comme anges en attributs.
[Man has as attributes: Being like metals,
Life and growth like plants,
Instinct and sense like animals,
Mind like angels.]—Jehan de Meung.

The Child is Father of the Man.—Wordsworth.

And he [Jesus] called to him a little child, and set him in the midst of them.—Matthew xviii. 2.

It was an Oriental poet who sang:—

"On parent knees, a naked, new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st, while all around thee smiled;
So live, that, sinking in thy last, long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep,"

and not so very long ago even the anthropologist seemed satisfied with the approximation of childhood and old age,—one glance at the babe in the cradle, one look at the graybeard on his deathbed, gave all the knowledge desired or sought for. Man, big, burly, healthy, omniscient, was the subject of all investigation. But now a change has come over the face of things. As did that great teacher of old, so, in our day, has one of the ministers of science "called to him a little child and set him in the midst of them,"—greatest in the kingdom of anthropology is assuredly that little child, as we were told centuries ago, by the prophet of Galilee, that he is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. The child, together with woman, who, in so many respects in which the essential human characteristics are concerned, so much resembles him, is now beyond doubt the most prominent figure in individual, as well as in racial, anthropology. Dr. D. G. Brinton, in an appreciative notice of the recent volume on Man and Woman, by Havelock Ellis, in which the secondary sexual differences between the male and the female portions of the human race are so well set forth and discussed, remarks: "The child, the infant in fact, alone possesses in their fulness 'the chief distinctive characters of humanity. The highest human types, as represented in men of genius, present a striking approximation to the child-type. In man, from about the third year onward, further growth is to some extent growth in degeneration and senility.' Hence the true tendency of the progressive evolution of the race is to become child-like, to become feminine." (Psych. Rev. I. 533.)

As Dr. Brinton notes, in this sense women are leading evolution—Goethe was right: Das Ewig-weibliche zieht uns hinan. But here belongs also the child-human, and he was right in very truth who said: "A little child shall lead them." What new meaning flashes into the words of the Christ, who, after declaring that "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom of God is within you," in rebuke of the Pharisees, in rebuke of his own disciples, "called to him a little child and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." Even physically, the key to the kingdom of heaven lies in childhood's keeping.

Vast indeed is now the province of him who studies the child. In Somatology,—the science of the physical characteristics and constitution of the body and its members,—he seeks not alone to observe the state and condition of the skeleton and its integuments during life, but also to ascertain their nature and character in the period of prenatal existence, as well as when causes natural, or unnatural, disease, the exhaustion of old age, violence, or the like, have induced the dissolution of death.

In Linguistics and Philology, he endeavours to discover the essence and import of those manifold, inarticulate, or unintelligible sounds, which, with the long flight of time, develop into the splendidly rounded periods of a Webster or a Gladstone, or swell nobly in the rhythmic beauties of a Swinburne or a Tennyson.

In Art and Technology, he would fain fathom the depths of those rude scribblings and quaint efforts at delineation, whence, in the course of ages, have been evolved the wonders of the alphabet and the marvellous creations of a Rubens and an Angelo.

In Psychology, he seeks to trace, in childish prattlings and lore of the nursery, the far-off beginnings of mythology, philosophy, religion. Beside the stories told to children in explanation of the birth of a sister or a brother, and the children's own imaginings concerning the little new-comer, he may place the speculations of sages and theologians of all races and of all ages concerning birth, death, immortality, and the future life, which, growing with the centuries, have ripened into the rich and wholesome dogmas of the church.

Ethnology, with its broad sweep over ages and races of men, its searchings into the origins of nations and of civilizations, illumined by the light of Evolution, suggests that in the growth of the child from helpless infancy to adolescence, and through the strong and trying development of manhood to the idiosyncrasies of disease and senescence, we have an epitome in miniature of the life of the race; that in primitive tribes, and in those members of our civilized communities, whose growth upward and onward has been retarded by inherited tendencies which it has been out of their power to overcome, or by a milieu and environment, the control and subjugation of which required faculties and abilities they did not possess, we see, as it were, ethnic children; that in the nursery, the asylum, the jail, the mountain fastnesses of earth, or the desert plains, peopled by races whose ways are not our ways, whose criteria of culture are far below ours, we have a panorama of what has transpired since, alone and face to face with a new existence, the first human beings partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and became conscious of the great gulf, which, after millenniums of struggle and fierce competition, had opened between the new, intelligent, speaking anthropoids and their fellows who straggled so far behind.

Wordsworth has said: "The child is father of the man," and a German writer has expanded the same thought:—

"Die Kindheit von heute
Ist die Menschheit von morgen,
Die Kindheit von heute
Ist die Menschheit von gestern."
["The childhood of to-day
Is the manhood of to-morrow,
The childhood of to-day
Is the manhood of yesterday.">[

In brief, the child is father of the man and brother of the race.

In all ages, and with every people, the arcana of life and death, the mysteries of birth, childhood, puberty, adolescence, maidenhood, womanhood, manhood, motherhood, fatherhood, have called forth the profoundest thought and speculation. From the contemplation of these strange phenomena sprang the esoteric doctrines of Egypt and the East, with their horrible accompaniments of vice and depravity; the same thoughts, low and terrible, hovered before the devotees of Moloch and Cybele, when Carthage sent her innocent boys to the furnace, a sacrifice to the king of gods, and Asia Minor offered up the virginity of her fairest daughters to the first-comer at the altars of the earth-mother. Purified and ennobled by long centuries of development and unfolding, the blossoming of such conceptions is seen in the great sacrifice which the Son of Man made for the children of men, and in the cardinal doctrine of the religion which he founded,—"Ye must be born again,"—the regeneration, which alone gave entrance into Paradise.

The Golden Age of the past of which, through the long lapse of years, dreamers have dreamt and poets sung, and the Golden City, glimpses of whose glorious portal have flashed through the prayers and meditations of the rapt enthusiast, seem but one in their foundation, as the Eden of the world's beginning and the heaven that shall open to men's eyes, when time shall be no more, are but closely allied phases, nay, but one and the same phase, rather, of the world-old thought,—the ethnic might have been, the ought to be of all the ages. The imagined, retrospect childhood of the past is twin-born with the ideal, prospective childhood of the world to come. Here the savage and the philosopher, the child and the genius, meet; the wisdom of the first and of the last century of human existence is at one. Childhood is the mirror in which these reflections are cast,—the childhood of the race is depicted with the same colours as the childhood of the individual. We can read a larger thought into the words of Hartley Coleridge:—

"Oh what a wilderness were this sad world,
If man were always man, and never child."

Besides the anthropometric and psycho-physical investigations of the child carried on in the scientific laboratory with exact instruments and unexceptionable methods, there is another field of "Child-Study" well worthy our attention for the light it can shed upon some of the dark places in the wide expanse of pedagogical science and the art of education.

Its laboratory of research has been the whole wide world, the experimenters and recorders the primitive peoples of all races and all centuries,—fathers and mothers whom the wonderland of parenthood encompassed and entranced; the subjects, the children of all the generations of mankind.

The consideration of "The Child in Folk-Thought,"—what tribe upon tribe, age after age, has thought about, ascribed to, dreamt of, learned from, taught to, the child, the parent-lore of the human race, in its development through savagery and barbarism to civilization and culture,—can bring to the harvest of pedagogy many a golden sheaf.

The works of Dr. Ploss, Das kleine Kind, Das Kind, and Das Weib, encyclopædic in character as the two last are, covering a vast field of research relating to the anatomy, physiology, hygiene, dietetics, and ceremonial treatment of child and mother, of girl and boy, all over the world, and forming a huge mine of information concerning child-birth, motherhood, sex-phenomena, and the like, have still left some aspects of the anthropology of childhood practically untouched. In English, the child has, as yet, found no chronicler and historian such as Ploss. The object of the present writer is to treat of the child from a point of view hitherto entirely neglected, to exhibit what the world owes to childhood and the motherhood and the fatherhood which it occasions, to indicate the position of the child in the march of civilization among the various races of men, and to estimate the influence which the child-idea and its accompaniments have had upon sociology, mythology, religion, language; for the touch of the child is upon them all, and the debt of humanity to the little children has not yet been told. They have figured in the world's history and its folk-lore as magi and "medicine-men," as priests and oracle-keepers, as physicians and healers, as teachers and judges, as saints, heroes, discoverers, and inventors, as musicians and poets, actors and labourers in many fields of human activity, have been compared to the foolish and to the most wise, have been looked upon as fetiches and as gods, as the fit sacrifice to offended Heaven, and as the saviours and regenerators of mankind. The history of the child in human society and of the human ideas and institutions which have sprung from its consideration can have here only a beginning. This book is written in full sympathy with the thought expressed in the words of the Latin poet Juvenal: Maxima debetur pueris reverentia, and in the declaration of Jean Paul: "I love God and every little child."

CHAPTER II.

THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER.

A good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.—English Proverb.

The first poet, the first priest, was the first mother.
The first empire was a woman and her children.—O. T. Mason.

When society, under the guidance of the "fathers of the church," went almost to destruction in the dark ages, it was the "mothers of the people" who saved it and set it going on the new right path. —Zmigrodski (adapted).

The story of civilization is the story of the mother. —Zmigrodski.

One mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers. —Laws of Manu.

If the world were put into one scale, and my mother into the other, the world would kick the beam.—Lord Langdale.

Names of the Mother.

In A Song of Life,—a book in which the topic of sex is treated with such delicate skill,—occurs this sentence: "The motherhood of mammalian life is the most sacred thing in physical existence" (120. 92), and Professor Drummond closes his Lowell Institute Lectures on the Evolution of Man in the following words: "It is a fact to which too little significance has been given, that the whole work of organic nature culminates in the making of Mothers—that the animal series end with a group which even the naturalist has been forced to call the Mammalia. When the savage mother awoke to her first tenderness, a new creative hand was at work in the world" (36. 240). Said Henry Ward Beecher: "When God thought of Mother, he must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly,—so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception," and it was unto babes and sucklings that this wisdom was first revealed. From their lips first fell the sound which parents of later ages consecrated and preserved to all time. With motherhood came into the world song, religion, the thought of immortality itself; and the mother and the child, in the course of the ages, invented and preserved most of the arts and the graces of human life and human culture. In language, especially, the mother and the child have exercised a vast influence. In the names for "mother," the various races have recognized the debt they owe to her who is the "fashioner" of the child, its "nourisher" and its "nurse." An examination of the etymologies of the words for "mother" in all known languages is obviously impossible, for the last speakers and interpreters of many of the unwritten tongues of the earth are long since dead and gone. How primitive man—the first man of the race—called his mother, we can but surmise. Still, a number of interesting facts are known, and some of these follow.

The word mother is one of the oldest in the language; one of the very few words found among all the great branches of the widely scattered Aryan race, bearing witness, in ages far remote, before the Celt, the Teuton, the Hellene, the Latin, the Slav, and the Indo-Iranian were known, to the existence of the family, with the mother occupying a high and honourable place, if not indeed the highest place of all. What the etymological meaning was, of the primitive Aryan word from which our mother is descended, is uncertain. It seems, however, to be a noun derived, with the agent-suffix -t-r, from the root ma, "to measure." Skeat thinks the word meant originally "manager, regulator [of the household]," rejecting, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, a suggested interpretation as the "producer." Kluge, the German lexicographer, hesitates between the "apportioner, measurer," and the "former [of the embryo in the womb]." In the language of the Klamath Indians of Oregon, p'gishap, "mother," really signifies the "maker."

The Karankawas of Texas called "mother," kaninma, the "suckler," from kanin, "the female breast." In Latin mamma, seems to signify "teat, breast," as well as "mother," but Skeat doubts whether there are not two distinct words here. In Finnish and some other primitive languages a similar resemblance or identity exists between the words for "breast" and "mother." In Lithuanian, móte—cognate with our mother—signifies "wife," and in the language of the Caddo Indians of Louisiana and Texas sássin means both "wife" and "mother." The familiar "mother" of the New England farmer of the "Old Homestead" type, presents, perhaps, a relic of the same thought. The word dame, in older English, from being a title of respect for women—there is a close analogy in the history of sire—came to signify "mother." Chaucer translates the French of the Romaunt of the Rose, "Enfant qui craint ni père ni mère Ne pent que bien ne le comperre," by "For who that dredeth sire ne dame Shall it abie in bodie or name," and Shakespeare makes poor Caliban declare: "I never saw a woman, But only Sycorax, my dam." Nowadays, the word dam is applied only to the female parent of animals, horses especially. The word, which is one with the honourable appellation dame, goes back to the Latin domina, "mistress, lady," the feminine of dominus, "lord, master." In not a few languages, the words for "father" and "mother" are derived from the same root, or one from the other, by simple phonetic change. Thus, in the Sandeh language of Central Africa, "mother" is n-amu, "father," b-amu; in the Cholona of South America, pa is "father," pa-n, "mother"; in the PEntlate of British Columbia, "father" is mãa, "mother," tãa, while in the Songish mãn is "father" and tan "mother" (404. 143).

Certain tongues have different words for "mother," according as it is a male or a female who speaks. Thus in the Okanak·ên, a Salish dialect of British Columbia, a man or a boy says for "mother," sk'õi, a woman or a girl, tõm; in Kalispelm the corresponding terms for "my mother" are isk'õi and intoop. This distinction, however, seems not to be so common as in the case of "father."

In a number of languages the words for "mother" are different when the latter is addressed and when she is spoken of or referred to. Thus in the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Çatloltq, three British Columbia tongues, the two words for "mother" are respectively ât, abóuk; ãt, abEmp; nikH, tãn. It is to be noted, apparently, that the word used in address is very often simpler, more primitive, than the other. Even in English we find something similar in the use of ma (or mama) and mother.

In the Gothic alone, of all the great Teutonic dialects,—the language into which Bishop Wulfila translated the Scriptures in the fourth century,—the cognate equivalent of our English mother does not appear. The Gothic term is aithiei, evidently related to atta, "father," and belonging to the great series of nursery words, of which our own ma, mama, are typical examples. These are either relics of the first articulations of the child and the race, transmitted by hereditary adaptation from generation to generation, or are the coinages of mother and nurse in imitation of the cries of infancy.

These simple words are legion in number and are found over the whole inhabited earth,—in the wigwam of the Redskin, in the tent of the nomad Bedouin, in the homes of cultured Europeans and Americans. Dr. Buschmann studied these "nature-sounds," as he called them, and found that they are chiefly variations and combinations of the syllables ab, ap, am, an, ad, at, ba, pa, ma, na, da, ta, etc., and that in one language, not absolutely unrelated to another, the same sound will be used to denote the "mother" that in the second signifies "father," thus evidencing the applicability of these words, in the earliest stages of their existence, to either, or to both, of the parents of the child (166. 85). Pott, while remarking a wonderful resemblance in the names for parents all over the world, seeks to establish the rather doubtful thesis that there is a decided difference in the nature of the words for "father" and those for "mother," the former being "man-like, stronger," the latter "woman-like, mild" (517. 57).

Some languages apparently do not possess a single specialized word for "mother." The Hawaiian, for example, calls "mother and the sisters of the mother" makua wahine, "female parent," that being the nearest equivalent of our "mother," while in Tonga, as indeed with us to-day, sometimes the same term is applied to a real mother and to an adopted one (100. 389). In Japan, the paternal aunt and the maternal aunt are called "little mother." Similar terms and appellations are found in other primitive tongues. A somewhat extended discussion of names for "mother," and the questions connected with the subject, will be found in Westermarck (166. 85). Here also will be found notices of the names among various peoples for the nearest relatives of the mother and father. Incidentally it is worth noting that Westermarck controverts Professor Vambéry's opinion that the Turko-Tartar words for "mother," ana, ene, originally meant "nurse" or "woman" (from the root an, en), holding that exactly the reverse is the fact, "the terms for mother being the primitive words." He is also inclined to think that the Aryan roots pa, "to protect, to nourish," and ma, "to fashion," came from pa, "father," and ma, "mother," and not vice versâ. Mr. Bridges, the missionary who has studied so well the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, states that "the names imu and dabi—father and mother—have no meaning apart from their application, neither have any of their other very definite and ample list of terms for relatives, except the terms macu [cf. magu, "parturition">[ and macipa [cf. cipa, "female">[, son and daughter." This statement is, however, too sweeping perhaps (166. 88).

According to Colonel Mallery, the Ute Indians indicate "mother" by placing the index finger in the mouth (497a. 479). Clark describes the common Indian sign as follows: "Bring partially curved and compressed right hand, and strike with two or three gentle taps right or left breast, and make sign for female; though in conversation the latter is seldom necessary. Deaf mutes make sign for female, and cross hands as in their sign for baby, and move them to front and upwards" (420. 262). Somewhat similar is the sign for "father": "Bring the compressed right hand, back nearly outwards, in front of right or left breast, tips of fingers few inches from it; move the hand, mostly by wrist action, and gently tap the breast with tips of fingers two or three times, then make sign for male. Some Indians tap right breast for 'father,' and left for 'mother.' Deaf-mutes make sign for male, and then holding hands fixed as in their sign for baby, but a little higher, move the hands to front and upwards" (420. 167).

Interesting is the following statement of Mr. Codrington, the well-known missionary to the Melanesians:—

"In Mota the word used for 'mother' is the same that is used for the division [tribe?] veve, with a plural sign ra veve. And it is not that a man's kindred are so called after his mother, but that his mother is called his kindred, as if she were the representative of the division to which he belongs; as if he were not the child of a particular woman, but of the whole kindred for whom she brought him into the world." Moreover, at Mota, in like fashion, "the word for 'consort,' 'husband,' or 'wife,' is in a plural form ra soai, the word used for members of a body, or the component parts of a canoe" (25. 307-8).

Mother-Right.

Since the appearance of Bachofen's famous book on the matriarchate, "mother-right," that system of society in which the mother is paramount in the family and the line of inheritance passes through her, has received much attention from students of sociology and primitive history.

Post thus defines the system of mother-right:—

"The matriarchate is a system of relationship according to which the child is related only to his mother and to the persons connected with him through the female line, while he is looked upon as not related to his father and the persons connected with him through the male line. According to this system, therefore, the narrowest family circle consists not, as with us to-day, of father, mother, and child, but of mother, mother's brother, and sister's child, whilst the father is completely wanting, and the mother's brother takes the father's place with the sister's children. The real father is not the father of his own children, but of his nephews and nieces, whilst the brother of his wife is looked upon as father to his children. The brothers and sisters of the mother form with her a social group, to which belong also the children of the sisters, the children of the daughters of the sisters, etc., but not the children of the brothers, the children of the sisters' sons, etc. With every husband the relationship ceases" (127. I. 13-14).

The system of mother-right prevails widely over the whole globe; in some places, however, only in fragmentary condition. It is found amongst nearly all the native tribes of America; the peoples of Malaysia, Melanesia, Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Dravidian tribes of India; in Africa it is found in the eastern Sahara, the Soudan, the east and west coast, and in the centre of the continent, but not to the exclusion, altogether, of father-right, while in the north the intrusion of Europeans and the followers of Islam has tended to suppress it. Traces of its former existence are discovered among certain of the ancient tribes of Asia Minor, the old Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, the Aryans of India, the Chinese, Japanese, etc.

Mother-right has been recognized by many sociologists as a system of family relationship, perhaps the most widespread, perhaps the most primitive of all. Dr. Brinton says:—

"The foundation of the gentile system, as of any other family life, is … the mutual affection between kindred. In the primitive period this is especially between children of the same mother, not so much because of the doubt of paternity, as because physiologically and obviously, it is the mother in whom is formed, and from whom alone proceeds, the living being" (412. 47).

Professor O. T. Mason, in the course of his interesting address on
"Woman's Share in Primitive Culture," remarks (112. 10):—

"Such sociologists as Morgan and McLennan affirm that the primitive society had no family organization at all. They hypothecate a condition in which utter promiscuity prevailed. I see no necessity for this. There is some organization among insects. Birds mate and rear a little family. Many animals set up a kind of patriarchal horde. On the other hand, they err greatly who look among savages for such permanent home life as we enjoy. Marriages are in groups, children are the sons and daughters of these groups; divorces are common. The fathers of the children are not known, and if they were, they would have no authority on that account. The mother never changes her name, the children are named after her, or, at least, are not named after the father. The system of gentes prevails, each gens consisting of a hypothetical female ancestress, and all her descendants through females. These primitive men and women, having no other resort, hit upon this device to hold a band of kin together. Here was the first social tie on earth; the beginning of the state. The first empire was a woman and her children, regardless of paternity. This was the beginning of all the social bonds which unite us. Among our own Indians mother-right was nearly universal. Upon the death of a chief whose office was hereditary, he was succeeded, not by his son, but by the son of a sister, or an aunt, or a niece; all his property that was not buried with him fell to the same parties, could not descend to his children, since a child and the father belonged to different gentes." McLennan has discussed at some length the subject of kinship in ancient Greece (115. 193-246), and maintains that "the system of double kinship, which prevailed in the time of Homer, was preceded by a system of kinship through females only," referring to the cases of Lycaon, Tlepolemus, Helen, Arnaeus, Glaucus, and Sarpedon, besides the evidence in the Orestes of Euripides, and the Eumenides of Aeschylus. In the last, "the jury are equally divided on the plea [that Orestes was not of kin to his mother, Clytemnestra, whom he had killed, —"Do you call me related by blood to my mother?">[, and Orestes gains his cause by the casting vote of Athene." According to tradition, "in Greece, before the time of Cecrops, children always bore the name of their mothers," in marked contrast to tha state of affairs in Sparta, where, according to Philo, "the marriage tie was so loose that men lent their wives to one another, and cared little by whom children were begotten, provided they turned out strong and healthy."

We have preserved for us, by Plutarch and others, some of the opinions of Greek philosophers on the relation of the father and the mother to the child. Plato is represented as calling "mind the conception, idea, model, and father; and matter the mother, nurse, or seat and region capable of births." Chrysippus is said to have stated: "The foetus is nourished in the womb like a plant; but, being born, is refrigerated and hardened by the air, and its spirit being changed it becomes an animal," a view which, as McLennan points out, "constitutes the mother the mere nurse of her child, just as a field is of the seed sown in it."

The view of Apollo, which, in the council of the gods, influenced Athene to decide for Orestes, is this:—

"The bearer of the so-called offspring is not the mother of it, but only the nurse of the newly conceived foetus. It is the male who is the author of its being; while she, as a stranger, for a stranger, preserves the young plant for those for whom the god has not blighted it in the bud. And I will show you a proof of this assertion; one may become a father without a mother. There stands by a witness of this in the daughter of Olympian Zeus, who was not even nursed [much less engendered or begotten] in the darkness of the womb" (115. 211). "This is akin to the wild discussion in the misogynistic Middle Ages about the possibility of lucina sine concubitu. The most recent and most scholarly discussion of all questions involved in "mother-right" will be found people in the world; for it stands on record that the five companies (five hundred men) recruited from the Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the list among all the recruits of our army for height, vigour, and corporeal symmetry" (412. 82). And it was this people too who produced Hiawatha, a philosophic legislator and reformer, worthy to rank with Solon and Lycurgus, and the founder of a great league whose object was to put an end to war, and unite all the nations in one bond of brotherhood and peace.

Among the Choctaw-Muskogee tribes, women-chiefs were also known; the Yuchis, Chetimachas, had "Queens"; occasionally we find female rulers elsewhere in America, as among the Winnebagos, the Nah-ane, etc. Scattered examples of gynocracy are to be found in other parts of the world, and in their later development some of the Aryan races have been rather partial to women as monarchs, and striking instances of a like predilection are to be met with among the Semitic tribes,—Boadicea, Dido, Semiramis, Deborah are well-known cases in point, to say nothing of the Christian era and its more enlightened treatment of woman.

The fate of women among those peoples and in those ages where extreme exaltation of the male has been the rule, is sketched by Letourneau in his chapter on The Condition of Women (100. 173-185); the contrast between the Australians, to whom "woman is a domestic animal, useful for the purposes of genesic pleasure, for reproduction, and, in case of famine, for food," the Chinese, who can say "a newly-married woman ought to be merely as a shadow and as an echo in the house," the primitive Hindus, who forbade the wife to call her husband by name, but made her term him "master, lord," or even "god," and even some of our modern races in the eye of whose law women are still minors, and the Iroquois, is remarkable. Such great differences in the position and rights of women, existing through centuries, over wide areas of the globe, have made the study of comparative pedagogy a most important branch of human sociology. The mother as teacher has not been, and is not now, the same the world over.

As men holding supreme power have been termed "father," women have in like manner been called "mother." The title of the queen-mother in Ashanti is nana, "Grandmother" (438. 259), and to some of the Indian tribes of Canada Queen Victoria is the "Great White Mother," the "Great Mother across the Sea." In Ashanti the "rich, prosperous, and powerful" are termed oman enna, "mothers of the tribe," and are expected to make suitably large offerings to the dead, else there will be no child born in the neglectful family for a certain period (438. 228).

With the Romans, mater and its derivative matrona, came to be applied as titles of honour; and beside the rites of the parentalia we find those of the matronalia (492. 454).

In the ancient Hebrew chronicles we find mention of Deborah, that "mother in Israel."

With us, off whose tongues "the fathers," "forefathers," "ancestors" (hardly including ancestresses) and the like rolled so glibly, the "Pilgrim Fathers" were glorified long before the "Pilgrim Mothers," and hardly yet has the mother of the "father of his country" received the just remembrance and recognition belonging to her who bore so noble and so illustrious a son. By and by, however, it is to be hoped, we shall be free from the reproach cast upon us by Colonel Higginson, and wake up to the full consciousness that the great men of our land have had mothers, and proceed to re-write our biographical dictionaries and encyclopædias of life-history.

In Latin mater, as does mother with us, possessed a wide extent of meaning, "mother, parent, producer, nurse, preparer, cause, origin, source," etc. Mater omnium artium necessitas, "Necessity is the mother of invention," and similar phrases were in common use, as they are also in the languages of to-day. Connected with mater is materia, "matter,"—mother-stuff, perhaps,—and from it is derived matrimonium, which testifies concerning primitive Roman sociology, in which the mother-idea must have been prominent, something we cannot say of our word marriage, derived ultimately from the Latin mas, "a male."

Westermarck notes the Nicaraguans, Dyaks, Minahassers, Andaman Islanders, Pádam, Munda Kols, Santals, Moors of the Western Soudan, Tuaregs, Teda, among the more or less primitive peoples with whom woman is held in considerable respect, and sometimes, as among the Munda Kols, bears the proud title "mistress of the house" (166. 500, 501). As Havelock Ellis remarks, women have shown themselves the equals of men as rulers, and most beneficial results have flowed from their exercise of the great political wisdom, and adaptation to statecraft which seems to belong especially to the female sex. The household has been a training-school for women in the more extended spheres of human administrative society.

Alma Mater.

The college graduate fondly calls the institution from which he has obtained his degree Alma Mater, "nourishing, fostering, cherishing mother," and he is her alumnus (foster-child, nourished one). For long years the family of the benign and gracious mother, whose wisdom was lavished upon her children, consisted of sons alone, but now, with the advent of "sweeter manners, purer laws," daughters have come to her also, and the alumnae, "the sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair," share in the best gifts their parent can bestow. To Earth also, the term Alma Mater has been applied, and the great nourishing mother of all was indeed the first teacher of man, the first university of the race.

Alma, alumnus, alumna, are all derived from alo, "I nourish, support." From the radical al, following various trains of thought, have come: alesco, "I grow up"; coalesco, "I grow together"; adolesco, "I grow up,"—whence adolescent, etc.; obsolesco, "I wear out"; alimentum, "food"; alimonium, "support"; altor, altrix, "nourisher"; altus, "high, deep" (literally, "grown"); elementum, "first principle," etc. Connected With adolesco is adultus, whence our adult, with the radical of which the English word old (eld) is cognate. From the root al, "to grow, to make to grow, to nourish," spring also the Latin words prôles, "offspring," suboles, "offspring, sprout," indôles, "inborn or native quality."

"Mother's Son."

The familiar expression "every mother's son of us" finds kin in the Modern High German Muttersohn, Mutterkind, which, with the even more significant Muttermensch (human being), takes us back to the days of "mother-right." Rather different, however, is the idea called up by the corresponding Middle Low German modersone, which means "bastard, illegitimate child."

Lore of Motherhood

A synonym of Muttermensch is Mutterseele, for soul and man once meant pretty much, the same. The curious expression mutterseelenallein, "quite alone; alone by one's self," is given a peculiar interpretation by Lippert, who sees in it a relic of the burial of the dead (soul) beneath the hearth, threshold, or floor of the house; "wessen Mutter im Hause ruht, der kann daheim immer nur mit seiner Mutterseele selbander allein sein." Or, perhaps, it goes back to the time when, as with the Seminoles of Florida, the babe was held over the mouth of the mother, whose death resulted from its birth, in order that her departing spirit might enter the new being.

In German, the "mother-feeling" makes its influence felt in the nomenclature of the lower brute creation. As contrasted with our English female donkey (she-donkey), mare, ewe, ewe-lamb, sow, doe-hare (female hare), queen-bee, etc., we find Mutteresel, "mother-donkey "; Mutterpferd, "mother-horse"; Mutterschaf, "mother-sheep"; Mutterlamm, "mother lamb"; Mutterschwein, "mother swine"; Mutterhase, "mother-hare"; Mutterbiene, "mother-bee."

Nor is this feeling absent from the names of plants and things inanimate. We have Mutterbirke, "birch"; Mutterblume, "seed-flower"; Mutternelke, "carnation"; Mutternagelein (our "mother-clove"); Mutterholz. In English we have "mother of thyme," etc. In Japan a triple arrangement in the display of the flower-vase—a floral trinity—is termed chichi, "father"; haha, "mother"; ten, "heaven" (189. 74).

In the nursery-lore of all peoples, as we can see from the fairy-tales and child-stories in our own and other languages, this attribution of motherhood to all things animate and inanimate is common, as it is in the folk-lore and mythology of the adult members of primitive races now existing.

Mother Poet.

The arts of poetry, music, dancing, according to classic mythology, were presided over by nine goddesses, or Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, "Muse-mother," as Mrs. Browning terms her. The history of woman as a poet has yet to be written, but to her in the early ages poetry owed much of its development and its beauty. Mr. Vance has remarked that "among many of the lowest races the only love-dances in vogue are those performed by the women" (545a. 4069). And Letourneau considers that "there are good grounds for supposing that women may have especially participated in the creation of the lyric of the erotic kind." Professor Mason, in the course of his remarks upon woman's labour in the world in all ages, says (112. 12):—

"The idea of a maker, or creator-of-all-things found no congenial soil in the minds of savage men, who manufactured nothing. But, as the first potters, weavers, house-builders were women, the idea of a divine creator as a moulder, designer, and architect originated with her, or was suggested by her. The three Fates, Clotho, who spins the thread of life; Lachesis, who fixes its prolongation; and Atropos, who cuts this thread with remorseless shears, are necessarily derived from woman's work. The mother-goddess of all peoples, culminating in the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, is an idea, either originated by women, or devised to satisfy their spiritual cravings."

And we have, besides the goddesses of all mythologies, personifying woman's devotion, beauty, love. What shall we say of that art, highest of all human accomplishments, in the exercise of which men have become almost as gods? The old Greeks called the singer [Greek: poiaetaes], "maker," and perhaps from woman the first poets learned how to worship in noble fashion that great maker of all, whose poem is the universe. Religion and poetry have ever gone hand in hand; Plato was right when he said: "I am persuaded, somehow, that good poets are the inspired interpreters of the gods." Of song, as of religion, it may perhaps be said: Dux foemina facti.

To the mother beside the cradle where lies her tender offspring, song is as natural as speech itself to man. Lullabies are found in every land; everywhere the joyous mother-heart bursts forth into song. The German proverb is significant: "Wer ein saugendes Kind hat, der hat eine singende Frau," and Fischer, a quaint poet of the sixteenth century, has beautifully expressed a like idea:—

"Wo Honig ist, da sammlen sieb die Fliegen, Wo Kinder sind, da singt man um die Wiegen."

Ploss, in whose book is to be found a choice collection of lullabies from all over the globe, remarks: "The folk-poetry of all peoples is rich in songs whose texts and melodies the tender mother herself imagined and composed" (326. II. 128).

The Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco devotes an interesting chapter of her Essays in the Study of Folk-Song to the subject of lullabies. But not cradle-songs alone have sprung from woman's genius. The world over, dirges and funeral-laments have received their poetical form from the mother. As name-giver, too, in many lands, the mother exercised this side of her imaginative faculty. The mother and the child, from whom language received its chief inspiration, were also the callers forth of its choicest and most creative form.

Mother-Wit.

"An ounce o' mother-wit is worth a pound o' clergy," says the Scotch proverb, and the "mother-wit," Muttergeist and Mutterwitz, that instructive common-sense, that saving light that make the genius and even the fool, in the midst of his folly, wise, appear in folk-lore and folk-speech everywhere. What the statistics of genius seem to show that great men owe to their mothers, no less than fools, is summed up by the folk-mind in the word mother-wit. Jean Paul says: "Die Mütter geben uns von Geiste Wãrme und die Vãter Licht," and Goethe, in a familiar passage in his Autobiography, declares:—

"Vom Vater hab'ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen;
Vom Mütterchen die Frobnatur,
Und Lust zu fabulieren."

Shakespeare makes Petruchio tell the shrewish Katherine that his "goodly speech" is "extempore from my mother-wit," and Emerson calls "mother-wit," the "cure for false theology." Quite appropriately Spenser, in the Faerie Queene, speaks of "all that Nature by her mother-wit could frame in earth." It is worth noting that when the ancient Greeks came to name the soul, they personified it in Psyche, a beautiful female, and that the word for "soul" is feminine in many European languages.

Among the Teton Indians, according to the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, the following peculiar custom exists: "Prior to the naming of the infant is the ceremony of the transfer of character; should the infant be a boy, a brave and good-tempered man, chosen beforehand, takes the infant in his arms and breathes into his mouth, thereby communicating his own disposition to the infant, who will grow up to be a brave and good-natured man. It is thought that such an infant will not cry as much as infants that have not been thus favoured. Should the infant be a girl, it is put into the arms of a good woman, who breathes into its mouth" (433. 482).

Here we have father-wit as well as mother-wit.

Mother-Tongue.

Where women have no voice whatever in public affairs, and are subordinated to the uttermost in social and family matters, little that is honourable and noble is named for them. In East Central Africa, a Yao woman, asked if the child she is carrying is a boy or a girl, frequently replies: "My child is of the sex that does not speak" (518. XLIII. 249), and with other peoples in higher stages of culture, the "silent woman" lingers yet. Taceat mulier in ecclesiâ still rings in our ears to-day, as it has rung for untold centuries. Though the poet has said:—

"There is a sight all hearts beguiling—
A youthful mother to her infant smiling,
Who, with spread arms and dancing feet,
And cooing voice, returns its answer sweet,"

and mothers alone have understood the first babblings of humanity, they have waited long to be remembered in the worthiest name of the language they have taught their offspring.

The term mother-tongue, although Middle English had "birthe-tonge," in the sense of native speech, is not old in our language; the Century Dictionary gives no examples of its early use. Even immortal Shakespeare does not know it, for, in King Richard II., he makes Mowbray say:—

"The language I have learned these forty years
(My native English) now must I forego."

The German version of the passage has, however, mein mütterliches
Englisch.

Cowper, in the Task, does use "mother-tongue," in the connection following:—

"Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue."

Mother-tongue has now become part and parcel of our common speech; a good word, and a noble one.

In Modern High German, the corresponding Mutterzunge, found in Sebastian Franck (sixteenth century) has gradually given way to Muttersprache, a word whose history is full of interest. In Germany, as in Europe generally, the esteem in which Latin was held in the Middle Ages and the centuries immediately following them, forbade almost entirely the birth or extension of praiseworthy and endearing names for the speech of the common people of the country. So long as men spoke of "hiding the beauties of Latin in homely German words," and a Bacon could think of writing his chief work in Latin, in order that he might be remembered after his death, it were vain to expect aught else.

Hence, it does not surprise us to learn that the word Muttersprache is not many centuries old in German. Dr. Lübben, who has studied its history, says it is not to be found in Old High German or Middle High German (or Middle Low German), and does not appear even in Luther's works, though, judging from a certain passage in his Table Talk, it was perhaps known to him. It was only in the seventeenth century that the word became quite common. Weigand states that it was already in the Dictionarium latino-germanicum (Zurich, 1556), and in Maaler's Die Teutsch Spraach (Zurich, 1561), in which latter work (S. 262 a) we meet with the expressions vernacula lingua, patrius sermo, landspraach, muoterliche spraach, and muoterspraach (S. 295 c). Opitz (1624) uses the word, and it is found in Schottel's Teutsche Haupt-Sprache (Braunschweig, 1663). Apparently the earliest known citation is the Low German modersprake, found in the introduction of Dietrich Engelhus' (of Einbeck) Deutsche Chronik (1424).

Nowadays Muttersprache is found everywhere in the German book-language, but Dr. Lübben, in 1881, declared that he had never heard it from the mouth of the Low German folk, with whom the word was always lantsprake, gemene sprake. Hence, although the word has been immortalized by Klaus Groth, the Low German Burns, in the first poem of his Quickborn:—

"Min Modersprak, so slicht un recht,
Du ole frame Red!
Wenn blot en Mund 'min Vader' seggt,
So klingt mi't as en Bed,"

and by Johann Meyer, in his Ditmarscher Gedichte:—

"Vaderhus un Modersprak!
Lat mi't nöm'n un lat mi't rop'n;
Vaderhus, du belli Sted,
Modersprak, da frame Red,
Schönres klingt der Nix tohopen,"

it may be that modersprak is not entirely a word of Low German origin; beautiful though it is, this dialect, so closely akin to our own English, did not directly give it birth. Nor do the corresponding terms in the other Teutonic dialects,—Dutch moederspraak, moedertaal, Swedish modersmål, etc.,—seem more original. The Romance languages, however, offer a clue. In French, langue mère is a purely scientific term of recent origin, denoting the root-language of a number of dialects, or of a "family of speech," and does not appear as the equivalent of Muttersprache. The equivalents of the latter are: French, langue maternelle; Spanish, lengua materna; Italian, lingua materna, etc., all of which are modifications or imitations of a Low Latin lingua materna, or lingua maternalis. The Latin of the classic period seems not to have possessed this term, the locutions in use being sermo noster, patrius sermo, etc. The Greek had [Greek: ae egchorios glossa ae idia glossa,] etc. Direct translations are met with in the moderlike sprake of Daniel von Soest, of Westphalia (sixteenth century), and the muoterliche spraach of Maaler (1561). It is from an Italian- Latin source that Dr. Lübben supposes that the German prototypes of modersprak and Muttersprache arose. In the Bôk der Byen, a semi-Low German translation (fifteenth century) of the Liber Apium of Thomas of Chantimpré, occurs the word modertale in the passage "Christus sede to er [the Samaritan woman] mit sachte stemme in erre modertale." A municipal book of Treuenbrietzen informs us that in the year 1361 it was resolved to write in the ydeoma maternale—what the equivalent of this was in the common speech is not stated—and in the Relatio of Hesso, we find the term materna lingua (105 a).

The various dialects have some variants of Muttersprache, and in Göttingen we meet with moimen spraken, where moime (cognate with Modern High German Muhme, "aunt"), signifies "mother," and is a child-word.

From the mother-tongue to the mother-land is but a step. As the speech she taught her babe bears the mother's name, so does also the land her toil won from the wilderness.

Mother-Land.

As we say in English most commonly "native city," so also we say "native land." Even Byron sings:—

"Adieu, adieu I my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;

* * * * *

My native land—good night!"

and Fitz-Greene Halleck, in his patriotic poem "Marco Bozzaris," bids strike "For God, and your native land."

Scott's far-famed lines:—

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land!"

and Smith's national hymn, "My country,'tis of thee," know no mother-land.

In the great Century Dictionary, the only illustration cited of the use of the word mother-land is a very recent one, from the Century Magazine (vol. xxix. p. 507).

Shakespeare, however, comes very near it, when, in King John (V. ii.), he makes the Bastard speak of "your dear Mother-England," —but this is not quite "mother-land."

In German, though, through the sterner influences which surrounded the Empire in its birth and reorganization, Vaterland is now the word, Mutterland was used by Kant, Wieland, Goethe, Herder, Uhland, etc. Lippert suggests an ingenious explanation of the origin of the terms Mutterland, Vaterland, as well as for the predominance of the latter and younger word. If, in primitive times, man alone could hold property,—women even and children were his chattels,—yet the development of agriculture and horticulture at the hands of woman created, as it were, a new species of property, property in land, the result of woman's toil and labour; and this new property, in days when "mother-right" prevailed, came to be called Mutterland, as it was essentially "mothers' land." But when men began to go forth to war, and to conquer and acquire land that was not "mothers' land," a new species of landed property,—the "land of the conquering father,"—came into existence (and with it a new theory of succession, "father-right"), and from that time forward "Vaterland" has extended its signification, until it has attained the meaning which it possesses in the German speech of to-day (492. 33, 36).

The inhabitants of the British colonies scattered all over the world speak of Britain as the "mother country," "Mother England"; and R. H. Stoddard, the American poet, calls her "our Mother's Mother." The French of Canada term France over-sea "la mère patrie" (mother fatherland).

Even Livy, the Roman historian, wrote terra quam matrem appellamus,—"the land we call mother,"—and Virgil speaks of Apollo's native Delos as Delum maternum. But for all this, the proud Roman called his native land, not after his mother, but after his father, patria; so also in corresponding terms the Greek, [Greek: patris], etc. But the latter remembered his mother also, as the word metropolis, which we have inherited, shows. [Greek: Maetropolis] had the meanings: "mother-state" (whence daughter-colonies went forth); "a chief city, a capital, metropolis; one's mother-city, or mother-country." In English, metropolis has been associated with "mother-church," for a metropolis or a metropolitan city, was long one which was the seat of a bishopric.

Among the ancient Greeks the Cretans were remarkable for saying not [Greek: patris] (father-land), but [Greek: maetris] (mother-land), by which name also the Messenians called their native land. Some light upon the loss of "mother-words" in ancient Greece may be shed from the legend which tells that when the question came whether the new town was to be named after Athene or Poseidon, all the women voted for the former, carrying the day by a single vote, whereupon Poseidon, in anger, sent a flood, and the men, determining to punish their wives, deprived them of the power of voting, and decided that thereafter children were not to be named after their mothers (115. 235).

In Gothic, we meet with a curious term for "native land, home," gabaurths (from gabairan "to bear"), which signifies also "birth." As an exemplification of the idea in the Sophoclean phrase "all-nourishing earth," we find that at an earlier stage in the history of our own English tongue erd (cognate with our earth) signified "native land," a remembrance of that view of savage and uncivilized peoples in which earth, land are "native country," for these are, in the true sense of the term, Landesleute, homines.

In the language of the Hervey Islands, in the South Pacific, "the place in which the placenta of an infant is buried is called the ipukarea, or native soil" (459. 26).

Our English language seems still to prefer "native city, native town, native village," as well as "native land," "mother-city" usually signifying an older town from which younger ones have come forth. In German, though Vaterstadt in analogy with Vaterland seems to be the favorite, Mutterstadt is not unknown.

Besides Mutterland and Mutterstadt, we find in German the following:—

Mutterboden, "mother-land." Used by the poet Uhland. Muttergefilde, "the fields of mother-earth." Used by Schlegel. Muttergrund, "the earth," as productive of all things. Used by Goethe. Mutterhimmel, "the sky above one's native land." Used by the poet Herder. Mutterluft, "the air of one's native land." Mutterhaus, "the source, origin of anything." Uhland even has:—

"Hier ist des Stromes Mutterhaus,
Ich trink ihn frisch vom Stein heraus."

More far-reaching, diviner than "mother-land," is "mother-earth."

CHAPTER III.

THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (Continued).

To the child its mother should be as God.—G. Stanley Hall.

A mother is the holiest thing alive.—Coleridge.

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.—Henry Ward Beecher.

When the social world was written in terms of mother-right, the religious world was expressed in terms of mother-god.

There is nothing more charming than to see a mother with a child in her arms, and nothing more venerable than a mother among a number of her children.—Goethe.

Mother-Earth.

"Earth, Mother of all," is a world-wide goddess. Professor O.T. Mason, says: "The earth is the mother of all mankind. Out of her came they. Her traits, attributes, characteristics, they have so thoroughly inherited and imbibed, that, from any doctrinal point of view regarding the origin of the species, the earth may be said to have been created for men, and men to have been created out of the earth. By her nurture and tuition they grow up and flourish, and, folded in her bosom, they sleep the sleep of death. The idea of the earth-mother is in every cosmogony. Nothing is more beautiful in the range of mythology than the conception of Demeter with Persephone, impersonating the maternal earth, rejoicing in the perpetual return of her daughter in spring, and mourning over her departure in winter to Hades" (389 (1894). 140).

Dr. D.G. Brinton writes in the same strain (409. 238): "Out of the earth rises life, to it it returns. She it is who guards all germs, nourishes all beings. The Aztecs painted her as a woman with countless breasts; the Peruvians called her 'Mama Allpa,' mother Earth; in the Algonkin tongue, the words for earth, mother, father, are from the same root. Homo, Adam, chamaigenes, what do all these words mean but earth-born, the son of the soil, repeated in the poetic language of Attica in anthropos, he who springs up like a flower?"

Mr. W. J. McGee, treating of "Earth the Home of Man," says (502. 28):—

"In like manner, mankind, offspring of Mother Earth, cradled and nursed through helpless infancy by things earthly, has been brought well towards maturity; and, like the individual man, he is repaying the debt unconsciously assumed at the birth of his kind, by transforming the face of nature, by making all things better than they were before, by aiding the good and destroying the bad among animals and plants, and by protecting the aging earth from the ravages of time and failing strength, even as the child protects his fleshly mother. Such are the relations of earth and man."

The Roman babe had no right to live until the father lifted him up from "mother-earth" upon which he lay; at the baptism of the ancient Mexican child, the mother spoke thus: "Thou Sun, Father of all that live, and thou Earth, our Mother, take ye this child and guard it as your son" (529. 97); and among the Gypsies of northern Hungary, at a baptism, the oldest woman present takes the child out, and, digging a circular trench around the little one, whom she has placed upon the earth, utters the following words: "Like this Earth, be thou strong and great, may thy heart be free from care, be merry as a bird" (392 (1891). 20). All of these practices have their analogues in other parts of the globe.

In another way, infanticide is connected with "mother-earth." In the book of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xiv. 23) we read: "They slew their children in sacrifices." Infanticide—"murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange, and unnatural"—has been sheltered beneath the cloak of religion. The story is one of the darkest pages in the history of man. A priestly legend of the Khonds of India attributes to child-sacrifice a divine origin:—

"In the beginning was the Earth a formless mass of mud, and could not have borne the dwelling of man, or even his weight; in this liquid and ever-moving slime neither tree nor herb took root. Then God said: 'Spill human blood before my face!' And they sacrificed a child before Him. … Falling upon the soil, the bloody drops stiffened and consolidated it."

But too well have the Khonds obeyed the command: "And by the virtues of the blood shed, the seeds began to sprout, the plants to grow, the animals to propagate. And God commanded that the Earth should be watered with blood every new season, to keep her firm and solid. And this has been done by every generation that has preceded us."

More than once "the mother, with her boys and girls, and perhaps even a little child in her arms, were immolated together,"—for sometimes the wretched children, instead of being immediately sacrificed, were allowed to live until they had offspring whose sad fate was determined ere their birth. In the work of Reclus may be read the fearful tale of the cult of "Pennou, the terrible earth-deity, the bride of the great Sun-God" (523. 315).

In Tonga the paleness of the moon is explained by the following legend: Vatea (Day) and Tonga-iti (Night) each claimed the first-born of Papa (Earth) as his own child. After they had quarrelled a great deal, the infant was cut in two, and Vatea, the husband of Papa, "took the upper part as his share, and forthwith squeezed it into a ball and tossed it into the heavens, where it became the sun." But Tonga-iti, in sullen humour, let his half remain on the ground for a day or two. Afterward, however, "seeing the brightness of Vatea's half, he resolved to imitate his example by compressing his share into a ball, and tossing it into the dark sky during the absence of the sun in Avaiki, or netherworld." It became the moon, which is so pale by reason of "the blood having all drained out and decomposition having commenced," before Tonga-iti threw his half up into the sky (458. 45). With other primitive peoples, too, the gods were infanticidal, and many nations like those of Asia Minor, who offered up the virginity of their daughters upon the altars of their deities, hesitated not to slay upon their high places the first innocent pledges of motherhood.

The earth-goddess appears again when the child enters upon manhood, for at Brahman marriages in India, the bridegroom still says to the bride, "I am the sky, thou art the earth, come let us marry" (421. 29).

And last of all, when the ineluctable struggle of death is over, man returns to the "mother-earth"—dust to dust. One of the hymns of the Rig-Veda has these beautiful words, forming part of the funeral ceremonies of the old Hindus:—

"Approach thou now the lap of Earth, thy mother,
The wide-extending Earth, the ever-kindly;
A maiden soft as wool to him who comes with gifts,
She shall protect thee from destruction's bosom.

"Open thyself, O Earth, and press not heavily;
Be easy of access and of approach to him,
As mother with her robe her child,
So do thou cover him, O Earth!" (421. 31).

The study of the mortuary rites and customs of the primitive peoples of all ages of the world's history (548) reveals many instances of the belief that when men, "the common growth of mother-earth," at last rest their heads upon her lap, they do not wholly die, for the immortality of Earth is theirs. Whether they live again,—as little children are often fabled to do,—when Earth laughs with flowers of spring, or become incarnate in other members of the animate or inanimate creation, whose kinship with man and with God is an article of the great folk-creed, or, in the beautiful words of the burial service of the Episcopal Church, sleep "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection," all testifies that man is instinct with the life that throbs in the bosom of Earth, his Mother. As of old, the story ran that man grew into being from the dust, or sprang forth in god-like majesty, so, when death has come, he sinks to dust again, or triumphantly scales the lofty heights where dwell the immortal deities, and becomes "as one of them."

With the idea of the earth-mother are connected the numerous myths of the origin of the first human beings from clay, mould, etc., their provenience from caves, holes in the ground, rocks and mountains, especially those in which the woman is said to have been created first (509. 110). Here belong also not a few ethnic names, for many primitive peoples have seen fit to call themselves "sons of the soil, terrae filii, Landesleute."

Muller and Brinton have much to say of the American earth-goddesses, Toci, "our mother," and goddess of childbirth among the ancient Mexicans (509. 494); the Peruvian Pachamama, "mother-earth," the mother of men (509. 369); the "earth-mother" of the Caribs, who through earthquakes manifests her animation and cheerfulness to her children, the Indians, who forthwith imitate her in joyous dances (509. 221); the "mother-earth" of the Shawnees, of whom the Indian chief spoke, when he was bidden to regard General Harrison as "Father": "No, the sun yonder is my father, and the earth my mother; upon her bosom will I repose," etc. (509. 117).

Among the earth-goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome are Demeter, Ceres, Tellus, Rhea, Terra, Ops, Cybele, Bona Dea, Bona Mater, Magna Mater, Gaea, Ge, whose attributes and ceremonies are described in the books of classical mythology. Many times they are termed "mother of the gods" and "mother of men"; Cybele is sometimes represented as a woman advanced in pregnancy or as a woman with many breasts; Rhea, or Cybele, as the hill-enthroned protectress of cities, was styled Mater turrita.

The ancient Teutons had their Hertha, or Erdemutter, the Nertha of Tacitus, and fragments of the primitive earth-worship linger yet among the folk of kindred stock. The Slavonic peoples had their "earth-mother" also.

The ancient Indian Aryans worshipped Prithîvî-mâtar, "earth-mother," and Dyaus pitar, "sky-father," and in China, Yang, Sky, is regarded as the "father of all things," while Yu, Earth, is the "mother of all things."

Among the ancient Egyptians the "earth-mother," the "parent of all things born," was Isis, the wife of the great Osiris. The natal ceremonies of the Indians of the Sia Pueblo have been described at great length by Mrs. Stevenson (538. 132-143). Before the mother is delivered of her child the priest repeats in a low tone the following prayer:—

"Here is the child's sand-bed. May the child have good thoughts and know its mother-earth, the giver of food. May it have good thoughts and grow from childhood to manhood. May the child be beautiful and happy. Here is the child's bed; may the child be beautiful and happy. Ashes man, let me make good medicine for the child. We will receive the child into our arms, that it may be happy and contented. May it grow from childhood to manhood. May it know its mother Ct'sêt [the first created woman], the Ko'pishtaia, and its mother-earth. May the child have good thoughts and grow from childhood to manhood. May it be beautiful and happy" (538. 134).

On the fourth morning after the birth of the child, the doctress in attendance, "stooping until she almost sits on the ground, bares the child's head as she holds it toward the rising sun, and repeats a long prayer, and, addressing the child, she says: 'I bring you to see your Sun-father and Ko'pishtaia, that you may know them and they you'" (538. 141).

Mother-Mountain.

Though we are now accustomed, by reason of their grandeur and sublimity, to personify mountains as masculine, the old fable of Phædrus about the "mountain in labour, that brought forth a mouse,"—as Horace has it, Montes laborabant et parturitur ridiculus mus,—shows that another concept was not unknown to the ancients. The Armenians call Mount Ararat "Mother of the World" (500. 39), and the Spaniards speak of a chief range of mountains as Sierra Madre. In mining we meet with the "mother-lode," veta, madre, but, curiously enough, the main shaft is called in German Vaterschacht.

We know that the Lapps and some other primitive peoples "transferred to stones the domestic relations of father, mother, and child," or regarded them as children of Mother-Earth (529. 64); "eggs of the earth" they are called in the magic songs of the Finns. In Suffolk, England, "conglomerate is called 'mother of stones,' under the idea that pebbles are born of it"; in Germany Mutterstein. And in litholatry, in various parts of the globe, we have ideas which spring from like conceptions.

Mother-Night.

Milton speaks of the "wide womb of uncreate night," and some of the ancient classical poets call Nox "the mother of all things, of gods as well as men." "The Night is Mother of the Day," says Whittier, and the myth he revives is an old and wide-spread one. "Out of Night is born day, as a child comes forth from the womb of his mother," said the Greek and Roman of old. As Bachofen (6. 16, 219) remarks: "Das Mutterthum verbindet sich mit der Idee der den Tag aus sich gebierenden Nacht, wie das Vaterrecht dem Reiche des Lichts, dem von der Sonne mit der Mutter Nacht gezeugten Tage." Darkness, Night, Earth, Motherhood, seem all akin in the dim light of primitive philosophy. Yet night is not always figured as a woman. James Ferguson, the Scotch poet, tells us how

"Auld Daddy Darkness creeps frae his hole,
Black as a blackamoor, blin' as a mole,"

and holds dominion over earth till "Wee Davie Daylicht comes keekin' owre the hill" (230. 73).

An old Anglo-Saxon name for Christinas was modra-neht, "mother's night."

Mother-Dawn.

In Sanskrit mythology Ushas, "Dawn," is daughter of Heaven, and poetically she is represented as "a young wife awakening her children and giving them new strength for the toils of the new day."

Sometimes she is termed gavam ganitri, "the mother of the cows," which latter mythologists consider to be either "the clouds which pour water on the fields, or the bright mornings which, like cows, are supposed to step out one by one from the stable of the night" (510. 431).

In an ancient Hindu hymn to Ushas we read:—

"She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by men, she made the light by striking down darkness.

"She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows, the leader of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold" (421. 29).

This daughter of the sky was the "lengthener of life, the love of all, the giver of food, riches, blessings." According to Dr. Brinton, the Quiche Indians of Guatemala speak of Xmucane and Xpiyacoc as being "the great ancestress and the great ancestor" of all things. The former is called r'atit zih, r'atit zak, "primal mother of the sun and light" (411. 119).

Mother-Days.

In Russia we meet with the days of the week as "mothers." Perhaps the most remarkable of these is "Mother Friday," a curious product of the mingling of Christian hagiology and Slavonic mythology, of St. Prascovia and the goddess Siwa. On the day sacred to her, "Mother Friday" wanders about the houses of the peasants, avenging herself on such as have been so rash as to sew, spin, weave, etc., on a Friday (520. 206).

In a Wallachian tale appear three supernatural females,—the holy mothers Friday, Wednesday, and Sunday,—who assist the hero in his quest of the heroine, and in another Wallachian story they help a wife to find her lost husband.

"Mother Sunday" is said "to rule the animal world, and can collect her subjects by playing on a magic flute. She is represented as exercising authority over both birds and beasts, and in a Slovak story she bestows on the hero a magic horse" (520. 211). In Bulgaria we even find mother-months, and Miss Garnett has given an account of the superstition of "Mother March" among the women of that country (61.I. 330). William Miller, the poet-laureate of the nursery, sings of Lady Summer:—

"Birdie, birdie, weet your whistle!
Sing a sang to please the wean;
Let it be o' Lady Summer
Walking wi' her gallant train!
Sing him how her gaucy mantle,
Forest-green, trails ower the lea,
Broider'd frae the dewy hem o't
Wi' the field flowers to the knee!

"How her foot's wi' daisies buskit,
Kirtle o' the primrose hue,
And her e'e sae like my laddie's,
Glancing, laughing, loving blue!
How we meet on hill and valley,
Children sweet as fairest flowers,
Buds and blossoms o' affection,
Rosy wi' the sunny hours" (230. 161).

Mother-Sun.

In certain languages, as in Modern German, the word for "sun" is feminine, and in mythology the orb of day often appears as a woman. The German peasant was wont to address the sun and the moon familiarly as "Frau Sonne" and "Herr Mond," and in a Russian folk-song a fair maiden sings (520. 184):—

"My mother is the beauteous Sun,
And my father, the bright Moon;
My brothers are the many Stars,
And my sisters the white Dawns."

Jean Paul beautifully terms the sun "Sonne, du Mutterauge der Welt!" and Hölty sings: "Geh aus deinem Gezelt, Mutter des Tags hervor, und vergülde die wache Welt"; in another passage the last writer thus apostrophizes the sun: "Heil dir, Mutter des Lichts!" These terms "mother-eye of the world," "mother of day," "mother of light," find analogues in other tongues. The Andaman Islanders have their chän-a bô-dô, "mother-sun" (498. 96), and certain Indians of Brazil call the sun coaraçy, "mother of the day or earth." In their sacred language the Dakota Indians speak of the sun as "grandmother" and the moon as "grandfather." The Chiquito Indians "used to call the sun their mother, and, at every eclipse of the sun, they would shoot their arrows so as to wound it; they would let loose their dogs, who, they thought, went instantly to devour the moon" (100. 289).

The Yuchi Indians called themselves "children of the sun." Dr. Gatschet tells us: "The Yuchis believe themselves to be the offspring of the sun, which they consider to be a female. According to one myth, a couple of human beings were born from her monthly efflux, and from, these the Yuchis afterward originated." Another myth of the same people says: "An unknown mysterious being once came down upon the earth and met people there who were the ancestors of the Yuchi Indians. To them this being (Hi'ki, or Ka'la hi'ki) taught many of the arts of life, and in matters of religion admonished them to call the sun their mother as a matter of worship" (389 (1893). 280).

Mother-Moon.

Shelley sings of

"That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,"

and in other languages besides Latin the word for moon is feminine, and the lunar deity a female, often associated with childbirth. The moon-goddesses of the Orient—Diana (Juno), Astarte, Anahita, etc.—preside over the beginnings of human life. Not a few primitive peoples have thought of the moon as mother. The ancient Peruvians worshipped Mama-Quilla, "mother-moon," and the Hurons regarded Ataensic, the mother or grandmother of Jouskeha, the sun, as the "creatress of earth and man," as well as the goddess of death and of the souls of the departed (509. 363). The Tarahumari Indians of the Sierra of Chihuahua, Mexico, call the sun au-nau-ru-a-mi, "high father," and the moon, je-ru-a-mi, "high mother." The Tupi Indians of Brazil term the moon jacy, "our mother," and the same name occurs in the Omagua and other members of this linguistic stock. The Muzo Indians believe that the sun is their father and the moon their mother (529. 95).

Horace calls the moon siderum regina, and Apuleius, regina coeli, and Milton writes of

"mooned Ashtaroth,
Heaven's queen and mother both."

Froebel's verses, "The Little Girl and the Stars," are stated to be based upon the exclamation of the child when seeing two large stars close together in the heavens, "Father-Mother-Star," and a further instance of like nature is cited where the child applied the word "mother" to the moon.

Mother-Fire.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, taught that the world was created from fire, the omnipotent and omniscient essence, and with many savage and barbaric peoples fire-worship has nourished or still flourishes. The Indie Aryans of old produced fire by the method of the twirling stick, and in their symbolism "the turning stick, Pramanta, was the father of the god of fire; the immovable stick was the mother of the adorable and luminous Agni [fire]"—a concept far-reaching in its mystic and mythological relations (100. 564).

According to Mr. Gushing the Zuñi Indians term fire the "Grandmother of
Men."

In their examination of the burial-places of the ancient Indian population of the Salado River Valley in Arizona, the Hemenway Exploring Expedition found that many children were buried near the kitchen hearths. Mr. Cushing offers the following explanation of this custom, which finds analogies in various parts of the world: "The matriarchal grandmother, or matron of the household deities, is the fire. It is considered the guardian, as it is also, being used for cooking, the principal 'source of life' of the family. The little children being considered unable to care for themselves, were placed, literally, under the protection of the family fire that their soul-life might be nourished, sustained, and increased" (501. 149). Boecler tells us that the Esthonian bride "consecrates her new home and hearth by an offering of money cast into the fire, or laid on the oven, for Tule-ema, [the] Fire Mother" (545. II. 285). In a Mongolian wedding-song there is an invocation of "Mother Ut, Queen of Fire," who is said to have come forth "when heaven and earth divided," and to have issued "from the footsteps of Mother-Earth." She is further said to have "a manly son, a beauteous daughter-in-law, bright daughters" (484. 38).

Mother-Water.

The poet Homer and the philosopher Thales of Miletus agreed in regarding water as the primal element, the original of all existences, and their theory has supporters among many primitive peoples. At the baptism festivals of their children, the ancient Mexicans recognized the goddess of the waters. At sunrise the midwife addressed the child, saying, among other things: "Be cleansed with thy mother, Chalchihuitlicue, the goddess of water." Then, placing her dripping finger upon the child's lips, she continued: "Take this, for on it thou must live, grow, become strong, and flourish. Through it we receive all our needs. Take it." And, again, "We are all in the hands of Chalchihuitlicue, our mother"; as she washed the child she uttered the formula: "Bad, whatever thou art, depart, vanish, for the child lives anew and is born again; it is once more cleansed, once more renewed through our mother Chalchihuitlicue." As she lifted the child up into the air, she prayed, "O Goddess, Mother of Water, fill this child with thy power and virtue" (326. I. 263).

In their invocation for the restoration of the spirit to the body, the Nagualists,—a native American mystic sect,—of Mexico and Central America, make appeal to "Mother mine, whose robe is of precious gems," i.e. water, regarded as "the universal mother." The "robe of precious stones" refers to "the green or vegetable life" resembling the green of precious stones. Another of her names is the "Green Woman,"—a term drawn from "the greenness which follows moisture" (413. 52-54).

The idea of water as the source of all things appears also in the cosmology of the Indie Aryans. In one of the Vedic hymns it is stated that water existed before even the gods came into being, and the Rig-veda tells us that "the waters contained a germ from which everything else sprang forth." This is plainly a myth of the motherhood of the waters, for in the Brâhmanas we are told that from the water arose an egg, from which came forth after a year Pragâpati, the creator (510. 248). Variants of this myth of the cosmic egg are found in other quarters of the globe.

Mother-Ocean.

The Chinchas of Peru looked upon the sea as the chief deity and the mother of all things, and the Peruvians worshipped Mama-Cocha, "mother sea" (509. 368), from which had come forth everything, even animals, giants, and the Indians themselves. Associated with Mama-Cocha was the god Vira-Cocha, "sea-foam." In Peru water was revered everywhere,—rivers and canals, fountains and wells,—and many sacrifices were made to them, especially of certain sea-shells which were thought to be "daughters of the sea, the mother of all waters." The traditions of the Incas point to an origin from Lake Titicaca, and other tribes fabled their descent from fountains and streams (412. 204). Here belong, doubtless, some of the myths of the sea-born deities of classical mythology as well as those of the water-origin of the first of the human race, together with kindred conceits of other primitive peoples.

In the Bengalese tale of "The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead," recorded by Day, the hero pleads: "O mother Ocean, please make way for me, or else I die" (426. 250), and passes on in safety. The poet Swinburne calls the sea "fair, white mother," "green-girdled mother," "great, sweet mother, mother and lover of men, the sea."

Mother-River.

According to Russian legend "the Dnieper, Volga, and Dvina used once to be living people. The Dnieper was a boy, and the Volga and Dvina his sisters." The Russians call their great river "Mother Volga," and it is said that, in the seventeenth century, a chief of the Don Cossacks, inflamed with wine, sacrificed to the mighty stream a Persian princess, accompanying his action with these words: "O Mother Volga, thou great River! much hast thou given me of gold and of silver, and of all good things; thou hast nursed me and nourished me, and covered me with glory and honor. But I have in no way shown thee my gratitude. Here is somewhat for thee; take it!" (520. 217-220).

In the Mahábhárata, the great Sanskrit epic, King Sántanu is said to have walked by the side of the river one day, where "he met and fell in love with a beautiful girl, who told him that she was the river Ganges, and could only marry him on condition he never questioned her conduct. To this he, with a truly royal gallantry, agreed; and she bore him several children, all of whom she threw into the river as soon as they were born. At last she bore him a boy, Bhíshma; and her husband begged her to spare his life, whereupon she instantly changed into the river Ganges and flowed away" (258. 317). Similar folk-tales are to be met with in other parts of the world, and the list of water-sprites and river-goddesses is almost endless. Greater than "Mother Volga," is "Mother Ganges," to whom countless sacrifices have been made. In the language of the Caddo Indians, the Mississippi is called báhat sássin, "mother of rivers."

Mother-Plant.

The ancient Peruvians had their "Mother Maize," Mama Cora, which they worshipped with a sort of harvest-home having, as Andrew Lang points out, something in common with the children's last sheaf, in the north-country (English and Scotch) "kernaby," as well as with the "Demeter of the threshing-floor," of whom Theocritus speaks (484. 18).

An interesting legend of the Indians of the Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico is recorded by Muller (509. 60). Ages ago there dwelt on the green plains a beautiful woman, who refused all wooers, though they brought many precious gifts. It came to pass that the land was sore distressed by dearth and famine, and when the people appealed to the woman she gave them maize in plenty. One day, she lay asleep naked; a rain-drop falling upon her breast, she conceived and bore a son, from whom are descended the people who built the "Casas Grandes." Dr. Fewkes cites a like myth of the Hopi or Tusayan Indians in which appears kó-kyan-wüq-ti, "the spider woman," a character possessing certain attributes of the Earth-Mother. Speaking of certain ceremonies in which Cá-li-ko, the corn-goddess, figures, he calls attention to the fact that "in initiations an ear of corn is given to the novice as a symbolic representation of mother. The corn is the mother of all initiated persons of the tribe" (389 (1894). 48).

Mr. Lummis also speaks of "Mother Corn" among the Pueblos Indians: "A flawless ear of pure white corn (type of fertility and motherhood) is decked out with a downy mass of snow-white feathers, and hung with ornaments of silver, coral, and the precious turquoise" (302. 72).

Concerning the Pawnee Indians, Mr. Grinnell tells us that after the separation of the peoples, the boy (medicine-man) who was with the few who still remained at the place from which the others had departed, going their different ways, found in the sacred bundle—the Shekinah of the tribe—an ear of corn. To the people he said: "We are to live by this, this is our Mother." And from "Mother Corn" the Indians learned how to make bows and arrows. When these Indians separated into three bands (according to the legend), the boy broke off the nub of the ear and gave it to the Mandans, the big end he gave to the Pawnees, and the middle to the Rees. This is why, at the present time, the Pawnees have the best and largest corn, the Rees somewhat inferior, and the Mandans the shortest of all—since they planted the pieces originally given them (480 (1893). 125).

The old Mexicans had in Cinteotl a corn-goddess and deity of fertility in whose honour even human sacrifices were made. She was looked upon as "the producer," especially of children, and sometimes represented with a child in her arms (509. 491).

In India there is a regular cult of the holy basil (Ocymum sanetum), or Tulasî, as it is called, which appears to be a transformation of the goddess Lakshmî. It may be gathered for pious purposes only, and in so doing the following prayer is offered: "Mother Tulasî, be thou propitious. If I gather thee with care, be merciful unto me. O Tulasî, mother of the world, I beseech thee." This plant is worshipped as a deity,—the wife of Vishnu, whom the breaking of even a little twig grieves and torments,—and "the pious Hindus invoke the divine herb for the protection of every part of the body, for life and for death, and in every action of life; but above all, in its capacity of ensuring children to those who desire to have them." To him who thoughtlessly or wilfully pulls up the plant "no happiness, no health, no children." The Tulasî opens the gates of heaven; hence on the breast of the pious dead is placed a leaf of basil, and the Hindu "who has religiously planted and cultivated the Tulasî, obtains the privilege of ascending to the palace of Vishnu, surrounded by ten millions of parents" (448. 244).

In Denmark, there is a popular belief that in the elder (Sambucus) there lives a spirit or being known as the "elder-mother" (hylde-moer), or "elder-woman" (hilde-qvinde), and before elder-branches may be cut this petition is uttered: "Elder-mother, elder-mother, allow me to cut thy branches." In Lower Saxony the peasant repeats, on bended knees, with hands folded, three times the words: "Lady Elder, give me some of thy wood; then will I also give thee some of mine, when it grows in the forest" (448. 318-320). In Huntingdonshire, England, the belief in the "elder-mother" is found, and it is thought dangerous to pluck the flowers, while elder-wood, in a room, or used for a cradle, is apt to work evil for children. In some parts of England, it is believed that boys beaten with an elder stick will be retarded in their growth; in Sweden, women who are about to become mothers kiss the elder. In Germany, a somewhat similar personification of the juniper, "Frau Wachholder," exists. And here we come into touch with the dryads and forest-sprites of all ages, familiar to us in the myths of classic antiquity and the tales of the nursery (448. 396).

In a Bengalese tale, the hero, on coming to a forest, cries: "O mother kachiri, please make way for me, or else I die," and the wood opens to let him pass through (426. 250).

Perhaps the best and sweetest story of plant mythology under this head is Hans Christian Andersen's beautiful tale of "The Elder-Tree Mother,"—the Dryad whose name is Remembrance (393. 215).

Mother-Thumb.

Our word thumb signifies literally "thick or big finger," and the same idea occurs in other languages. With not a few primitive peoples this thought takes another turn, and, as in the speech of the Karankawas, an extinct Indian tribe of Texas, "the biggest, or thickest finger is called 'father, mother, or old'" (456. 68). The Creek Indians of the Southeastern United States term the "thumb" ingi itchki, "the hand its mother," and a like meaning attaches to the Chickasaw ilbak-ishke, Hichiti ilb-iki, while the Muskogees call the "thumb," the "mother of fingers." It is worthy of note, that, in the Bakaïri language of Brazil, the thumb is called "father," and the little finger, "child," or "little one" (536. 406). In Samoa the "thumb" is named lima-matua, "forefather of the hand," and the "first finger" lima-tama, "child of the hand." In the Tshi language of Western Africa a finger is known as ensah-tsia-abbah, "little child of the hand," and in some other tongues of savage or barbaric peoples "fingers" are simply "children of the hand."

Professor Culin in his notes of "Palmistry in China and Japan," says: "The thumb, called in Japanese, oya-ubi, 'parent-finger,' is for parents. The little finger, called in Japanese, ko-ubi, 'child-finger,' is for children; the index-finger is for uncle, aunt, and elder brother and elder sister. The third finger is for younger brother and younger sister" (423a). A short little finger indicates childlessness, and lines on the palm of the hand, below the little finger, children. There are very many nursery-games and rhymes of various sorts based upon the hand and fingers, and in not a few of these the thumb and fingers play the rôle of mother and children. Froebel seized upon this thought to teach the child the idea of the family. His verses are well-known:—

"Das ist die Groszmama,
Das ist der Groszpapa,
Das ist der Vater,
Das ist die Mutter,
Das ist's kleine Kindchen ja;
Seht die ganze Familie da.
Das ist die Mutter lieb und gut,
Das ist der Vater mit frohem Muth;
Das ist der Bruder lang und grosz;
Das ist die Schwester mit Puppchen im Schoosz;
Und dies ist das Kindchen, noch klein und zart,
Und dies die Familie von guter Art."

Referring to Froebel's games, Elizabeth Harrison remarks:—

"In order that this activity, generally first noticed in the use of the hands, might be trained into right and ennobling habits, rather than be allowed to degenerate into wrong and often degrading ones, Froebel arranged his charming set of finger-games for the mother to teach her babe while he is yet in her arms; thus establishing the right activity before the wrong one can assert itself. In such little songs as the following:—

'This is the mother, good and dear;
This the father, with hearty cheer;
This is the brother, stout and tall;
This is the sister, who plays with her doll;
And this is the baby, the pet of all.
Behold the good family, great and small,'

the child is led to personify his fingers and to regard them as a small but united family over which he has control." (257 a. 14).

Miss Wiltse, who devotes a chapter of her little volume to "Finger-songs related to Family Life and the Imaginative Faculty," says:—

"The dawning consciousness of the child so turned to the family relations is surely better than the old nursery method of playing 'This little pig went to market'" (384. 45).

And from the father and mother the step to God is easy.

Dr. Brewer informs us that in the Greek and Roman Church the Trinity is symbolized by the thumb and first two fingers: "The thumb, being strong, represents the Father; the long, or second finger, Jesus Christ; and the first finger, the Holy Ghost, which proceedeth from the Father and the Son" (Dict. of Phrase and Fable, P. 299).

Mother-God.

The "Motherhood of God" is an expression that still sounds somewhat strangely to our ears. We have come to speak readily enough of the "Fatherhood of God" and the "Brotherhood of Man," but only a still small voice has whispered of the "Motherhood of God" and the "Sisterhood of Woman." Yet there have been in the world, as, indeed, there are now, multitudes to whom the idea of Heaven without a mother is as blank as that of the home without her who makes it. If over the human babe bends the human mother who is its divinity,—

"The infant lies in blessed ease
Upon his mother's breast;
No storm, no dark, the baby sees
Invade his heaven of rest.
He nothing knows of change or death—
Her face his holy skies;
The air he breathes, his mother's breath—
His stars, his mother's eyes,"—

so over the infant-race must bend the All-Mother, das Ewigweibliche. Perhaps the greatest service that the Roman Catholic Church has rendered to mankind is the prominence given in its cult of the Virgin Mary to the mother-side of Deity. In the race's final concept of God, the embodiment of all that is pure and holy, there must surely be some overshadowing of a mother's tender love. With the "Father-Heart" of the Almighty must be linked the "Mother-Soul." To some extent, at least, we may expect a harking back to the standpoint of the Buddhist Kalmuck, whose child is taught to pray: "O God, who art my father and my mother."

In all ages and over the whole world peoples of culture less than ours have had their "mother-gods," all the embodiments of motherhood, the joy of the Magnificat, the sacrosanct expression of the poet's truth:—

"Close to the mysteries of God art thou,
My brooding mother-heart,"

the recognition of that outlasting secret hope and love, of which the Gospel writer told in the simple words: "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother," and faith in which was strong in the Mesopotamians of old, who prayed to the goddess Istar, "May thy heart be appeased as the heart of a mother who has borne children." The world is at its best when the last, holiest appeal is ad matrem. Professor O.T. Mason has eloquently stated the debt of the world's religions to motherhood (112. 12):—"The mother-goddess of all peoples, culminating in the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, is an idea either originated by women, or devised to satisfy their spiritual cravings. So we may go through the pantheons of all peoples, finding counterparts of Rhea, mother-earth, goddess of fertility; Hera, queen of harvests, feeder of mankind; Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home, of families and states, giving life and warmth; Aphrodite, the beautiful, patron of romantic love and personal charms; Hera, sovereign lady, divine caciquess, embodiment of queenly dignity; Pallas Athene, ideal image of that central inspiring force that we learn at our mother's knee, and that shone in eternal splendour; Isis, the goddess of widowhood, sending forth her son Horus, to avenge the death of his father, Osiris; as moon-goddess, keeping alive the light until the sun rises again to bless the world."

The All-Mother.

In Polynesian mythology we find, dwelling in the lowest depths of Avaiki (the interior of the universe), the "Great Mother,"—the originator of all things, Vari-ma-te-takere, "the very beginning,"—and her pet child, Tu-metua, "Stick by the parent," her last offspring, inseparable from her. All of her children were born of pieces of flesh which she plucked off her own body; the first-born was the man-fish Vatea, "father of gods and men," whose one eye is the sun, the other the moon; the fifth child was Raka, to whom his mother gave the winds in a basket, and "the children of Raka are the numerous winds and storms which distress mankind. To each child is allotted a hole at the edge of the horizon, through which he blows at pleasure." In the songs the gods are termed "the children of Vatea," and the ocean is sometimes called "the sea of Vatea." Mr. Gill tells us that "the Great Mother approximates nearest to the dignity of creator"; and, curiously enough, the word Vari, "beginning," signifies, on the island of Rarotonga, "mud," showing that "these people imagined that once the world was a 'chaos of mud,' out of which some mighty unseen agent, whom they called Vari, evolved the present order of things" (458. 3, 21).

Another "All-Mother" is she of whom our own poets have sung, "Nature," the source and sustainer of all.

Mother-Nature.

"So übt Natur die Mutterpflicht," sang the poet Schiller, and "Mother Nature" is the key-word of those modern poets who, in their mystic philosophy, consciously or unconsciously, revive the old mythologies. With primitive peoples the being, growing power of the universe was easily conceived as feminine and as motherly. Nature is the "great parent," the "gracious mother," of us all. In "Mother Nature," woman, the creator of the earliest arts of man, is recognized and personified, and in a wider sense even than the poet dreamt of: "One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."

Pindar declared that "gods and men are sons of the same mother," and with many savage and barbaric tribes, gods, men, animals, and all other objects, animate and inanimate, are akin(388.210). As Professor Robertson Smith has said: "The same lack of any sharp distinction between the nature of different kinds of visible beings appears in the old myths in which all kinds of objects, animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic, appear as cognate with one another, with men, and with the gods" (535.85). Mr. Hartland, speaking of this stage of thought, says: "Sun and moon, the wind and the waters, perform all the functions of living beings; they speak, they eat, they marry and have children" (258.26). The same idea is brought out by Count D'Alviella: "The highest point of development that polytheism could reach, is found in the conception of a monarchy or divine family, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even the whole universe" (388.211). Mr. Frank Cushing attributes like beliefs in the kinship of all existences to the Zuni Indians (388.66), and Mr. im Thurn to the Indians of Guiana (388.99).

This feeling of kinship to all that is, is beautifully expressed in the words of the dying Greek Klepht: "Do not say that I am dead, but say that I am married in the sorrowful, strange countries, that I have taken the flat stone for a mother-in-law, the black earth for my wife, and the little pebbles for brothers-in-law." (Lady Verney, Essays, II. 39.)

In the Trinity of Upper Egypt the second person was Mut, "Mother
Nature." the others being Armin, the chief god, and their son, Khuns.

Among the Slavs, according to Mone, Ziwa is a nature-goddess, and the Wends regard her as "many-breasted Mother Nature," the producing and nourishing power of the earth. Her consort is Zibog, the god of life (125. II. 23).

Curiously reminiscent of the same train of ideas which has given to the moderson of Low German the signification of "bastard," is our own equivalent term "natural son."

Poets and orators have not failed to appeal to "Mother Nature" and to sing her panegyrics, but there is perhaps nothing more sweet and noble than the words of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme," and the verses of Longfellow:—

"And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying, 'Here is a story-book
Thy Father has—written for thee.

"'Come wander with me,' she said,
'Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread,
In the manuscripts of God.'

"And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him, night and day,
The rhymes of the universe.

"And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She—would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale."

Through the long centuries Nature has been the mother, nurse, and teacher of man.

Other Mother-Goddesses.

Among other "mother-goddesses" of ancient Italy we find Maia Mater, Flora Mater, both deities of growth and reproduction; Lua Mater, "the loosing mother," a goddess of death; Acca Larentia, the mother of the Lares (Acca perhaps = Atta, a child-word for mother, as Lippert suggests); Mater matuta, "mother of the dawn," a goddess of child-birth, worshipped especially by married women, and to whom there was erected a temple at Cære.

The mother-goddesses of Germany are quite numerous. Among those minor ones cited by Grimm and Simrock, are: Haulemutter, Mutter Holle, the Klagemütter or Klagemuhmen, Pudelmutter (a name applied to the goddess Berchta), Etelmutter, Kornmutter, Roggenmutter, Mutterkorn, and the interesting Buschgroszmutter, "bush grandmother," as the "Queen of the Wood-Folk" is called. Here the mother-feeling has been so strong as to grant to even the devil a mother and a grandmother, who figure in many proverbs and folk-locutions. When the question is asked a Mecklenburger, concerning a social gathering: "Who was there?" he may answer: "The devil and his mother (möm)"; when a whirlwind occurs, the saying is: "The Devil is dancing with his grandmother."

In China the position of woman is very low, and, as Mr. Douglas points out: "It is only when a woman becomes a mother that she receives the respect which is by right due to her, and then the inferiority of her sex disappears before the requirements of filial love, which is the crown and glory of China" (434. 125).

In Chinese cosmogony and mythology motherhood finds recognition. Besides the great Earth-Mother, we meet with Se-wang-moo, the "Western Royal Mother," a goddess of fairy-land, and the "Mother of Lightning," thunder being considered the "father and teacher of all living beings." Lieh-tze, a philosopher of the fifth century B.C., taught: "My body is not my own; I am merely an inhabitant of it for the time being, and shall resign it when I return to the 'Abyss Mother'" (434. 222, 225, 277).

In the Flowery Kingdom there is also a sect "who worship the goddess
Pity, in the form of a woman holding a child in her arms."

Among the deities and semi-deities of the Andaman Islanders are chän·a·ê·lewadi, the "mother of the race,"—Mother E·lewadi; chän·a·erep, chän·a·châ·riâ, chän·a·te·liu, chän·a·li·mi, chän·a·jär·a·ngûd, all inventors and discoverers of foods and the arts. In the religious system of the Andaman Islanders, Pû·luga-, the Supreme Being, by whom were created "the world and all objects, animate and inanimate, excepting only the powers of evil," and of whom it is said, "though his appearance is like fire, yet he is (nowadays) invisible," is "believed to live in a large stone house in the sky with a wife whom he created for himself; she is green in appearance, and has two names, chän·a·àu·lola (Mother Freshwater Shrimp) and chän·a·pâ·lak-—(Mother Eel); by her he has a large family, all except the eldest being girls; these last, known as mô·ro-win— (sky-spirits or angels), are said to be black in appearance, and, with their mother, amuse themselves from time to time by throwing fish and prawns into the streams and sea for the use of the inhabitants of the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman was chän·a·ê·lewadi (Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after her ê·lewadi" (498. 96):

Quite frequently we find that primitive peoples have ascribed the origin of the arts or of the good things of life to women whom they have canonized as saints or apotheosized into deities.

We may close our consideration of motherhood and what it has given the world with the apt words of Zmigrodzki:—

"The history of the civilization (Kulturgeschichte) of our race, is, so to speak, the history of the mother-influence. Our ideas of morality, justice, order, all these are simply mother-ideas. The mother began our culture in that epoch in which, like the man, she was autodidactic. In the epoch of the Church Fathers, the highly educated mother saved our civilization and gave it a new turn, and only the highly educated mother will save us out of the moral corruption of our age. Taken individually also, we can mark the ennobling, elevating influence which educated mothers have exercised over our great men. Let us strive as much as possible to have highly accomplished mothers, wives, friends, and then the wounds which we receive in the struggle for life will not bleed as they do now" (174. 367).

The history of civilization is the story of the mother, a story that stales not with repetition. Richter, in his Levana, makes eloquent appeal:—

"Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother! On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who marked out for us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O woman, to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death. Be, then, the mothers of your children."

Tennyson in The Foresters uses these beautiful words: "Every man for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour." Herein lies the whole philosophy of life. The ancient Germans were right, who, as Tacitus tells us, saw in woman sanctum aliquid et providum, as indeed the Modern German Weib (cognate with our wife) also declares, the original signification of the word being "the animated, the inspirited."

CHAPTER IV.

THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE FATHER.

If the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; and with a father, we have as yet a prophet, priest, and king, and an obedience that makes us free.—Carlyle.

To you your father should be as a god.—Shakespeare.

Our Father, who art in Heaven.—Jesus.

Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.—Pope.

Names of the Father.

Father, like mother, is a very old word, and goes back, with the cognate terms in Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Indo-Aryan speech, to the primitive Indo-European language, and, like mother, it is of uncertain etymology.

An English preacher of the twelfth century sought to derive the word from the Anglo-Saxon fédan, "to feed," making the "father" to be the "feeder" or "nourisher," and some more modern attempts at explanation are hardly better. This etymology, however incorrect, as it certainly is, in English, does find analogies in the tongues of primitive peoples. In the language of the Klamath Indians, of Oregon, the word for "father" is t'shishap (in the Modoc dialect, p'tishap), meaning "feeder, nourisher," from a radical tshi, which signifies "to give somebody liquid food (as milk, water)." Whether there is any real connection between our word pap,—with its cognates in other languages,—which signifies "food for infants," as well as "teat, breast," and the child-word papa, "father," is doubtful, and the same may be said of the attempt to find a relation between teat, tit, etc., and the widespread child-words for "father," tat, dad. Wedgewood (Introd. to Dictionary), however, maintained that: "Words formed of the simplest articulations, ma and pa, are used to designate the objects in which the infant takes the earliest interest,—the mother, the father, the mother's breast, the act of taking or sucking food." Tylor also points out how, in the language of children of to-day, we may find a key to the origin of a mass of words for "father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast, toy, doll," etc. From the limited supply of material at the disposal of the early speakers of a language, we can readily understand how the same sound had to serve for the connotation of different ideas; this is why "mama means in one tongue mother, in another father, in a third, uncle; dada in one language father, in a second nurse, in another breast; tata in one language father, in another son," etc. The primitive Indo-European p-tr, Skeat takes to be formed, with the agent-suffix tr, from the radical pâ, "to protect, to guard,"—the father having been originally looked upon as the "protector," or "guarder." Max Müller, who offers the same derivation, remarks: "The father, as begetter, was called in Sanskrit ganitár, as protector and supporter of his posterity, however, pitár. For this reason, in the Veda both names together are used in order to give the complete idea of 'father.' In like manner, mâtar, 'mother,' is joined with ganit, 'genetrix,' and this shows that the word mâtar must have soon lost its etymological signification and come to be a term, of respect and caress. With the oldest Indo-Europeans, mâtar meant 'maker,' from mâ, 'to form.'"

Kluge, however, seems to reject the interpretation "protector, defender," and to see in the word a derivative from the "nature-sound" pa. So also Westermarck (166. 86-94). In Gothic, presumably the oldest of the Teutonic dialects, the most common word for "father" is atta, still seen in the name of the far-famed leader of the Huns, Attila, i.e. "little father," and in the ätti of modern Swiss dialects. To the same root attach themselves Sanskrit atta, "mother, elder sister"; Ossetic ädda, "little father (Väterchen)"; Greek årra, Latin atta, "father"; Old Slavonic otí-ci, "little father"; Old Irish aite, "foster-father." Atta belongs to the category of "nature-words" or "nursery-words" of which our dad (daddy) is also a member.

Another member is the widespread papa, pa. Our word papa, Skeat thinks, is borrowed, through the French, from Latin papa, found as a Roman cognomen. This goes back in all probability to ancient Greek, for, in the Odyssey (vi. 57), Nausicaa addresses her father as [Greek: pappa phile], "dear papa." The Papa of German is also borrowed from French, and, according to Kluge, did not secure a firm, place in the language until comparatively late in the eighteenth century.

In some of the Semitic languages the word for "father" signifies "maker," and the same thing occurs elsewhere among primitive people (166. 91).

As with "mother," so with "father"; in many languages a man (or a boy) does not employ the same term as a woman (or a girl). In the Haida, Okanak'en, and Kootenay, all Indian languages of British Columbia, the words used by males and by females are, respectively: kun, qat; lEe'u, mistm; tito, so.

In many languages the word for "father," as is also the case with "mother," is different when the parent is addressed from that used when he is spoken of or referred to. In the Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Ntlakyapamuq, four Indian languages of British Columbia, the words for "father" when addressed, are respectively a'bo, ats, no'we, pap, and for "father" in other cases, nEgua'at, au'mp, nuwe'k'so, ska'tsa. Here, again, it will be noticed that the words used in address seem shorter and more primitive in character.

In the Chinantee language of Mexico, nuh signifies at the same time "father" and "man." In Gothic aba means both "father" and "husband" (492. 33). Here belongs also perhaps the familiar "father" with which the New England housewife was wont to address her husband.

With many peoples the name "father" is applied to others than the male parent of the child. The following remarks of McLennan, regarding the Tamil and Telugu of India, will stand for not a few other primitive tribes: "All the brothers of a father are usually called fathers, but, in strictness, those who are older than the father are called great fathers, and those who are younger, little fathers. With the Puharies, all the brothers of a father are equally fathers to his children." In Hawaii, the term "male parent" "applied equally to the father, to the uncles, and even to distant relations." In Japan, the paternal uncle is called "little father" and the maternal uncle "second little father" (100. 389, 391).

A lengthy discussion of these terms, with a wealth of illustration from many primitive languages, will be found in Westermarck (166. 86-94).

Father-Right.

Of the Roman family it has been said: "It was a community comprising men and things. The members were maintained by adoption as well as by consanguinity. The father was before all things the chief, the general administrator. He was called father even when he had no son; paternity was a question of law, not one of persons. The heir is no more than the continuing line of the deceased person; he was heir in spite of himself for the honour of the defunct, for the lares, the hearth, the manes, and the hereditary sepulchre" (100. 423). In ancient Rome the paterfamilias and the patina potestas are seen in their extreme types. Letourneau remarks further: "Absolute master, both of things and of people, the paterfamilias had the right to kill his wife and to sell his sons. Priest and king in turn, it was he who represented the family in their domestic worship; and when, after his death, he was laid by the side of his ancestors in the common tomb, he was deified, and helped to swell the number of the household gods" (100. 433).

Post thus defines the system of "father-right":—

"In the system of 'father-right' the child is related only to the father and to the persons connected with him through the male line, but not with his mother and the persons connected with him through the female line. The narrowest group organized according to father-right consists of the father and his children. The mother, for the most part, appears in the condition of a slave to the husband. To the patriarchal family in the wider sense belong the children of the sons of the father, but not the children of his daughters; the brothers and sisters of the same father, but not those merely related to the same mother; the children of the brother of the same father, but not the children of the sisters of the same father, etc. With every wife the relationship ceases every time" (127. I. 24).

The system of father-right is found scattered over the whole globe. It is found among the Indo-European peoples (Aryans of Asia, Germans, Slavs, Celts, Romans), the Mongol-Tartar tribes, Chinese, Japanese, and some of the Semitic nations; in northern Africa and scattered through the western part of the continent, among the Kaffirs and Hottentots; among some tribes in Australia and Polynesia and the two Americas (the culture races).

The position of the father among those peoples with whom strict mother-right prevails is thus sketched by Zmigrodski (174.206):—

"The only certain thing was motherhood and the maternal side of the family,—mother, daughter, granddaughter, that was the fixed stem continuing with certainty. Father, son, grandson, were only the leaves, which existed only until the autumnal wind of death tore them away, to hurl them into the abyss of oblivion. In that epoch no one said, 'I am the son of such a father and the grandson of such a grandfather,' but 'I am the son of such a mother and the grandson of such a grandmother.' The inheritance went not to the son and grandson, but to the daughter and to the granddaughter, and the sons received a dowry as do the daughters in our society of to-day. In marriage the woman did not assume the name of the man, but vice versa. The husband of a woman, although the father of her children, was considered not so near a relative of them as the wife's brother, their uncle."

Dr. Brinton says, concerning mother-right among the Indians of North
America (412. 48):—

"Her children looked upon her as their parent, but esteemed their father as no relation whatever. An unusually kind and intelligent Kolosch Indian was chided by a missionary for allowing his father to suffer for food. 'Let him go to his own people,' replied the Kolosch, 'they should look after him.' He did not regard a man as in any way related or bound to his paternal parent."

In a certain Polynesian mythological tale, the hero is a young man, "the name of whose father had never been told by his mother," and this has many modern parallels (115. 97). On the Gold Coast of West Africa there is a proverb, "Wise is the son that knows his own father" (127.1. 24), a saying found elsewhere in the world,—indeed, we have it also in English, and Shakespeare presents but another view of it when he tells us: "It is a wise father that knows his own child."

In many myths and folk-and fairy-tales of all peoples the discovery by the child of its parent forms the climax, or at least one of the chief features of the plot; and we have also those stories which tell how parents have been killed unwittingly by their own children, or children have been slain unawares by their parents.

Father-King.

In his interesting study of "Royalty and Divinity" (75), Dr. von Held has pointed out many resemblances between the primitive concepts "King" and "God." Both, it would seem, stand in close connection with "Father." To quote from Dr. von Held: "Fathership (Vaterschaft, patriarcha), lordship (Herrentum), and kingship (Konigtum) are, therefore (like rex and [Greek: Basileus]), ideas not only linguistically, but, to even a greater degree really, cognate, having altogether very close relationship to the word and idea 'God.' Of necessity they involve the existence and idea of a people, and therefore are related not only to the world of faith, but also to that of intellect and of material things."

The Emperor of China is the "father and mother of the empire," his millions of subjects being his "children"; and the ancient Romans had no nobler title for their emperor than pater patrice, the "father of his country," an appellation bestowed in these later days upon the immortal first President of the United States.

In the Yajnavalkya, one of the old Sanskrit law-books, the king is bidden to be "towards servants and subjects as a father" (75. 122), and even Mirabeau and Gregoire, in the first months of the States-General, termed the king "le pere de tous les Franqais," while Louis XII. and Henry IV. of France, as well as Christian III. of Denmark, had given to them the title "father of the people." The name pater patrice was not borne by the Caesars alone, for the Roman Senate conferred the title upon Cicero, and offered it to Marius, who refused to accept it. "Father of his Country" was the appellation of Cosmo de' Medici, and the Genoese inscribed the same title upon the base of the statue erected to Andrea Doria. One of the later Byzantine Emperors, Andronicus Palæologus, even went so far as to assume this honoured title. Nor has the name "Father of the People" been confined to kings, for it has been given also to Gabriel du Pineau, a French lawyer of the seventeenth century.

The "divinity that doth hedge a king" and the fatherhood of the sovereign reach their acme in Peru, where the Inca was king, father, even god, and the halo of "divine right" has not ceased even yet to encircle the brows of the absolute monarchs of Europe and the East.

Landesvater (Vater des Volkes) is the proudest designation of the German Kaiser. "Little Father" is alike the literal meaning of Attila, the name of the far-famed leader of the "Huns," in the dark ages of Europe, and of batyushka, the affectionate term by which the peasant of Russia speaks of the Czar.

Nana, "Grandfather," is the title of the king of Ashanti in Africa, and "Sire" was long in France and England a respectful form of address to the monarch.

Some of the aboriginal tribes of America have conferred upon the President of the United States the name of the "Great Father at Washington," the "Great White Father," and "Father" was a term they were wont to apply to governors, generals, and other great men of the whites with whom they came into contact.

The father as head of the family is the basis of the idea of "father-king." This is seen among the Matchlapis, a Kaffir tribe, where "those who own a sufficient number of cattle to maintain a family have the right to the title of chief"; this resembles the institution of the pater familias in ancient Latium (100. 459,533).

Dr. von Held thus expresses himself upon this point: "The first, and one may say also the last, naturally necessary society of man is the family in the manifold forms out of which it has been historically developed. Its beginning and its apex are, under given culture-conditions, the man who founds it, the father. What first brought man experientially to creation as a work of love was fatherhood. This view is not altered by the fact that the father, in order to preserve, or, what is the same, to continue to produce, to bring up, must command, force, punish. If the family depends on no higher right, it yet appears as the first state, and then the father appears not only as father, but also as king" (75. 119).

The occurrence to-day of "King" as a surname takes us back to a time when the head of the family enjoyed the proud title, which the Romans conferred upon Cæsar Augustus, Pater et Princeps, the natural development from Ovid's virque paterque gregis.

The Romans called their senators patres, and we now speak of the "city fathers," aldermen, _elder_men, in older English, and the "fathers" of many a primitive people are its rulers and legislators. The term "father" we apply also to those who were monarchs and chiefs in realms of human activity other than that of politics. Following in the footsteps of the Latins, who spoke of Zeno as Pater stoicorum, of Herodotus as Pater historioe, and even of the host of an inn as Pater cenoe, we speak of "fathering" an idea, a plot, and the like, and denominate "father," the pioneer scientists, inventors, sages, poets, chroniclers of the race.

From pater the Romans derived patrimonium, patrimony, "what was inherited from the father," an interesting contrast to matrimonium; patronus, "patron, defender, master of slaves"; patria (terra), "fatherland,"—Ovid uses paterna terra, and Horace speaks of paternum flumen; patricius, "of fatherly dignity, high-born, patrician," etc. Word after word in the classic tongues speaks of the exalted position of the father, and many of these have come into our own language through the influence of the peoples of the Mediterranean.

Father-Priest.

Said Henry Ward Beecher: "Look at home, father-priest, mother-priest; your church is a hundred-fold heavier responsibility than mine can be. Your priesthood is from God's own hands." The priesthood of the father is widespread. Mr. Gomme tells us: "Certainly among the Hindus, the Greeks, the Romans, and, so late down as Tacitus, the Germans, the house-father was priest and judge in his own clan" (461.104). Max Müller speaks to the same effect: "If we trace religion back to the family, the father or head of the family is ipso facto the priest. When families grew into clans, and clans into tribes and confederacies, a necessity would arise of delegating to some heads of families the performance of duties which, from having been the spontaneous acts of individuals, had become the traditional acts of families and clans" (510.183). Africa, Asia, America, furnish us abundant evidence of this. Our own language testifies to it also. We speak of the "Fathers of the Church,"—patres, as they were called,—and the term "Father" is applied to an ecclesiastic of the Roman Catholic Church, just as in the Romance languages of Europe the descendants of the Latin pater (French pere, Spanish padre, Italian padre, etc.) are used to denote the same personage. In Russian an endearing term for "priest" is batyushka, "father dear"; the word for a village-priest, sometimes used disrespectfully, is pop. This latter name is identical with the title of the head of the great Catholic Church, the "Holy Father," at Rome, viz. papa, signifying literally "papa, father," given in the early days of Latin Christianity, and the source of our word Pope and its cognates in the various tongues of modern Europe. The head of an abbey we call an abbot, a name coming, through the Church-Latin abbas, from the Syriac abba, "father"; here again recurs the correlation of priest and father. It is interesting to note that both the words papa and abba, which we have just discussed, and which are of such importance in the history of religion, are child-words for "father," bearing evidence of the lasting influence of the child in this sphere of human activity. Among the ancient Romans we find a pater patratus, whose duty it was to ratify treaties with the proper religious rites. Dr. von Held is of opinion that, "in the case of a special priesthood, it is not so much the character of its members as spiritual fathers, as their calling of servants of God, of servants of a Father-God, which causes them to be termed fathers, papas" (75. 120).

Father-God.

Shakespeare has aptly said, in the words which Theseus addresses to the fair Hermia:—

"To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax,
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it,"

and widespread indeed, in the childhood of the race, has been the belief in the Fatherhood of God. Concerning the first parents of human kind the ancient Hebrew Scripture declares: "And God created man in His own image," and long centuries afterwards, in his memorable oration to the wise men of Athens upon Mars' Hill, the Apostle Paul quoted with approval the words of the Greek poet, Cleanthes, who had said: "For we are all His off-spring." Epictetus, appealing to a master on behalf of his slaves, asked: "Wilt thou not remember over whom thou rulest, that they are thy relations, thy brethren by nature, the offspring of Zeus?" (388.210).

At the battle of Kadshu, Rameses II., of Egypt, abandoned by his soldiers, as a last appeal, exclaimed: "I will call upon thee, O my father Amon!" (388. 209).

Many prophets and preachers have there been who taught to men the doctrine of "God, the Father," but last and best of all was the "Son of Man," the Christ, who taught his disciples the world-heard prayer: "Our Father, who art in Heaven," who pro-claimed that "in my Father's house are many mansions," and whose words in the agony of Gethsemane were: "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt."

Between the Buddhist Kalmucks, with whom the newly married couple reverently utter these words: "I incline myself this first time to my Lord God, who is my father and my mother" (518. I. 423), and the deistic philosophers of to-day there is a vast gulf, as there is also between the idea of Deity among the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala, where the words for God alom and achalom signify respectively "begetter of children," and "begetter of sons," and the modern Christian concept of God, the Father, with His only begotten Son, the Saviour of the world.

The society of the gods of human creation has everywhere been modelled upon that of man. He was right who said Olympus was a Greek city and Zeus a Greek father. According to D'Alviella: "The highest point of development that polytheism could reach is found in the conception of a monarchy or divine family, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even the whole universe. The divine monarch or father, however, might still be no more than the first among his peers. For the supreme god to become the Only God, he must rise above all beings, superhuman as well as human, not only in his power, but in his very nature" (388. 211).

Though the mythology of our Teutonic forefathers knew of the "All-Father,"—the holy Odin,—it is from those children-loving people, the Hebrews, that our Christian conception of "God the Father," with some modifications, is derived. As Professor Robertson Smith has pointed out, among the Semites we find the idea of the tribal god as father strongly developed: "But in heathen religions the fatherhood of the gods is a physical fatherhood. Among the Greeks, for example, the idea that the gods fashioned men out of clay, as potters fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception is that the races of men have gods for their ancestors, or are the children of the earth, the common mother of gods and men, so that men are really of the same stock or kin of the gods. That the same conception was familiar to the older Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes idolaters as saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth. In the ancient poem, Num. xxi. 29, the Moabites are called the sons and daughters of Chemosh, and, at a much more recent date, the prophet Malachi calls a heathen woman, 'the daughter of a strange god'" (535. 41-43).

Professor Smith cites also the evidence furnished by genealogies and personal names: "The father of Solomon's ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, was called Abibaal, 'my father is Baal'; Ben-Hadad, of Damascus, is 'the son of the god Hadad'; in Aramæan we find names like Barlâhâ, 'son of God,' Barba'shmîn, 'son of the Lord of Heaven,' Barate, 'son of Ate,' etc." We have also that passage in Genesis which tells how the "sons of God saw the daughters of men that were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose" (vi. 2), while an echo of the same thought dwells with the Polynesians, who term illegitimate children tamarika na te Atua, "children of the gods" (458. 121). D'Alviella further remarks: "Presently these family relations of the gods were extended till they embraced the whole creation, and especially mankind. The confusion between the terms for creating and begetting, which still maintained itself in half-developed languages, must have led to a spontaneous fusion of the ideas of creator and father." But there is another aspect of this question. Of the Amazulu Callaway writes: "Speaking generally, the head of each house is worshipped by the children of that house; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children; they remember his kindness to them whilst he was living; they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it, and say, 'He will treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others beside us; he will regard us only.'" Of these people it is true, as they themselves say: "Our father is a great treasure to us, even when he is dead" (417.144).

Here we pass over to ancestor worship, seen at its height in China, whose great sage, Confucius, taught: "The great object of marriage is to beget children, and especially sons, who may perform the required sacrifices at the tombs of their parents" (434. 126).

In this connection, the following passage from Max Müller is of interest: "How religious ideas could spring from the perception of something infinite or immortal in our parents, grandparents, and ancestors, we can see even at the present day. Among the Zulus, for instance, Unkulunkulu or Ukulukulu, which means the great-great-grandfather, has become the name of God. It is true that each family has its own Unkulunkulu, and that his name varies accordingly. But there is also an Unkulunkulu of all men (unkulunladu wabantu bonke), and he comes very near to being a father of all men. Here also we can watch a very natural process of reasoning. A son would look upon his father as his progenitor; he would remember his father's father, possibly his father's grandfather. But beyond that his own experience could hardly go, and therefore the father of his own great-grandfather, of whom he might have heard, but whom he had never seen, would naturally assume the character of a distant unknown being; and, if the human mind ascended still further, it would almost by necessity be driven to a father of all fathers, that is to a creator of mankind, if not of the world" (510. 156).

Again we reach the "Father" of Pope's "Universal Prayer"—

"Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,"

having started from the same thought as the Hebrews in the infancy of their race. An Eastern legend of the child Abraham has crystallized the idea. It is said that one morning, while with his mother in the cave in which they were hiding from Nimrod, he asked his mother, "Who is my God?" and she replied, "It is I." "And who is thy God?" he inquired farther. "Thy father" (547.69). Hence also we derive the declaration of Du Vair, "Nous devons tenir nos pères comme des dieux en terre," and the statement of another French writer, of whom Westermarck says: "Bodin wrote, in the later part of the sixteenth century, that, though the monarch commands his subjects, the master his disciples, the captain his soldiers, there is none to whom nature has given any command except the father, 'who is the true image of the great sovereign God, universal father of all things'" (166. 238).

Father-Sky.

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky,"

sang the poet Herbert, unconsciously renewing an ancient myth. As many cosmologies tell, Day and Dawn were born of the embraces of Earth and Sky. Ushas, Eos, Aurora, is the daughter of heaven, and one story of the birth is contained in the Maori myth of Papa and Rangi. Ushas, Max Muller tells us, "has two parents, heaven and earth, whose lap she fills with light" (510. 431). From Rangi, "Father-Sky," and Papa, "Mother-Earth," say the Maoris of New Zealand, sprang all living things; and, in like manner, the Chinese consider the Sky or Heaven,—Yang, the masculine, procreative, active element,—to be the "father of all things," while the Earth,—Yu, the feminine, conceiving, passive element,—is the "mother of all things." From the union of these two everything in existence has arisen, and consequently resembles the one or the other (529. 107).

Among the primitive Aryans, the Sky, or Heaven God, was called "Father," as shown by the Sanskrit Dyaus Pitâr, Greek Zeus Patær, Latin Jupiter, all of which names signify "sky father." Dyaus is also called janitâr, "producer, father," and Zeus, the "eternal father of men," the "father of gods and men, the ruler and preserver of the world." In the Vedic hymns are invocations of Dyaus (Sky), as "our Father," and of Prithivi (Earth), as "our Mother" (388. 210).

Dyaus symbolizes the "bright sky"; from the same primitive Indo-European root come the Latin words dies (day), deus or divus (god); the dark sombre vault of heaven is Varuna, the Greek [Greek: Ouranós], Latin Uranus.

Other instances of the bridal of earth and sky,—of "mother earth," and "father sky,"—are found among the tribes of the Baltic, the Lapps, the Finns (who have Ukko, "Father Heaven," Akka, "Mother Earth"), and other more barbaric peoples.

In Ashanti, the new deity, which the introduction of Christianity has added to the native pantheon, is called Nana Nyankupon, "Grandfather-sky" (438. 24).

The shaman of the Buryats of Alarsk prays to "Father Heaven"; in the
Altai Mountains the prayer is to

"Father Yulgen, thrice exalted,
Whom the edge of the moon's axe shuns,
Who uses the hoof of the horse.
Thou, Yulgen, hast created all men,
Who are stirring round about us,
Thou, Yulgen, hast endowed us with all cattle;
Let us not fall into sorrow!
Grant that we may resist the evil one!" (504. 70, 77).

We too have recollections of that "Father-Sky," whom our far-off ancestors adored, the bright, glad, cheerful sky, the "ancestor of all." Max Müller has summed up the facts of our inheritance in brief terms:—

"Remember that this Dyaush Pitar is the same as the Greek [Greek: Zeus Patær], and the Latin Jupiter, and you will see how this one word shows us the easy, the natural, the almost inevitable transition from the conception of the active sky as a purely physical fact, to the Father-Sky with all his mythological accidents, and lastly to that Father in heaven whom Æschylus meant when he burst out in his majestic prayer to Zeus, whosoever he is" (510. 410).

Unnumbered centuries have passed, but the "witchery of the soft blue sky" has still firm hold upon the race, and we are, as of old, children of "our Father, who art in Heaven."

Father-Sea.

Montesinos tells us that Viracocha, "sea-foam," the Peruvian god of the sea, was regarded as the source of all life and the origin of all things,—world-tiller, world-animator, he was called (509. 316). Xenophanes of Kolophon, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C., taught that "the mighty sea is the father of clouds and winds and rivers." In Greek mythology Oceanus is said to be the father of the principal rivers of earth. Neptune, the god of the sea,—"Father Neptune," he is sometimes called,—had his analogue in a deity whom the Libyans looked upon as "the first and greatest of the gods." To Neptune, as the "Father of Streams," the Romans erected a temple in the Campus Martius and held games and feasts in his honour. The sea was also spoken of as pater aequoreus.

Father-River.

The name "Father of Waters" is assigned, incorrectly perhaps, to certain
American Indian languages, as an appellation of the Mississippi. From
Macaulay's "Lay of Horatius," we all know

"O Tiber, Father Tiber,
To whom the Romans pray,"

and "Father Thames" is a favourite epithet of the great English river.

Father-Frost.

In our English nursery-lore the frost is personified as a mischievous boy, "Jack Frost," to whose pranks its vagaries are due. In old Norse mythology we read of the terrible "Frost Giants," offspring of Ymir, born of the ice of Niflheim, which the warmth exhaled from the sun-lit land of Muspelheim caused to drop off into the great Ginnunga-gap, the void that once was where earth is now. In his "Frost Spirit" Whittier has preserved something of the ancient grimness.

We speak commonly of the "Frost-King," whose fetters bind the earth in winter.

In Russia the frost is called "Father Frost," and is personified as a white old man, or "a mighty smith who forges strong chains with which to bind the earth and the waters," and on Christmas Eve "the oldest man in each family takes a spoonful of kissel (a sort of pudding), and then, having put his head through the window, cries: 'Frost, Frost, come and eat kissel! Frost, Frost, do not kill our oats! Drive our flax and hemp deep into the ground'" (520.223-230).

Quite different is the idea contained in Grimm's tale of "Old Mother Frost,"—the old woman, the shaking of whose bed in the making causes the feathers to fly, and "then it snows on earth."

Father Fire.

Fire has received worship and apotheosis in many parts of the globe. The Muskogee Indians of the southeastern United States "gave to fire the highest Indian title of honour, grandfather, and their priests were called 'fire-makers'" (529. 68). The ancient Aztecs called the god of fire "the oldest of the gods, Huehueteotl, and also 'our Father,' Tota, as it was believed that from him all things were derived." He was supposed "to govern the generative proclivities and the sexual relations," and he was sometimes called Xiuhtecutli, "'God of the Green Leaf,' that is, of vegetable fecundity and productiveness." He was worshipped as "the life-giver, the active generator of animate existence,"—the "primal element and the immediate source of life" (413). These old Americans were in accord with the philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, who held that "fire is the element, and all things were produced in exchange for fire"; and Heraclitus, in the fragments in which he speaks of "God," the "one wise," that which "knows all things," means "Fire." In the rites of the Nagualists occurs a "baptism by fire," which was "celebrated on the fourth day after the birth of the child, during which time it was deemed essential to keep the fire burning in the house, but not to permit any of it to be carried out, as that would bring bad luck to the child," and, in the work of one of the Spanish priests, a protest is made: "Nor must the lying-in women and their assistants be permitted to speak of Fire as the father and mother of all things, and the author of nature; because it is a common saying with them that Fire is present at the birth and death of every creature." It appears also that the Indians who followed this strange cult were wont to speak of "what the Fire said and how the Fire wept" (413. 45-46).

Among various other peoples, fire is regarded as auspicious to children; its sacred character is widely recognized. In the Zend-Avesta, the Bible of the ancient Persians, whose religion survives in the cult of the Parsees, now chiefly resident in Bombay and its environs, we read of Ahura-Mazda, the "Wise Lord," the "Father of the pure world," the "best thing of all, the source of light for the world." Purest and most sacred of all created things was fire, light (421. 32). In the Sar Dar, one of the Parsee sacred books, the people are bidden to "keep a continual fire in the house during a woman's pregnancy, and, after the child is born, to burn a lamp [or, better, a fire] for three nights and days, so that the demons and fiends may not be able to do any damage and harm." It is said that when Zoroaster, the founder of the ancient religion of Persia, was born, "a demon came at the head of a hundred and fifty other demons, every night for three nights, to slay him, but they were put to flight by seeing the fire, and were consequently unable to hurt him" (258. 96).

In ancient Rome, among the Lithuanians on the shores of the Baltic, in Ireland, in England, Denmark, Germany, "while a child remained unbaptized," it was, or is, necessary "to burn a light in the chamber." And in the island of Lewis, off the northwestern coast of Scotland, "fire used to be carried round women before they were churched, and children before they were christened, both night and morning; and this was held effectual to preserve both mother and infant from evil spirits, and (in the case of the infant) from being changed."

In the Gypsy mountain villages of Upper Hungary, during the baptism of a child, the women kindle in the hut a little fire, over which the mother with the baptized infant must step, in order that milk may not fail her while the child is being suckled (392. II. 21).

In the East Indies, the mother with her new-born child is made to pass between two fires.

Somewhat similar customs are known to have existed in northern and western Europe; in Ireland and Scotland especially, where children were made to pass through or leap over the fire.

To Moloch ("King"), their god of fire, the Phoenicians used to sacrifice the first-born of their noblest families. A later development of this cult seems to have consisted in making the child pass between two fires, or over or through a fire. This "baptism of fire" or "purification by fire," was in practice among the ancient Aztecs of Mexico. To the second water-baptism was added the fire-baptism, in which the child was drawn through the fire four times (509. 653).

Among the Tarahumari Indians of the Mexican Sierra Madre, the medicine-man "cures" the infant, "so that it may become strong and healthy, and live a long life." The ceremony is thus described by Lumholtz: "A big fire of corn-cobs, or of the branches of the mountain-cedar, is made near the cross [outside the house], and the baby is carried over the smoke three times towards each cardinal-point, and also three times backward. The motion is first toward the east, then toward the west, then south, then north. The smoke of the corn-cobs assures him of success in agriculture. With a fire-brand the medicine-man makes three crosses on the child's forehead, if it is a boy, and four, if a girl" (107. 298).

Among certain South American tribes the child and the mother are "smoked" with tobacco (326. II. 194).

With marriage, too, fire is associated. In Yucatan, at the betrothal, the priest held the little fingers of bridegroom and bride to the fire (509. 504), and in Germany, the maiden, on Christmas night, looks into the hearth-fire to discover there the features of her future husband (392. IV. 82). Rademacher (130a) has called attention to the great importance of the hearth and the fireplace in family life. In the Black Forest the stove is invoked in these terms: "Dear oven, I beseech thee, if thou hast a wife, I would have a man" (130 a. 60). Among the White Russians, before the wedding, the house of the bridegroom and that of the bride are "cleansed from evil spirits," by burning a heap of straw in the middle of the living-room, and at the beginning of the ceremonies, after they have been elevated upon a cask, as "Prince" and "Princess," the guests, with the wedding cake and two tapers in their hands, go round the cask three times, and with the tapers held crosswise burn them a little on the neck, the forehead, and the temples, so that the hair is singed away somewhat. At church the wax tapers are of importance: if they burn brightly and clearly, the young couple will have a happy, merry married life; if feeble, their life will be a quiet one; if they flicker, there will be strife and quarrels between them (392 (1891). 161).

Writing of Manabozho, or Michabo, the great divinity of the Algonkian tribes of the Great Lakes, Dr. D. G. Brinton says: "Michabo, giver of life and light, creator and preserver, is no apotheosis of a prudent chieftain, still less the fabrication of an idle fancy, or a designing priestcraft, but, in origin, deeds, and name, the not unworthy personification of the purest conceptions they possessed concerning the Father of All" (409. 469).

To Agni, fire, light, "in whom are all the gods," the ancient Hindu prayed: "Be unto us easy of access, as a father to his son" (388. 210), and later generations of men have seen in light the embodiment of God. As Max Müller says, "We ourselves also, though we may no longer use the name of Morning-Light for the Infinite, the Beyond, the Divine, still find no better expression than Light when we speak of the manifestations of God, whether in nature or in our mind" (510. 434).

In the Christian churches of to-day hymns of praise are sung to God as "Father of Light and Life," and their neophytes are bidden, as of old, to "walk as Children of Light."

Father-Sun.

At the naming of the new-born infant in ancient Mexico, the mother thus addressed the Sun and the Earth: "Thou Sun, Father of all that live, and thou Earth, our Mother, take ye this child, and guard it as your son." A common affirmation with them was: "By the life of the Sun, and of our Lady, the Earth" (529. 97).

Many primitive tribes have the custom of holding the newborn child up to the sun.

Not a few races and peoples have called themselves "children of the sun." The first of the Incas of Peru—a male and a female—were children of the Sun "our Father," who, "seeing the pitiable condition of mankind, was moved to compassion, and sent to them, from Heaven, two of his children, a son and a daughter, to teach them how to do him honour, and pay him divine worship "; they were also instructed by the sun in all the needful arts of life, which they taught to men (529. 102). When the "children of the Sun" died, they were said to be "called to the home of the Sun, their Father" (100. 479).

The Comanche Indians, who worship the sun with dances and other rites, call him taab-apa, "Father Sun," and the Sarcees speak of the sun as "Our Father," and of the earth as "Our Mother" (412. 122, 72).

With the Piute Indians "the sun is the father and ruler of the heavens. He is the big chief. The moon is his wife, and the stars are their children. The sun eats his children whenever he can catch them. They fall before him, and are all the time afraid when he is passing through the heavens. When he (their father) appears in the morning, you see all the stars, his children, fly out of sight,—go away back into the blue of the above,—and they do not wake to be seen again until he, their father, is about going to his bed" (485. I. 130).

Dr. Eastman says of the Sioux Indians: "The sun was regarded as the father, and the earth as the mother, of all things that live and grow; but, as they had been married a long time and had become the parents of many generations, they were called the great-grandparents" (518 (1894). 89).

Widespread over the earth has been, and still is, the worship of the sun; some mythologists, indeed, would go too far and explain almost every feature of savage and barbarous religion as a sun-myth or as smacking of heliolatry.

Imagery and figurative language borrowed from the consideration of the aspect and functions of the great orb of day have found their way into and beautified the religious thought of every modern Christian community. The words of the poet Thomson:

"Prime cheerer light!
Of all material beings first and best!
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe!
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt
In unessential gloom; and thou, O Sun!
Soul of surrounding worlds! in whom best seen
Shines out thy Maker!"

find briefer expression in the simple speech of the dying Turner: "The sun is God."

Father-Earth.

Though, in nearly every portion of the globe the apotheosis of earth is as a woman, we find in America some evidences of a cult of the terrestrial Father-God. Concerning the cave-worship of the Mexican aborigines, Dr. Brinton says (413. 38, 50): "The intimate meaning of this cave-cult was the worship of the Earth. The Cave-God, the Heart of the Hills, really typified the Earth, the Soil, from whose dark recesses flow the limpid streams and spring the tender shoots of the food-plants as well as the great trees. To the native Mexican the Earth was the provider of food and drink, the common Father of All; so that, to this day, when he would take a solemn oath, he stoops to the earth, touches it with his hand, and repeats the solemn formula: 'Cuix amo nechitla in toteotzin? Does not our Great God see me?'"

Father-Wind.

Dr. Berendt, when travelling through the forests of Yucatan, heard his Maya Indian guide exclaim in awe-struck tones, as the roar of a tornado made itself heard in the distance: He catal nohoch yikal nohoch tat, "Here comes the mighty wind of the Great Father." As Dr. Brinton points out, this belief has analogues all over the world, in the notion of the wind-bird, the master of breath, and the spirit, who is father of all the race, for we learn also that "the whistling of the wind is called, or attributed to, tat acmo, words which mean 'Father Strong-Bird'" (411. 175).

The cartography of the Middle Ages and the epochs of the great maritime discoveries has made us familiar with the wind-children, offspring of the wind-father, from whose mouths came the breezes and the storms, and old Boreas, of whom the sailors sing, has traces of the fatherhood about him. More than one people has believed that God, the Father, is Spirit, breath, wind.

Other Father-Gods.

The ancient Romans applied the term Pater to many of their gods beside the great Jove. Vulcan was called Lemnus Pater, the "Lemnian Father"; Bacchus, Pater Lenæus; Janus, the "early god of business," is termed by Horace, Matutinus Pater, "Early-morning Father"; Mars is Mars Pater, etc. The Guarayo Indians, of South America, prayed for rain and bountiful harvests to "Tamoï, the grandfather, the old god in heaven, who was their first ancestor and had taught them agriculture" (100. 288).

The Abipones, of Paraguay, called the Pleiades their "Grandfather" and
"Creator." When the constellation was invisible, they said: "Our
Grandfather, Keebet, is ill" (509. 274, 284).

In his account of the folk-lore of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton tells us that the giant-beings known as Hbalamob, or balams, are sometimes "affectionately referred to as yum balam, or 'Father Balam.'" The term yum is practically the equivalent of the Latin pater, and of the "father," employed by many primitive peoples in addressing, or speaking of, their great male divinities (411. 176).

In his acute exposition of the philosophy of the Zuñi Indians, Mr. Gushing tells us (424. 11) that "all beings, whether deistic and supernatural, or animistic and mortal, are regarded as belonging to one system; and that they are likewise believed to be related by blood seems to be indicated by the fact that human beings are spoken of as the 'children of men,' while all other beings are referred to as 'the Fathers,' the 'All-Fathers (Á-tä-tchu),' and 'Our Fathers.'" The "Priest'of the Bow," when travelling alone through a dangerous country, offers up a prayer, which begins: "Si! This day, My Fathers, ye Animal Beings, although this country be filled with enemies, render me precious" (424. 41). The hunter, in the ceremonial of the "Deer Medicine," prays: "Si! This day, My Father, thou Game Animal, even though thy trail one day and one night hast (been made) round about; however, grant unto me one step of my earth-mother. Wanting thy life-blood, wanting that flesh, hence I address to thee good fortune, address to thee treasure," etc. When he has stricken down the animal, "before the 'breath of life' has left the fallen deer (if it be such), he places its fore feet back of its horns, and, grasping its mouth, holds it firmly, closely, while he applies his lips to its nostrils and breathes as much wind into them as possible, again inhaling from the lungs of the dying animal into his own. Then, letting go, he exclaims: 'Ah! Thanks, my father, my child. Grant unto me the seeds of earth ('daily bread') and the gift of water. Grant unto me the light of thy favour, do" (424. 36).

Something of a like nature, perhaps, attaches to the bear-ceremonials among the Ainu and other primitive peoples of northeastern Asia, with whom that animal is held in great respect and reverence, approaching to deification.

Of Pó-shai-an-k'ia, "the God (Father) of the Medicine Societies, or sacred esoteric orders of the Zuñis," Mr. Gushing tells us: "He is supposed to have appeared in human form, poorly clad, and therefore reviled by men; to have taught the ancestors of the Zuñi, Taos, Oraibi, and Coçonino Indians their agricultural and other arts; their systems of worship by means of plumed and painted prayer-sticks; to have organized their medicine societies, and then to have disappeared toward his home in Shi-pä-pu-li-ma (from shi-pa-a = mist, vapour; u-lin, surrounding; and i-mo-na = sitting-place of; 'The mist-enveloped city'), and to have vanished beneath the world, whence he is said to have departed for the home of the Sun. He is still the conscious auditor of the prayers of his children, the invisible ruler of the spiritual Shi-pä-pu-li-ma, and of the lesser gods of the medicine orders, the principal 'Finisher of the Paths of our Lives.' He is, so far as any identity can be established, the 'Montezuma' of popular and usually erroneous Mexican tradition" (424. 16). Both on the lowest steps of civilization and on the highest, we meet with this passing over of the Father into the Son, this participation of God in the affairs and struggles of men.

CHAPTER V.

THE NAME CHILD.

Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen
[Dear children have many names].—German Proverb.

Child or boy, my darling, which you will.—Swinburne.

Men ever had, and ever will have, leave
To coin new words well-suited to the age.
Words are like leaves, some wither every year,
And every year a younger race succeeds.—Roscommon.

Child and its Synonyms.

Our word child—the good old English term; for both babe and infant are borrowed—simply means the "product of the womb" (compare Gothic kilthei, "womb"). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for "child" in bairn, cognate with Anglo-Saxon bearn, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic barn (the Gothic had a diminutive barnilo, "baby"), Sanskrit bharna, which signifies "the borne one," "that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root bhr, "to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our "to bear" and the German "ge-bären." Son, which finds its cognates in all the principal Aryan dialects, except Latin, and perhaps Celtic,—the Greek [Greek: yios] is for [Greek: syios], and is the same word,—a widespread term for "male child, or descendant," originally meant, as the Old Irish suth, "birth, fruit," and the Sanskrit sû, "to bear, to give birth to," indicate, "the fruit of the womb, the begotten"—an expression which meets us time and again in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. The words offspring, issue, seed, used in higher diction, explain themselves and find analogues all over the world. To a like category belong Sanskrit gárbha, "brood of birds, child, shoot"; Pali gabbha, "womb, embryo, child"; Old High German chilburra, "female lamb"; Gothic kalbô, "female lamb one year old"; German Kalb; English calf; Greek [Greek: delphus], "womb"; whence [Greek: adelphus], "brother," literally "born of the same womb." Here we see, in the words for their young, the idea of the kinship of men and animals in which the primitive races believed. The "brought forth" or "born" is also the signification of the Niskwalli Indian ba'-ba-ad, "infant"; de-bád-da, "infant, son"; Maya al, "son or daughter of a woman"; Cakchiquel 4_ahol_, "son," and like terms in many other tongues. Both the words in our language employed to denote the child before birth are borrowed. Embryo, with its cognates in the modern tongues of Europe, comes from the Greek [Greek: embruon], "the fruit of the womb before delivery; birth; the embryo, foetus; a lamb newly born, a kid." The word is derived from eu, "within"; and bruo, "I am full of anything, I swell or teem with"; in a transitive sense, "I break forth." The radical idea is clearly "swelling," and cognates are found in Greek [Greek: bruon], "moss"; and German Kraut, "plant, vegetable." Foetus comes to us from Latin, where it meant "a bearing, offspring, fruit; bearing, dropping, hatching,—of animals, plants, etc.; fruit, produce, offspring, progeny, brood." The immediate derivation of the word is feto, "I breed," whence also effetus, "having brought forth young, worn out by bearing, effete." Feto itself is from an old verb feuere, "to generate, to produce," possibly related to fui and our be. The radical signification of foetus then is "that which is bred, or brought to be"; and from the same root fe are derived feles, "cat" (the fruitful animal); fe-num, "hay"; fe-cundus, "fertile"; fe-lix, "happy" (fruitful). The corresponding verb in Greek is [Greek: phuein], "to grow, to spring forth, to come into being," whence the following: [Greek: phusis], "a creature, birth, nature,"—nature is "all that has had birth"; [Greek: phuton] "something grown, plant, tree, creature, child"; [Greek: phulae, philon] "race, clan, tribe,"—the "aggregate of those born in a certain way or place"; [Greek: phus], "son"; [Greek: phusas], "father," etc.

In English, we formerly had the phrase "to look babies in the eyes," and we still speak of the pupil of the eye, the old folk-belief having been able to assert itself in the every-day speech of the race,—the thought that the soul looked out of the windows of the eyes. In Latin, pupilla pupila, "girl, pupil of the eye," is a diminutive of pupa (puppa), "girl, damsel, doll, puppet"; other related words are pupulus, "little boy"; pupillus, "orphan, ward," our pupil; pupulus, "little child, boy"; pupus, "child, boy." The radical of all these is pu, "to beget"; whence are derived also the following: puer, "child, boy"; puella (for puerula), a diminutive of puer, "girl"; pusus, "boy"; pusio, "little boy," pusillus; "a very little boy"; putus, "boy"; putillus, "little boy"; putilla, "little girl,"—here belongs also pusillanimus, "small-minded, boy-minded"; pubis, "ripe, adult"; pubertas, "puberty, maturity"; pullus, "a young animal, a fowl," whence our pullet. In Greek we find the cognate words [Greek: polos] "a young animal," related to our foal, filly; [Greek: polion], "pony," and, as some, perhaps too venturesome, have suggested, [Greek: pais], "child," with its numerous derivatives in the scientifical nomenclature and phraseology of to-day. In Sanskrit we have putra, "son," a word familiar as a suffix in river-names,—Brahmaputra, "son of Brahma,"—pota, "the young of an animal," etc. Skeat thinks that our word boy, borrowed from Low German and probably related to the Modern High German Bube, whence the familiar "bub" of American colloquial speech, is cognate with Latin pupus.

To this stock of words our babe, with its diminutive baby, seems not akin. Skeat, rejecting the theory that it is a reduplicative child-word, like papa, sees in it merely a modification (infantine, perhaps) of the Celtic maban, diminutive of mab, "son," and hence related to maid, the particular etymology of which is discussed elsewhere.

Infant, also, is a loan-word in English. In Latin, infans was the coinage of some primitive student of children, of some prehistoric anthropologist, who had a clear conception of "infancy" as "the period of inability to speak,"—for infans signifies neither more nor less than "not speaking, unable to speak." The word, like our "childish," assumed also the meanings "child, young, fresh, new, silly," with a diminutive infantulus. The Latin word infans has its representatives in French and other Romance languages, and has given rise to enfanter, "to give birth to a child," enfantement, "labour," two of the few words relating to child-birth in which the child is directly remembered. The history of the words infantry, "foot-soldiers," and Infanta, "a princess of the blood royal" in Spain (even though she be married), illustrates a curious development of thought.

Our word daughter, which finds cognates in Teutonic, Slavonic, Armenian, Zend, Sanskrit, and Greek, Skeat would derive from the root dugh, "to milk," the "daughter" being primitively the "milker," —the "milkmaid,"—which would remove the term from the list of names for "child" in the proper sense of the word. Kluge, however, with justice perhaps, considers this etymology improbable.

A familiar phrase in English is "babes and sucklings," the last term of which, cognate with German Säugling, meets with analogues far and wide among the peoples of the earth. The Latin words for children in relation to their parents are filius (diminutive filiolus), "son," and filia (diminutive filiola), "daughter," which have a long list of descendants in the modern Neo-Latin or Romance languages,—French fils, fille, filleul, etc.; Italian figlio, figlia, etc. According to Skeat, filius signified originally "infant," perhaps "suckling," from felare, "to suck," the radical of which, fe (Indo-European dhe), appears also in femina, "woman," and femella, "female," the "sucklers" par excellence. In Greek the cognate words are [Greek: titthae], "nurse," thaelus, "female," thaelae, "teat," etc.; in Lithuanian, dels, "son." With nonagan, "teat, breast," are cognate in the Delaware Indian language nonoshellaan, "to suckle," nonetschik, "suckling," and other primitive tongues have similar series.

The Modern High German word for child is Kind, which, as a substantive, finds representatives neither in Gothic nor in early English, but has cognates in the Old Norse kunde, "son," Gothic -kunds, Anglo-Saxon -kund, a suffix signifying "coming from, originating from." The ultimate radical of the word is the Indo-European root gen (Teutonic ken), "to bear, to produce," whence have proceeded also kin, Gothic kuni; queen, Gothic qvêns, "woman"; king, Modern High German König, originally signifying perhaps "one of high origin"; Greek genos and its derivatives; Latin genus, gens, gigno; Lithuanian gentis, "relative"; Sanskrit janas, "kin, stock," janús, "creature, kin, birth," jantú, "child, being, stock," jâtá, "son." Kind, therefore, while not the same word as our child, has the same primitive meaning, "the produced one," and finds further cognates in kid and colt, names applied to the young of certain animals, and the first of which, in the slang of to-day, is applied to children also. In some parts of Germany and Switzerland Kind has the sense of boy; in Thuringia, for example, people speak of zwei Kinder und ein Mädchen, "two boys and a girl." From the same radical sprang the Modern High German Knabe, Old High German chnabo, "boy, youth, young fellow, servant," and its cognates, including our English knave, with its changed meaning, and possibly also German Knecht and English knight, of somewhat similar import originally.

To the same original source we trace back Greek [Greek: genetaer], Latin genitor, "parent," and their cognates, in all of which the idea of genesis is prominent. Here belong, in Greek: [Greek: genesis], "origin, birth, beginning"; [Greek: gynae], "woman"; [Greek: genea], "family, race"; [Greek: geinomai], "I beget, produce, bring forth, am born"; [Greek: gignomai], "I come into a new state of being, become, am born." In Latin: gigno, "I beget, bring forth"; gens, "clan, race, nation,"—those born in a certain way; ingens, "vast, huge, great,"—"not gens," i.e. "born beyond or out of its kind"; gentilis, "belonging to the same clan, race, tribe, nation," then, with various turns of meaning, "national, foreign," whence our gentile, genteel, gentle, gentry, etc.; genus, "birth, race, sort, kind"; ingenium, "innate quality, natural disposition"; ingeniosus, "of good natural abilities, born well-endowed," hence ingenious; ingenuus, "native, free-born, worthy of a free man," hence "frank, ingenuous"; progenies, "descent, descendants, offspring, progeny"; gener, "son-in-law"; genius, "innate superior nature, tutelary deity, the god born to a place," hence the genius, who is "born," not "made"; genuinus, "innate, born-in, genuine"; indigena, "native, born-there, indigenous"; generosus, "of high, noble birth," hence "noble-minded, generous"; genero, "I beget, produce, engender, create, procreate," and its derivatives degenero, regenero, etc., with the many words springing from them. From the same radical gen comes the Latin (g)nascor, "I am born," whose stem (g)na is seen also in natio, "the collection of those born," or "the birth," and natura, "the world of birth,"—like Greek [Greek: phnsis],—for "nations" and "nature" have both "sprung into being." The Latin germen (our germ), which signified "sprig, offshoot, young bud, sprout, fruit, embryo," probably meant originally simply "growth," from the root ker, "to make to grow." From the same Indo-European radical have come the Latin creare, "to create, make, produce," with its derivatives procreare and creator, which we now apply to the Supreme Being, as the "maker" or "producer" of all things. Akin are also crescere, "to come forth, to arise, to appear, to increase, to grow, to spring, to be born," and Ceres, the name of the goddess of agriculture (growth and creation), whence our word cereal; and in Greek [Greek: Kronos], the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gæa (Earth), [Greek: kratos], "strength," and its derivatives ("democracy," etc.).

Another interesting Latin word is pario, "I bring forth, produce," whence parens, "producer, parent," partus, "birth, bearing, bringing forth; young, offspring, foetus, embryo of any creature," parturio, parturitio, etc. Pario is used alike of human beings, animals, birds, fish, while parturio is applied to women and animals, and, by Virgil, even to trees,—parturit arbos, "the tree is budding forth,"—and by other writers to objects even less animate.

In the Latin enitor, "I bring forth or bear children or young,"—properly, "I struggle, strive, make efforts,"—we meet with the idea of "labour," now so commonly associated with child-bearing, and deriving from the old comparison of the tillage of the soil and the bearing of the young. This association existed in Hebrew also, and Cain, the first-born of Adam, was the first agriculturist. We still say the tree bears fruit, the land bears crops, is fertile, and the most characteristic word in English belonging to the category in question is "to bear" children, cognate with Modern High German ge-bären, Gothic gabairan, Latin ferre (whence fertilis), Greek [Greek: ferein], Sanskrit bhri, etc., all from the Indo-European root bher, "to carry"—compare the use of tragen in Modern High German: sie trägt ein Kind unter dem Herzen. The passive verb is "to be born" literally, "to be borne, to be carried, produced," and the noun corresponding, birth, cognate with German Geburt, and Old Norse burthr, which meant "embryo" as well. Related ideas are seen in burden, and in the Latin, fors, fortuna, for "fortune" is but that which is "borne" or "produced, brought forth," just as the Modern High German Heil, "fortune, luck," is probably connected with the Indo-European radical gen, "to produce."

Corresponding to the Latin parentes, in meaning, we have the Gothic berusjos, "the bearers," or "parents"; we still use in English, "forbears," in the sense of ancestors. The good old English phrase "with child," which finds its analogues in many other languages, has, through false modesty, been almost driven out of literature, as it has been out of conversational language, by pregnant, which comes to us from the Latins, who also used gravidus,—a word we now apply only to animals, especially dogs and ants,—and enceinte, borrowed from French, and referring to the ancient custom of girding a woman who was with child. Similarly barren of direct reference to the child are accouchement, which we have borrowed from French, and the German Entbindung.

In German, Grimm enumerates, among other phrases relating to child-birth, the following, the particular meanings and uses of which are explained in his great dictionary: Schwanger, gross zum Kinde, zum Kinde gehen, zum Kinde arbeiten, um's Kind kommen, mit Kinde, ein Kind tragen, Kindesgrosz, Kindes schwer, Kinder haben, Kinder bekommen, Kinder kriegen, niederkommen, entbinden, and the quaint and beautiful eines Kindes genesen,—all used of the mother. Applied to both parents we find Kinder machen, Kinder bekommen (now used more of the mother), Kinder erzeugen (more recently, of the father only), Kinder erzielen.

Our English word girl is really a diminutive (from a stem gir, seen in Old Low German gör, "a child") from some Low German dialect, and, though it now signifies only "a female child, a young woman," in Middle English gerl (girl, gurl) was applied to a young person of either sex. In the Swiss dialects to-day gurre, or gurrli, is a name given to a "girl" in a depreciatory sense, like our own "girl-boy." In many primitive tongues there do not appear to be special words for "son" and "daughter," or for "boy" and "girl," as distinguished from each other, these terms being rendered "male-child (man-child)," and "female-child (woman-child)" respectively. The "man-child" of the King James' version of the Scriptures belongs in this category. In not a few languages, the words for "son" and "daughter" and for "boy" and "girl" mean really "little man," and "little woman"—a survival of which thought meets us in the "little man" with which his elders are even now wont to denominate "the small boy." In the Nahuatl language of Mexico, "woman" is ciuatl, "girl" ciuatontli; in the Niskwalli, of the State of Washington, "man" is stobsh, "boy" stótomish, "woman" sláne, "girl" cháchas (i.e. "small") sláne; in the Tacana, of South. America, "man" is dreja, "boy" drejave, "woman" epuna, "girl" epunave. And but too often the "boys" and "girls" even as mere children are "little men and women" in more respects than that of name.

In some languages the words for "son," "boy," "girl" are from the same root. Thus, in the Mazatec language, of Mexico, we find indidi "boy," tzadi "girl," indi "son," and in the Cholona, of Peru, nun-pullup "boy," ila-pullup "girl," pul "son,"—where ila means "female," and nun "male."

In some others, as was the case with the Latin puella, from puer, the word for "girl" seems derived from that for "boy." Thus, we have in Maya, mehen "son," ix-mehen "daughter,"— -ix is a feminine prefix; and in the Jívaro, of Ecuador, vila "son," vilalu, "daughter."

Among very many primitive peoples, the words for "babe, infant, child," signify really "small," "little one," like the Latin parvus, the Scotch wean (for wee ane, "wee one"), etc. In Hawaiian, for example, the "child" is called keiki, "the little one," and in certain Indian languages of the Western Pacific slope, the Wiyot kusha'ma "child," Yuke únsil "infant," Wintun cru-tut "infant," Niskwalli chá chesh "child (boy)," all signify literally "small," "little one."

Some languages, again, have diminutives of the word for "child," often formed by reduplication, like the wee wean of Lowland Scotch, and the pilpil, "infant" of the Nahuatl of Mexico.

In the Snanaimuq language, of Vancouver Island, the words k·ä'ela, "male infant," and k·ä'k·ela, "female infant," mean simply "the weak one." In the Modoc, of Oregon, a "baby" is literally, "what is carried on one's self." In the Tsimshian, of British Columbia, the word wok·â'ûts, "female infant," signifies really "without labrets," indicating that the creature is yet too young for the lip ornaments. In Latin, liberi, one of the words for "children," shows on its face that it meant only "children, as opposed to the slaves of the house, servi"; for liberi really denotes "the free ones." In "the Galibi language of Brazil, tigami signifies 'young brother, son, and little child,' indiscriminately." The following passage from Westermarck recalls the "my son," etc., of our higher conversational or even officious style (166.93):—

"Mr. George Bridgman states that, among the Mackay blacks of Queensland, the word for 'daughter' is used by a man for any young woman belonging to the class to which his daughter would belong if he had one. And, speaking of the Australians, Eyre says, 'In their intercourse with each other, natives of different tribes are exceedingly punctilious and polite; … almost everything that is said is prefaced by the appellation of father, son, brother, mother, sister, or some other similar term, corresponding to that degree of relationship which would have been most in accordance with their relative ages and circumstances."

Similar phenomena meet us in the language of the criminal classes, and the slang of the wilder youth of the country.

Among the Andaman Islanders: "Parents, when addressing or referring to their children, and not using names, employ distinct terms, the father calling his son dar ô-dire, i.e. 'he that has been begotten by me,' and his daughter, dar ô-dire-pail-; while the mother makes use of the word dab ê-tire, i.e. 'he whom I have borne,' for the former, and dab ê-tire pail- for the latter; similarly, friends, in speaking of children to their parents, say respectively, ngar ô-dire, or ngab ê-tire (your son), ngar ô-dire-pail-, or ngab ê-tire-pail- (your daughter)" (498. 59).

In the Tonkawé Indian language of Texas, "to be born" is nikaman yekéwa, literally, "to become bones," and in the Klamath, of Oregon, "to give birth," is nkâcgî, from nkák, "the top of the head," and gî, "to make," or perhaps from kák'gî, "to produce bones," from the idea that the seat of life is in the bones. In the Nipissing dialect of the Algonkian tongue, ni kanis, "my brother," signifies literally, "my little bone," an etymology which, in the light of the expressions cited above, reminds one of the Greek [Greek: adelphos], and the familiar "bone of my bone," etc. A very interesting word for "child" is Sanskrit toka, Greek [Greek: teknon], from the Indo-European radical tek, "to prepare, make, produce, generate." To the same root belong Latin texere, "to weave," Greek [Greek: technae] "art"; so that the child and art have their names from the same primitive source—the mother was the former of the child as she was of the chief arts of life.

"Flower-Names."

The people who seem to have gone farthest in the way of words for "child" are the Andaman Islanders, who have an elaborate system of nomenclature from the first year to the twelfth or fifteenth, when childhood may be said to end. There are also in use a profusion of "flower-names" and complimentary terms. The "flower-names" are confined to girls and young women who are not mothers. The following list shows the peculiarity of the name-giving:—

1. Proper name chosen before birth of child: .dô'ra.

2. If child turns out to be a boy, he is called: .dô'ra-ô'ta; if a girl, .dô'ra-kâ'ta; these names (ô'ta and kâ'ta refer to the genital organs of the two sexes) are used during the first two or three years only.

3. Until he reaches puberty, the boy is called: .dô'ra dâ'la, and the girl, .dô'ra-po'il'ola.

4. When she reaches maturity, the girl is said to be ún-lâ-wi, or â'kà-lá-wi, and receives a "flower-name" chosen from the one of "the eighteen prescribed trees which blossom in succession" happening to be in season when she attains womanhood.

5. If this should occur in the middle of August, when the Pterocarpus dalbergoides, called châ'langa, is in flower, ".dô'ra-po-ilola would become .chà'garu dô'ra, and this double name would cling to the girl until she married and was a mother, then the 'flower' name would give way to the more dignified term chän'a (madam or mother).dô'ra; if childless, a woman has to pass a few years of married life before she is called chän'a, after which no further change is made in her name."

Much other interesting information about name-giving may be found in the pages of Mr. Man's excellent treatise on this primitive people (498. 59-61; 201-208).

Sign Language.

Interesting details about signs and symbols for "child" may be found in
the elaborate article of Colonel Mallery on "Sign Language among North
American Indians" (497a), and the book of Mr. W. P. Clark on Indian
Sign Language (420).

Colonel Mallery tells us that "the Egyptian hieroglyphists, notably in the designation of Horus, their dawn-god, used the finger in or on the lips for 'child.' It has been conjectured in the last instance that the gesture implied, not the mode of taking nourishment, but inability to speak, in-fans." This conjecture, however, the author rejects (497a. 304). Among the Arapaho Indians "the sign for child, baby, is the forefinger in the mouth, i.e. a nursing child, and a natural sign of a deaf-mute is the same;" related seem also the ancient Chinese forms for "son" and "birth," as well as the symbol for the latter among the Dakota Indians (494 a. 356). Clark describes the symbol for "child," which is based upon those for "parturition" and "height," thus: "Bring the right hand, back outwards, in front of centre of body, and close to it, fingers extended, touching, pointing outwards and downwards; move the hands on a curve downwards and outwards; then carry the right hand, back outwards, well out to front and right of body, fingers extended and pointing upwards, hand resting at supposed height of child; the hand is swept into last position at the completion of first gesture. In speaking of children generally, and, in fact, unless it is desired to indicate height or age of the child, the first sign is all that is used or is necessary. This sign also means the young of any animal. In speaking of children generally, sometimes the signs for different heights are only made. Deaf-mutes make the combined sign for male and female, and then denote the height with right hand held horizontally" (420. 109).

For "baby," deaf-mutes "hold extended left hand back down, in front of body, forearm about horizontal and pointing to right and front; then lay the back of partially compressed right hand on left forearm near wrist" (420. 57).

Names.

The interesting and extensive field of personal onomatology—the study of personal names—cannot be entered upon exhaustively here. Shakespeare has said:—

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet,"—

and the same remark might be made of the children of some primitive peoples. Not infrequently the child is named before it is born. Of the Central Eskimo we read that often before the birth of the child, "some relative or friend lays his hand upon the mother's stomach, and decides what the infant is to be called; and, as the name serves for either sex, it is of no consequence whether it be a girl or a boy" (402. 612, 590). Polle has a good deal to say of the deep significance of the name with certain peoples—"to be" and "to be named" appearing sometimes as synonymous (517. 99). "Hallowed be Thy name" expresses the ideas of many generations of men. With the giving of a name the soul and being of a former bearer of it were supposed to enter into and possess the child or youth upon whom it was conferred. Kink says of the Eskimo of East Greenland, that "they seemed to consider man as consisting of three independent parts,—soul, body, name" (517. 122). One can easily understand the mysterious associations of the name, the taboos of its utterance or pronunciation so common among primitive peoples—the reluctance to speak the name of a dead person, as well as the desire to confer the name of such a one upon a new-born child, spring both from the same source.

The folk-lore and ceremonial of name-giving are discussed at length in Ploss, and the special treatises on popular customs. In several parts of Germany, it is held to be ominous for misfortune or harm to the child, if the name chosen for it should be made known before baptism. Sometimes, the child is hardly recognized as existing until he has been given a name. In Gerbstadt in Mansfeld, Germany, the child before it receives its name is known as "dovedung," and, curiously enough, in far-off Samoa, the corresponding appellation is "excrement of the family-god" (517.103).

The following statement, regarding one of the American Indian tribes, will stand for many other primitive peoples: "The proper names of the Dakotas are words, simple and compounded, which are in common use in the language. They are usually given to children by the father, grandfather, or some other influential relative. When young men have distinguished themselves in battle, they frequently take to themselves new names, as the names of distinguished ancestors of warriors now dead. The son of a chief when he comes to the chieftainship, generally takes the name of his father or grandfather, so that the same names, as in other more powerful dynasties, are handed down along the royal lines" (524. 44-45).

Of the same people we are also told: "The Dakotas have no family or surnames. But the children of a family have particular names which belong to them, in the order of their birth up to the fifth child. These names are for boys, Caske, Hepan, Hepi, Catan, and Hake. For girls they are, Windna, Hapan, Hapistinna, Wanske, and Wihake."

Terms applied to Children.

An interesting study might be made of the words we apply to children in respect of size, little, small, wee, tiny, etc., very many of which, in their etymology, have no reference to childhood, or indeed to smallness. The derivation of little is uncertain, but the word is reasonably thought to have meant "little" in the sense of "deceitful, mean," from the radical lut, "to stoop" (hence "to creep, to sneak"). Curiously enough, the German klein has lost its original meaning,—partly seen in our clean,—"bright, clear." Small also belongs in the same category, as the German schmal, "narrow, slim," indicates, though perhaps the original signification may have been "small" as we now understand it; a cognate word is the Latin macer, "thin, lean," which has lost an s at the beginning. Even wee, as the phrase "a little wee bit" hints, is thought (by Skeat) to be nothing more than a Scandinavian form of the same word which appears in our English way. Skeat also tells us that "a little teeny boy," meant at first "a little fractious (peevish) boy," being derived from an old word teen, "anger, peevishness." Analogous to tiny is pettish, which is derived from pet, "mama's pet," "a spoiled child." Endless would the list of words of this class be, if we had at our disposal the projected English dialect dictionary; many other illustrations might be drawn from the numerous German dialect dictionaries and the great Swiss lexicon of Tobler.

Still more interesting, perhaps, would be the discussion of the special words used to denote the actions and movements of children of all ages, and the names and appellatives of the child derived from considerations of age, constitution, habits, actions, speech, etc., which are especially numerous in Low German dialects and such forms of English speech as the Lowland Scotch. Worthy of careful attention are the synonyms of child, the comparisons in which the child figures in the speech of civilized and uncivilized man; the slang terms also, which, like the common expression of to-day, kid, often go back to a very primitive state of mind, when "children" and "kids" were really looked upon as being more akin than now. Beside the terms of contempt and sarcasm,—goose, loon, pig, calf, donkey, etc.,—those figures of speech which, the world over, express the sentiment of the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon regarding the foolishness of babes,—we, like the ancient Mexicans and many another lower race, have terms of praise and endearment,—"a jewel of a babe," and the like,—legions of caressives and diminutives in the use of which some of the Low German dialects are more lavish even than Lowland Scotch.

In Grimm's great Deutsches Wörterbuch, the synonymy of the word Kind and its semasiology are treated at great length, with a multitude of examples and explanations, useful to students of English, whose dictionaries lag behind in these respects. The child in language is a fertile subject for the linguist and the psychologist, and the field is as yet almost entirely unexplored.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CHILD IN THE PRIMITIVE LABORATORY.

As if no mother had made you look nice.—Proverbial Saying of Songish
Indians.

Spare the rod and spoil the child.—Hebrew Proverb.

Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.—Daniel v. 27.

He has lost his measure.—German Saying.

"Licking into Shape."

Pope, in the Dunciad, has the well-known lines:—

"So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,
Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear,"

a conceit found in Burton, Montaigne, Byron, and other writers, and based upon an old folk-belief that the cubs are born a formless lump which the mother-bear has to "lick into shape." The same idea gave rise to the "ours mal léché" of French, and our own colloquial expression "an ill-licked cub." In an Alemanian lullaby sung while washing and combing the child, occurs the following curious passage:—

"I bin e chleine Pumpernickel,
I bin e chleine Bär,
Und wie mi Gott erschaffe hät,
So wagglen ich derher,"
["I am a little Pumpernickel,
I am a little bear,
And just as God has fashioned me
I wiggle about,">[

which, perhaps, contains the same thought. In a recent article, Professor E. W. Fay offers an etymology of the word "livid" which facilitates the passage from animal to man: "Lividus meant 'licked.' The word derives from an animal's licking hurts and sores on the young. A mother of the human species still kisses (licks) a child's hurt to make it well" (Mod. Lang. Notes, IX. 263). Who has not had his mother say: "Does it hurt? Come and let me kiss it, and make it well."

Moreover, Reclus tells us, "There are Esquimaux who go further in their demonstrations of affection, and carrying their complaisance as far as Mamma Puss and Mamma Bruin, lick their babies to clean them, lick them well over from head to foot" (523. 38). Nor is it always the mother who thus acts. Mantegazza observes: "I even know a very affectionate child, who, without having learnt it from any one, licks the people to whom he wishes to show friendship" (499. 144).

Massage.

Che nasce bella nasce maritata,—"the girl born pretty is born married,"—says the Italian proverb, and many devices there are among primitive races to ensure the beauty which custom demands, but which nature has failed to provide.

Among the Songish Indians of British Columbia, there is a saying: Tôu ô'wuna täns ksEtctcâ'ai,—"as if no mother had made you look nice." Doctor Boas describes the "making the child look nice" as follows (404. 20):—

"As soon as it is born, the mother rubs it from the mouth towards the ears, so as to press the cheek-bones somewhat upward. The outer corners of the eyes are pulled outward that they may not become round, which is considered ill-looking. The calves of the legs are pressed backward and upward, the knees are tied together to prevent the feet from turning inward, the forehead is pressed down." Among the Nootka Indians, according to the same authority: "Immediately after birth, the eyebrows of the babe are pressed upward, its belly is pressed forward, and the calves of the legs are squeezed from the ankles upward. All these manipulations are believed to improve the appearance of the child. It is believed that the pressing of the eyebrows will give them the peculiar shape that may be noticed in all carvings of the Indians of the North Pacific Coast. The squeezing of the legs is intended to produce slim ankles" (404. 39).

The subject of the human physiognomy and physical characteristics in folk-lore and folk-speech is a very entertaining one, and the practices in vogue for beautifying these are legion and found all over the world (204).

Face-Games.

Some recollection of such procedure as that of the Songish Indians seems to linger, perhaps, in the game, which Sicilian nurses play on the baby's features. It consists in "lightly touching nose, mouth, eyes, etc., giving a caress or slap to the chin," and repeating at the same time the verses:—

"Varvaruttedu
Vucca d'aneddu,
Nasu affilatu,
Ocehi di stiddi
Frunti quatrata
E te 'ccà 'na timpulata."

In French we have corresponding to this:—

"Beau front
Petits yeux,
Nez can can,
Bouche d'argent,
Menton fleuri,
Chichirichi."

In Scotch:—

"Chin cherry,
Moo merry,
Nose nappie,
Ee winkie,
Broo brinkie,
Cock-up jinkie."

In English:—

"Eye winker,
Tom Tinker,
Nose dropper,
Mouth eater.
Chin chopper."

And cognate practices exist all over the globe (204. 21).

Primitive Weighing.

"Worth his weight in gold" is an expression which has behind it a long history of folk-thought. Professor Gaidoz, in his essay on Ransom by Weight (236), and Haberlandt, in his paper on the Tulâpurusha, Man-Weighing (248) of India, have shown to what extent has prevailed in Europe and Asia the giving of one's weight in gold or other precious substances by prisoners to their captors, in order to secure their liberty, by devotees to the church, or to some saint, as a cure for, or a preventitive of disease, or as an act of charity or of gratitude for favours received.

The expression used of Belshazzar in Daniel v. 27, "Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting" (and the analogue in Job xxxi. 6), has been taken quite literally, and in Brittany, according to the Abbot of Soissons, there was a Chapel of the Balances, "in which persons who came to be cured miraculously, were weighed, to ascertain whether their weight diminished when prayer was made by the monks in their behalf." Brewer informs us that "Rohese, the mother of Thomas Becket, used to weigh her boy every year on his birthday, against the money, clothes, and provisions which she gave to the poor" (191.41). From Gregory of Tours we learn that Charicus, King of the Suevi, when his son was ill, "hearing of the miraculous power of the bones of St. Martin, had his son weighed against gold and silver, and sent the amount to his sepulchre and sanctuary at Tours" (236. 60).

Weighing of infants is looked upon with favour in some portions of western Europe, and to the same source we may ultimately trace the modern baby's card with the weight of the newcomer properly inscribed upon it,—a fashion which bids fair to be a valuable anthropometric adjunct. "Hefting the baby" has now taken on a more scientific aspect than it had of yore.

The following curious custom of the eastern Eskimo is perhaps to be mentioned here, a practice connected with their treatment of the sick. "A stone weighing three or four pounds, according to the gravity of the sickness, is placed by a matron under the pillow. Every morning she weighs it, pronouncing meanwhile words of mystery. Thus she informs herself of the state of the patient and his chances of recovery. If the stone grows constantly heavier, it is because the sick man cannot escape, and his days are numbered" (523. 39).

It is a far cry from Greenland to England, but there are connecting links in respect of folk-practice. Mr. Dyer informs us that in the parish church of Wingrove, near Ailesbury, as late as 1759, a certain Mrs. Hammokes was accused of witchcraft, and her husband demanded the "trial by the church Bible." So "she was solemnly conducted to the parish church, where she was stript of all her clothes to her shift, and weighed against the great parish Bible in the presence of all her neighbours. The result was that, to the no small mortification of her accuser, she outweighed the Bible, and was triumphantly acquitted of the charge" (436. 307, 308).

How often has not woman, looked upon in the light of a child, been subjected to the same practices and ceremonies!

Primitive Measurements.

The etymology and original significance of our common English words, span, hand, foot, cubit, fathom, and their cognates and equivalents in other languages, to say nothing of the self-explanatory finger's breadth, arm's length, knee-high, ankle-deep, etc., go back to the same rude anthropometry of prehistoric and primitive times, from which the classic peoples of antiquity obtained their canons of proportion and symmetry of the human body and its members. Among not a few primitive races it is the child rather than the man that is measured, and we there meet with a rude sort of anthropometric laboratory. From Ploss, who devotes a single paragraph to "Measurements of the Body," we learn that these crude measurements are of great importance in folk-medicine:—

"In Bohemia, the new-born child is usually measured by an old woman, who measures all the limbs with a ribbon, and compares them with one another; the hand, e.g., must be as long as the face. If the right relations do not subsist, prayers and various superstitious practices are resorted to in order to prevent the devil from injuring the child, and the evil spirits are driven out of the house by means of fumigation. In the case of sick children in Bohemia the measuring is resorted to as a sympathetic cure. In other parts of Germany, on the other hand, in Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Oldenburg, it is thought that measuring and weighing the new-born child may interfere with its thriving and growth" (326. I. 302).

Sibree states that in Madagascar, at circumcision, the child is measured and sprinkled with water (214. 6), and Ellis, in his history of that island, gives the following details of the ceremony (History of Madagascar, Vol. I. p. 182):—

"The children on whom the rite is to be performed are next led across the blood of the animal just killed, to which some idea of sacredness is attached. They are then placed on the west side of the house, and, as they stand erect, a man holding a light cane in his hand, measures the first child to the crown of the head, and at one stroke cuts off a piece of the cane measured to that height, having first carefully dipped the knife in the blood of the slaughtered sheep. The knife is again dipped in the blood, and the child measured to the waist, when the cane is cut to that height. He is afterwards measured to the knee with similar results. The same ceremony is performed on all the children successively. The meaning of this, if indeed any meaning can be attached to it, seems to be the symbolical removal of all evils to which the children might be exposed,—first from the head to the waist, then from the waist to the knees, and finally, from the knees to the sole of the foot."

The general question of the measurement of sick persons (not especially children), and of the payment of an image or a rod of precious metal of the height of a given person, or the height of his waist, shoulders, knee, etc., of the person, in recompense for some insult or injury, has been treated of by Grimm, Gaidoz, and Haberlandt. Gaidoz remarks (236. 74): "It is well known that in Catholic countries it is customary to present the saints with votive offerings in wax, which are representative of the sicknesses for which the saints are invoked; a wax limb, or a wax eye, for instance, are representative of a sore limb or of a sore eye, the cure of which is expected from the saint. Wax bodies were offered in the same way, as we learn from a ludicrous story told by Henri Estienne, a French writer of the sixteenth century. The story is about a clever monk who made credulous parents believe he had saved their child by his prayers, and he says to the father, 'Now your son is safe, thanks to God; one hour ago I should not have thought you would have kept him alive. But do you know what you are to do? You ought to have a wax effigy of his own size made for the glory of God, and put it before the image of the holy Ambrose, at whose intercession our Lord did this favour to you.'" Even poorer people were in the habit of offering wax candles of the height or of the weight of the sick person.

In 1888, M. Letourneau (299) called attention to the measurement of the neck as a test of puberty, and even of the virginity of maidens. In Brittany, "According to popular opinion, there is a close relation between the volume of the neck and puberty, sometimes even the virginity of girls. It is a common sight to see three young girls of uncertain age measure in sport the circumference of the neck of one of them with a thread. The two ends of this thread are placed between the teeth of the subject, and the endeavour is made to make the loop of the thread pass over the head. If the operation succeeds, the young girl is declared 'bonne à marier.'" MM. Hanoteau and Letourneau state that among the Kabyles of Algeria a similar measurement is made of the male sex. In Kabylia, where the attainment of the virile state brings on the necessity of paying taxes and bearing arms, families not infrequently endeavour to conceal the puberty of their young men. If such deceit is suspected, recourse is had to the test of neck-measurement. Here again, as in Brittany, if the loop formed by the thread whose two ends are held in the teeth passes over the head, the young man is declared of age, and enrolled among the citizens, whilst his family is punished by a fine. M. Manouvrier also notes that the same test is also employed to discover whether an adolescent is to be compelled to keep the fast of Rhamadan.

Measurements of Limbs and Body.

M. Mahoudeau cites from Tillaux's Anatomie topographique, and MM. Perdrizet and Gaidoz in Mélusine for 1893, quote from the Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturette et cabalistique du Petit Albert (1743) extracts relating to this custom, which is also referred to by the Roman writers C. Valerius, Catullus, Vossius, and Scaliger. The subject is an interesting one, and merits further investigation. Ellis (42. 233) has something to say on the matter from a scientific point of view. Grimm has called attention to the very ancient custom of measuring a patient, "partly by way of cure, partly to ascertain if the malady were growing or abating." This practice is frequently mentioned in the German poems and medical books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In one case a woman says of her husband, "I measured him till he forgot everything," and another, desirous of persuading hers that he was not of sound mind, took the measure of his length and across his head. In a Zürich Ms. of 1393, "measuring" is included among the unchristian and forbidden things of sorcery. In the region about Treves, a malady known as night-grip (Nachtgriff) is ascertained to be present by the following procedure: "Draw the sick man's belt about his naked body lengthwise and breadthwise, then take it off and hang it on a nail with the words 'O God, I pray thee, by the three virgins, Margarita, Maria Magdalena, and Ursula, be pleased to vouchsafe a sign upon the sick man, if he have the nightgrip or no'; then measure again, and if the belt be shorter than before, it is a sign of the said sickness." In the Liegnitz country, in 1798, we are told there was hardly a village without its messerin (measuress), an old woman, whose modus operandi was this: "When she is asked to say whether a person is in danger from consumption, she takes a thread and measures the patient, first from head to heel, then from tip to tip of the outspread arms; if his length be less than his breadth then he is consumptive; the less the thread will measure his arms, the farther has the disease advanced; if it reaches only to the elbow, there is no hope for him. The measuring is repeated from time to time; if the thread stretches and reaches its due length again, the danger is removed. The wise woman must never ask money for her trouble, but take what is given." In another part of Germany, "a woman is stript naked and measured with a piece of red yarn spun on a Sunday." Sembrzycki tells us that in the Elbing district, and elsewhere in that portion of Prussia, the country people are firmly possessed by the idea that a decrease in the measure of the body is the source of all sorts of maladies. With an increase of sickness the hands and feet are believed to lose more and more their just proportional relations one with another, and it is believed that one can determine how much measure is yet to be lost, how long the patient has yet to live. This belief has given rise to the proverbial phrase das Maas verlieren—"to lose one's measure" (462. III. 1163-5).

Not upon adults alone, however, were these measurements carried out, but upon infants, children, and youths as well. Even in the New World, among the more conservative of the population of Aryan origin, these customs still nourish, as we learn from comparatively recent descriptions of trustworthy investigators. Professor J. Howard Gore, in the course of an interesting article on "The Go-Backs," belief in which is current among the dwellers in the mountain regions of the State of Virginia, tells us that when some one has suggested that "the baby has the 'go-backs,'" the following process is gone through: "The mother then must go alone with the babe to some old lady duly instructed in the art or science of curing this blighting disease. She, taking the infant, divests it of its clothing and places it on its back. Then, with a yarn string, she measures its length or height from the crown of the head to the sole of the heel, cutting off a piece which exactly represents this length. This she applies to the foot, measuring off length by length, to see if the piece of yarn contains the length of the foot an exact number of times. This operation is watched by the mother with the greatest anxiety, for on this coincidence of measure depends the child's weal or woe. If the length of the string is an exact multiple of the length of the foot, nothing is wrong, but if there is a remainder, however small, the baby has the go-backs, and the extent of the malady is proportional to this remainder. Of course in this measuring, the elasticity of the yarn is not regarded, nor repetitions tried as a test of accuracy" (244. 108). Moreover, "the string with which the determination was made must be hung on the hinge of a gate on the premises of the infant's parents, and as the string by gradual decay passes away, so passes away the 'go-backs.' But if the string should be lost, the ailment will linger until a new test is made and the string once more hung out to decay. Sometimes the cure is hastened by fixing the string so that wear will come upon it."

Professor Gore aptly refers to the Latin proverb ex pede Herculem, which arose from the calculation of Pythagoras, who from the stadium of 6000 feet laid out by Hercules for the Olympian games, by using his own foot as the unit, obtained the length of the foot of the mighty hero, whence he also deduced his height. We are not told, however, as the author remarks, whether or not Hercules had the "go-backs."

Among the white settlers of the Alleghanies between southwestern Georgia and the Pennsylvania line, according to Mr. J. Hampden Porter, the following custom is in vogue: "Measuring an infant, whose growth has been arrested, with an elastic cord that requires to be stretched in order to equal the child's length, will set it right again. If the spell be a wasting one, take three strings of similar or unlike colours, tie them to the front door or gate in such a manner that whenever either are opened there is some wear and tear of the cords. As use begins to tell upon them, vigour will recommence" (480. VII. 116). Similar practices are reported from Central Europe by Sartori (392 (1895). 88), whose article deals with the folk-lore of counting, weighing, and measuring.

Tests of Physical Efficiency.

That certain rude tests of physical efficiency, bodily strength, and power of endurance have been and are in use among primitive peoples, especially at the birth of children, or soon after, or just before, at, or after, puberty, is a well-known fact, further testified to by the occurrence of these practices in folk-tales and fairy-stories. Lifting stones, jumping over obstacles, throwing stones, spears, and the like, crawling or creeping through holes in stones, rocks, or trees, have all been in vogue, and some of them survive even to-day in England and in other parts of Europe as popular tests of puberty and virginity. Mr. Dyer, in his Church Lore Gleanings, mentions the "louping," or "petting" stone at Belford, in Northumberland (England), a stone "placed in the path outside the church porch, over which the bridal pair with their attendants must leap"—the belief is that "the bride must leave all her pets and humours behind her when she crosses it." At High-Coquetdale, according to Mr. Henderson, in 1868, a bride was made to jump over a stick held by two groomsmen at the church door (436. 125). Another very curious practice is connected with St. Wilfrid's "needle" at Ripon Cathedral—said to be an imitation of the Basilican transenna. Through this passage maidens who were accused of unchastity crept in order to prove their innocence. If they could not pass through, their guilt was presumed. It is also believed that "poor palsied folk crept through in the expectation of being healed." At Boxley Church in Kent, there was a "small figure of St. Rumbold, which only those could lift who had never sinned in thought or deed" (436. 312, 313).

At a marriage among the Nootka Indians of Vancouver Island, the groom's party essay feats like these: "Heavy weights are lifted; they try who is the best jumper. A blanket with a hole in the centre is hung up, and men walk up to it blindfolded from a distance of about twenty steps. When they get near it they must point with their fingers towards the blanket, and try to hit the hole. They also climb a pole, on top of which an eagle's nest, or something representing an eagle's nest, is placed. The winner of each game receives a number of blankets from the girl's father. When the games are at an end, the groom's father distributes blankets among the other party" (404. 43). This reminds us of the games at picnics and social gatherings of our own people.

In the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1895, S. O. Addy, in an article entitled "English Surnames and Heredity," points out how the etymologies give us some indications of the physical characteristics of the persons on whom the names were conferred. In primitive times and among the lower races names are even of more importance in this respect.

Clark says: "I have seen a baby not two days old snugly tied up in one of these little sacks; the rope tied to the pommel of the saddle, the sack hanging down alongside of the pony, and mother and child comfortably jogging along, making a good day's march in bitter cold winter weather, easily keeping up with a column of cavalry which was after hostile Indians. After being carefully and firmly tied in the cradle, the child, as a rule, is only taken out to be cleaned in the morning, and again in the evening just before the inmates of a lodge go to sleep; sometimes also in the middle of the day, but on the march only morning and evening" (420. 57).

In his account of the habits of the Tarahumari Indians, Lumholtz observes: "Heat never seems to trouble them. I have seen young babies sleeping with uncovered heads on the backs of their mothers, exposed to the fierce heat of the summer sun." The same writer tells us that once he pulled six hairs at once from a sleeping child, "without causing the least disturbance," and only when twenty-three had been extracted at once did the child take notice, and then only scratched its head and slept on (107. 297).

Colonel Dodge notes the following practice in vogue among the wild
Indians of the West:—

"While the child, either boy or girl, is very young, the mother has entire charge, control, and management of it. It is soon taught not to cry by a very summary process. When it attempts to 'set up a yell,' the mother covers its mouth with the palm of her hand, grasps its nose between her thumb and forefinger, and holds on until the little one is nearly suffocated. It is then let go, to be seized and smothered again at the first attempt to cry. The baby very soon comprehends that silence is the best policy" (432.187).

Of the Indians of Lower California, who learn to stand and walk before they are a year old, we are told on the authority of the missionary Baegert: "When they are born they are cradled in the shell of a turtle or on the ground. As soon as the child is a few months old, the mother places it perfectly naked astraddle on her shoulders, its legs hanging down on both sides in front. In this guise the mother roves about all day, exposing her helpless charge to the hot rays of the sun and the chilly winds that sweep over the inhospitable country" (306. 185).

Sleep.

Curious indeed are some of the methods in use among primitive peoples to induce sleep. According to Mr. Fraser, the natives of a village near the banks of the Girree, in the Himalayan region of India, had the following custom (Quart. Rev. XXIV. 109):—

"The mother, seizing the infant with both arms and aided by the knees, gives it a violent whirling motion, that would seem rather calculated to shake the child in pieces than to produce the effect of soft slumber; but the result was unerring, and in a few seconds the child was fast asleep."

Somewhat akin to this procedure is the practice our modern mothers and nurses have of swinging the baby through a sort of semicircle in their arms, accompanying it with the familiar song,—

"This way,
And that way," etc.

This song and action, their dolls doing duty as children, have been introduced into the kindergarten, and even figure now in "doll-drills" on the stage, and at church festivals and society entertainments.

Of the same village the author goes on to say:—

"Several straw sheds are constructed on a bank, above which a cold clear stream is led to water their fields, and a small portion of this, probably of three fingers' breadth, is brought into the shed by a hollow stick or piece of bark, and falls from this spout into a small drain, which carries it off about two feet below. The women bring their children to these huts in the heat of the day, and having lulled them to sleep and wrapt their bodies and feet warm in a blanket, they place them on a small bench or tray horizontally, in such a way that the water shall fall upon the crown of the head, just keeping the whole top wet with its stream. We saw two under this operation, and several others came in while we remained, to place their children in a similar way. Males and females are equally used thus, and their sleep seemed sound and unruffled."

"Heroic Treatment."

The Andamanese baby "within a few hours of its birth has its head shaved and painted with kòvob—(an ochre-mixture), while its diminutive face and body are adorned with a design in tiela-og—(white clay); this latter, as may be supposed, is soon obliterated, and requires therefore to be constantly renewed." We are further informed that before shaving an infant, "the mother usually moistens the head with milk which she presses from her breast," while with older children and adults water serves for this purpose (498. 114).

The "heroic treatment," meted out by primitive peoples to children, as they approach puberty, has been discussed in detail by Ploss, Kulischer, Daniels. Religion and the desire to attract the affection or attention of the other sex seem to lie very close to the fundamental reasons for many of these practices, as Westermarck points out in his chapter on the "Means of Attraction." (166. 165-212). A divine origin is often ascribed to these strange mutilations. "The Australian Dieyerie, on being asked why he knocks out two front teeth of the upper jaw of his children, can answer only that, when they were created, the Muranaura, a good spirit, thus disfigured the first child, and, pleased at the sight, commanded that the like should be done to every male or female child for ever after. The Pelew Islanders believe that the perforation of the septum of the nose is necessary for winning eternal bliss; and the Nicaraguans say that their ancestors were instructed by the gods to flatten their children's heads. Again, in Fiji it is supposed that the custom of tattooing is in conformity with the appointment of the god Dengei, and that its neglect is punished after death. A similar idea prevails among the Kingsmill Islanders and Ainos; and the Greenlanders formerly believed that the heads of those girls who had not been deformed by long stitches made with a needle and black thread between the eyes, on the forehead, and upon the chin, would be turned into train tubs and placed under the lamps in heaven, in the land of souls" (165. 170, 171).

Were all the details of the fairy-tales true, which abound in every land, the cruelty meted out to the child suspected of being a changeling would surpass human belief. Hartland enumerates the following procedures as having been in use, according to legend, to determine the justice of the suspicion: Flinging the child on a dung-heap; putting in the oven; holding a red-hot shovel before the child's face; heating a poker red-hot to mark a cross on its forehead; heating the tongs red-hot to seize it by the nose; throwing on, or into, the fire; suspending over the fire in a pot; throwing the child naked on the glowing embers at midnight; throwing into lake, river, or sea (258. 120-123). These and many more figure in story, and not a few of them seem to have been actually practised upon the helpless creatures, who, like the heathen, were not supposed to call for pity or love. Mr. Hartland cites a case of actual attempt to treat a supposed changeling in a summary manner, which occurred no later than May 17,1884, in the town of Clonmel, Ireland. In the absence of the mother of a three-year-old child (fancied by the neighbours to be a changeling), two women "entered her house and placed the child naked on a hot shovel, 'under the impression that it would break the charm,'"—the only result being, of course, that the infant was very severely burned (258. 121).

On the other hand, children of true Christian origin, infants who afterwards become saints, are subject to all sorts of torment at the hands of Satan and his angels, at times, but come forth, like the "children" of the fiery furnace in the time of Daniel, in imitation of whose story many of the hagiological legends have doubtless been put forth, unscathed from fire, boiling water, roaring torrents, and other perilous or deadly situations (191. 9,122).

CHAPTER VII.

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CHILD-LIFE: PARENTAL AFFECTION.

These are my jewels.—Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi).

A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?—Wordsworth.

Children always turn towards the light.—Hare.

That I could bask in Childhood's sun
And dance o'er Childhood's roses!—Praed.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child.—Shakespeare.

Parental Love.

In his essay on The Pleasures of Home, Sir John Lubbock makes the following statement (494. 102):—

"In the Origin of Civilization, I have given many cases showing how small a part family affection plays in savage life. Here I will only mention one case in illustration. The Algonquin (North America) language contained no word for 'to love,' so that when the missionaries translated the Bible into it they were obliged to invent one. What a life, and what a language, without love!"

How unfortunately inaccurate, how entirely unjustifiable, such a declaration is, may be seen from the study of the words for love in two of the Algonkian dialects,—Cree and Chippeway,—which Dr. Brinton has made in one of his essays, The Conception of Love in some American Languages. Let us quote the ipsissima verba (411. 415):—

(1) "In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, a friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man."

(2) "The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love, and to that which the gods have for men."

(3) "In the Chippeway there is a series of expressions for family love and friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological process which developed the Latin amare from the Sanscrit sam."

(4) "The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek [Greek: agapæ], we find expressed in both the dialects by derivatives from a root different from any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms kis, keche, or kiji, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy. Concretely, it signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective [kije, kise], which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent divinity."

Surely this people cannot be charged with a lack of words for love, whose language enables them so well to express its every shade of meaning. Nay, they have even seen from afar that "God is Love," as their concept of Michabo tells us they had already perceived that He was "Light."

Motherhood and Fatherhood.

The nobility and the sanctity of motherhood have found recognition among the most primitive of human races. A Mussulman legend of Adam and Eve represents the angel Gabriel as saying to the mother of mankind after the expulsion from Paradise: "Thou shalt be rewarded for all the pains of motherhood, and the death of a woman in child-bed shall be accounted as martyrdom" (547. 38). The natives of the Highlands of Borneo hold that to a special hereafter, known as "Long Julan," go those who have suffered a violent death (been killed in battle, or by the falling of a tree, or some like accident), and women who die in child-birth; which latter become the wives of those who have died in battle. In this Paradise everybody is rich, with no need for labour, as all wants are supplied without work (475. 199).

Somewhat similar beliefs prevailed in ancient Mexico and among the
Eskimo.

Even so with the father. Zoroaster said in the book of the law: "I name the married before the unmarried, him who has a household before him who has none, the father of a family before him who is childless" (125. I. 108). Dr. Winternitz observes of the Jews: "To possess children was always the greatest good-fortune that could befall a Jew. It was deemed the duty of every man to beget a son; the Rabbis, indeed, considered a childless man as dead. To the Cabbalists of the Middle Ages, the man who left no posterity behind him seemed one who had not fulfilled his mission in this world, and they believed that he had to return once more to earth and complete it" (385. 5).

Ploss (125. I. 108) and Lallemand (286. 21) speak in like terms of this children-loving people. The Talmud ranks among the dead "the poor, the leprous, the blind, and those who have no children," and the wives of the patriarchs of old cheerfully adopted as their own the children born to their husband by slave or concubine. To be the father of a large family, the king of a numerous people, was the ideal of the true Israelite. So, also, was it in India and China.

Ploss and Haberlandt have a good deal to say of the ridicule lavished upon old maids and bachelors among the various peoples and races, and Rink has recorded not a few tales on this head from the various tribes of the Eskimo—in these stories, which are of a more or less trifling and outré character, bachelors are unmercifully derided (525. 465).

With the Chippeways, also, the bachelor is a butt for wit and sarcasm. A tale of the Mississagas of Skugog represents a bachelor as "having gone off to a certain spot and built a lot of little 'camps.' He built fires, etc., and passed his time trying to make people believe he was not alone. He used to laugh and talk, and pretend that he had people living there." Even the culture-heroes Gluskap and Näniboju are derided in some of the tales for not being married (166. 376).

According to Barbosa (67. 161), a writer of the early part of the sixteenth century, the Nairs, a Dravidian people of the Malabar coast (523. 159), believed that "a maiden who refused to marry and remained a virgin would be shut out of Paradise." The Fijians excluded from Paradise all bachelors; they were smashed to pieces by the god Nangganangga (166. 137).

In the early chronicles and mythic lore of many peoples there are tales of childless couples, who, in their quaint fashion, praying to the gods, have been blest with the desired offspring. There is, however, no story more pathetic, or more touching, than the Russian folk-tale cited by Ralston, in which we read concerning an old childless couple (520. 176): "At last the husband went into the forest, felled wood, and made a cradle. Into this his wife laid one of the logs he had cut, and began swinging it, crooning the while a tune beginning:—

'Swing, blockie dear, swing.'

After a little time, behold! the block already had legs. The old woman rejoiced greatly, and began swinging anew, and went on swinging until the block became a babe."

The rude prayers and uncouth aspirations of barbarous and savage peoples, these crude ideas of the uncivilized races of men, when sounded in their deepest depths, are the folk-expression of the sacredness of the complete family, the forerunners of the poet's prayer:—

"Seigneur! préservez-moi, préservez ceux que j'aime,
Frères, parents, amis, et ennemis même
Dans le mal triomphants,
De jamais voir, Seigneur! l'été sans fleurs vermeilles,
La cage sans oiseaux, la ruche sans abeilles,
La maison sans enfants."

The affection of the ancient Egyptians for their children is noted by Erman. The child is called "mine," "the only one," and is "loved as the eyes of its parents"; it is their "beauty," or "wealth." The son is the "fair-come" or "welcome"; at his birth "wealth comes." At the birth of a girl it is said "beauty comes," and she is called "the lady of her father" (441. 216-230). Interesting details of Egyptian child-life and education may be read in the recently edited text of Amélineau (179), where many maxims of conduct and behaviour are given. Indeed, in the naming of children we have some evidence of motherly and fatherly affection, some indication of the gentle ennobling influence of this emotion over language and linguistic expression. True is it all over the world:—

Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen.
[Dear children have many names.]

The Dead Child.

Parental affection is nowhere more strongly brought out than in the lamentations for the dead among some of the lowest tribes of Californian Indians. Of the Yokaia, Mr. Powers tells us (519. 166):—

"It is their custom to 'feed the spirits of the dead' for the space of one year, by going daily to places which they were accustomed to frequent while living, where they sprinkle piñole upon the ground. A Yokaia mother who has lost her babe goes every day for a year to some place where her little one played while alive, or to the spot where its body was burned, and milks her breasts into the air. This is accompanied by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, and sometimes she sings a hoarse and melancholy chant, and dances with a wild, ecstatic swaying of the body."

Of the Miwok the same authority says:—

"The squaws wander off into the forest, wringing their arms piteously, beating the air, with eyes upturned, and adjuring the departed one, whom they tenderly call 'dear child,' or 'dear cousin' (whether a relative or not), to return."

Of the Niskwaili Indians, of the State of Washington, Dr. Gibbs observes (457. 205):—

"They go out alone to some place a little distant from the lodge or camp, and in a loud, sobbing voice, repeat a sort of stereotyped formula, as, for instance, a mother on the loss of her child:—

'Ah seahb! shed-da bud-dah ah-ta-bud! ad-de-dah!
Ah chief my child dead! alas!'

When in dreams they see any of their deceased friends this lamentation is renewed."

Very beautiful and touching in the extreme is the conduct of the
Kabinapek of California:—

"A peculiarity of this tribe is the intense sorrow with which they mourn for their children when dead. Their grief is immeasurable. They not only burn up everything that the baby ever touched, but everything that they possess, so that they absolutely begin life over again—naked as they were born, without an article of property left" (519. 206).

Besides the custom of "feeding the spirits of the dead," just noticed, there exists also among certain of the Californian Indians the practice of "whispering a message into the ear of the dead." Mr. Powers has preserved for us the following most beautiful speech, which, he tells us, was whispered into the ear of a child by a woman of the Karok ere the first shovelful of earth was cast upon it (519. 34): "O, darling, my dear one, good-bye! Never more shall your little hands softly clasp these old withered cheeks, and your pretty feet shall print the moist earth around my cabin never more. You are going on a long journey in the spirit-land, and you must go alone, for none of us can go with you. Listen then to the words which I speak to you and heed them well, for I speak the truth. In the spirit-land there are two roads. One of them is a path of roses, and it leads to the Happy Western Land beyond the great water, where you shall see your dear mother. The other is a path strewn with thorns and briars, and leads, I know not whither, to an evil and dark land, full of deadly serpents, where you wander forever. O, dear child, choose you the path of roses, which leads to the Happy Western Land, a fair and sunny land, beautiful as the morning. And may the great Kareya [the Christ of these aborigines] help you to walk in it to the end, for your little tender feet must walk alone. O, darling, my dear one, good-bye!"

This whispering to the dead is found in other parts of the world. Mr. Hose, describing the funeral of a boy, which he witnessed in Borneo, says (475. 198):—

"As the lid of the coffin was being closed, an old man came out on the verandah of the house with a large gong (Tetawak) and solemnly beat it for several seconds. The chief, who was sitting near, informed me that this was done always before closing the lid, that the relations of the deceased might know that the spirit was coming to join them; and upon his arrival in Apo Leggan [Hades] they would probably greet him in such terms as these: 'O grandchild, it was for you the gong was beating, which we heard just now; what have you brought? How are they all up above? Have they sent any messages?'" The new arrival then delivers the messages entrusted to him, and gives the cigarettes—which, rolled up in a banana-leaf, have been placed in his hand—as proof of the truth of what he says. These cigarettes retain the smell of the hand that made them, which the dead relations are thought to be able to recognize.

Motherhood and Infanticide.

The intimate relationship recognized as existing between the infant and its mother has been among many primitive peoples a frequent cause of infanticide, or has been held at least to excuse and justify that crime. Of the natives of Ashanti, Ellis says:—

"Should the mother die in childbirth, and the child itself be born alive, it is customary to bury it with the mother…. The idea seems to be that the child belongs to the mother, and is sent to accompany her to Srahmanadzi [ghost-land], so that her srahman [ghost] may not grieve for it" (438. 234). Post states that in Unyóro, when the mother dies in childbirth, the infant is killed; among the Hottentots it was exposed (if the mother died during the time of suckling, the child was buried alive with her); among the Damara, "when poor women die and leave children behind them, they are often buried with the mother" (127. I. 287).

According to Collins and Barrington, among certain native tribes of Australia, "when the mother of a suckling dies, if no adoptive parents can be found, the child is placed alive in the arms of the corpse and buried together with it" (125. II. 589). Of the Banians of Bombay, Niebuhr tells us that children under eighteen months old are buried when the mother dies, the corpse of the latter being burned at ebb tide on the shore of the sea, so that the next tide may wash away the ashes (125. II. 581). In certain parts of Borneo: "If a mother died in childbirth, it was the former practice to strap the living babe to its dead mother, and bury them both, together. 'Why should it live?' say they. 'It has been the death of its mother; now she is gone, who will suckle it?'" (481 (1893). 133).

In certain parts of Australia, "children who have caused their mother great pain in birth are put to death" (127. I. 288), and among the Sakalavas of Madagascar, the child of a woman dying in childbed is buried alive with her, the reason given being "that the child may thus be punished for causing the death of its mother" (125. II. 590).

As has been noted elsewhere, not a few primitive peoples have considered that death, in consequence of giving birth to a child, gained for the mother entrance into Paradise. But with some more or less barbarous tribes quite a different idea prevails. Among the Ewe negroes of the slave coast of West Africa, women dying in childbirth become blood-seeking demons; so also in certain parts of Borneo, and on the Sumatran island of Nias, where they torment the living, plague women who are with child, and kill the embryo in the womb, thus causing abortion; in Java, they make women in labour crazy; in Amboina, the Uliase and Kei Islands, and Gilolo, they become evil spirits, torturing women in labour, and seeking to prevent their successful delivery; in Gilolo, the Kei group, and Celebes, they even torment men, seeking to emasculate them, in revenge for the misfortune which has overtaken them (397.19).

Of the Doracho Indians of Central America, the following statement is made: "When a mother, who is still suckling her child, dies, the latter is placed alive upon her breast and burned with her, so that in the future life she may continue to suckle it with her own milk" (125. II. 589). Powers remarks concerning the Korusi (Patwin) Indians of California (519. 222): "When a woman died, leaving her infant very young, the friends shook it to death in a skin or blanket. This was done even with a half-breed child." Of the Nishinam Indians, the same authority informs us: "When a mother dies, leaving a very young infant, custom allows the relatives to destroy it. This is generally done by the grandmother, aunt, or other near relative, who holds the poor innocent in her arms, and, while it is seeking the maternal fountain, presses it to her breast until it is smothered. We must not judge them too harshly for this. They knew nothing of bottle nurture, patent nipples, or any kind of milk whatever, other than the human" (519. 328).

Among the Wintun, also, young infants are known to have been buried when the mother had died shortly after confinement (519. 232).

The Eskimo, Letourneau informs us, were wont to bury the little child with its dead mother, for they believed that unless this were done, the mother herself would call from Killo, the other world, for the child she had borne (100. 147, 148).

The Dead Mother.

To none of the saintly dead, to none of our race who have entered upon the life beyond the grave, is it more meet to pray than to the mother; folk-faith is strong in her power to aid and bless those left behind on earth. That sympathetic relation existing between mother and child when both are living, is often believed to exist when one has departed into the other world. By the name wa-hdé ca-pi, the Dakota Indians call the feeling the (living) mother has for her absent (living) child, and they assert that "mothers feel peculiar pain in their breasts when anything of importance happens to their absent children, or when about to hear from them. This feeling is regarded as an omen." That the mother, after death, should feel the same longing, and should return to help or to nourish her child, is an idea common to the folk-belief of many lands, as Ploss (125. II. 589) and Zmigrodzki have noted.

"Amid the song of the angels," says Zmigrodzki (174. 142), "the plaint of her child on earth reaches the mother's ear, and pierces her heart like a knife. Descend to earth she must and does." In Brittany she is said to go to God Himself and obtain permission to visit earth. Her flight will be all the easier, if, before burial, her relatives have loosed her hair. In various parts of Germany and Switzerland, the belief is that for six weeks the dead mother will come at night to suckle her child, and a pair of slippers or shoes are always put into the coffin with the corpse, for the mother has to travel over thistles, thorns, and sharp stones to reach her child. Widespread over Europe is this belief in the return of the mother, who has died in giving life to her little one. Till cock-crow in the morning she may suckle it, wash it, fondle it; the doors open of themselves for her. If the child is being well treated by its relatives, the mother rejoices, and soon departs; but if it has been neglected, she attends to it, and waits till the last moment, making audible her unwillingness to depart. If the neglect continues, the mother descends to earth once more, and, taking the child with her, returns to heaven for good. And when the mother with her offspring approaches the celestial gates, they fly wide open to receive them. Never, in the folk-faith, was entrance readier granted, never was Milton's concept more completely realized, when

"Heaven open'd wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound,
On golden hinges moving."

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):—

"My first-born; where art thou?
Oh that my wild grief for thee,
Pet daughter, could be assuaged!
Snatched away in time of peace.

Thy delight was to swim,
Thy head encircled with flowers,
Interwoven with fragrant laurel
And the spotted-leaved jessamine.

Whither is my pet gone—
She who absorbed all my love—
She whom I had hoped
To fill with ancestral wisdom?

Red and yellow pandanus drupes
Were sought out in thy morning rambles,
Nor was the sweet-scented myrtle forgotten.

Sometimes thou didst seek out
Fugitives perishing in rocks and caves.

Perchance one said to thee,
'Be mine, be mine, forever;
For my love to thee is great.'

Happy the parent of such a child!
Alas for Enuataurere! Alas for Enuataurere!

Thou wert lovely as a fairy!
A husband for Enuataurere!

Each envious youth exclaims:
'Would that she were mine!'

Enuataurere now trips o'er the ruddy ocean.
Thy path is the foaming crest of the billow.

Weep for Enuataurere—
For Enuataurere."

This song, though, published in 1892, seems to have been composed about the year 1815, at a fête in honour of the deceased. Mr. Gill justly calls attention to the beauty of the last stanza but one, where "the spirit of the girl is believed to follow the sun, tripping lightly over the crest of the billows, and sinking with the sun into the underworld (Avaiki), the home of disembodied spirits."

Among others of the lower races of men, we find the father, expressing his grief at the loss of a child, as tenderly and as sincerely as, if less poetically than, the Polynesian chief, though often the daughter is not so well honoured in death as is the son. Our American Indian tribes furnish not a few instances of such affectionate lamentation.

Much too little has been made of the bright side of child-life among the lower races. But from even the most primitive of tribes all traces of the golden age of childhood are not absent. Powers, speaking of the Yurok Indians of California, notes "the happy cackle of brown babies tumbling on their heads with the puppies" (519. 51), and of the Wintun, in the wild-clover season, "their little ones frolicked and tumbled on their heads in the soft sunshine, or cropped the clover on all-fours like a tender calf" (519. 231). Of the Pawnee Indians, Irving says (478. 214): "In the farther part of the building about a dozen naked children, with faces almost hid by their tangled hair, were rolling and wrestling upon the floor, occasionally causing the lodge to re-echo with their childish glee." Mr. im Thurn, while among the Indians of Guiana, had his attention "especially attracted by one merry little fellow of about five years old, whom I first saw squatting, as on the top of a hill, on top of a turtle-shell twice as big as himself, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and solemnly smoking a long bark cigarette" (477. 39). Of the wild Indians of the West, Colonel Dodge tells us: "The little children are much petted and spoiled; tumbling and climbing, unreproved, over the father and his visitors in the lodge, and never seem to be an annoyance or in the way" (432. 189). Mr. MacCauley, who visited the Seminole Indians of Florida, says: "I remember seeing, one day, one jolly little fellow, lolling and rollicking on his mother's back, kicking her and tugging away at the strings of beads which hung temptingly between her shoulders, while the mother, hand-free, bore on one shoulder a log, which, a moment afterwards, still keeping her baby on her back as she did so, she chopped into small wood for the camp-fire." (496. 498).

There is a Zuñi story of a young maiden, "who, strolling along, saw a beautiful little baby boy bathing in the waters of a spring; she was so pleased with his beauty that she took him home, and told her mother that she had found a lovely little boy" (358. 544). Unfortunately, it turned out to be a serpent in the end.

Kissing.

As Darwin and other authorities have remarked, there are races of men upon the face of the earth, in America, in Africa, in Asia, and in the Island world, who, when first seen of white discoverers, knew not what it meant to kiss (499. 139). The following statement will serve for others than the people to whom it refers: "The only kiss of which the Annamite woman is cognizant is to place her nose against the man's cheek, and to rub it gently up and down, with a kind of canine sniff."

Mantegazza tells us that Raden-Saleh, a "noble and intelligent" Javanese painter, told him that, "like all Malays, he considered there was more tenderness in the contact of the noses than of the lips," and even the Japanese, the English of the extreme Orient, were once ignorant of the art of kissing (499. 139).

Great indeed is the gulf between the Javanese artist and the American, Benjamin West, who said: "A kiss from my mother made me a painter." To a kiss from the Virgin Mother of Christ, legend says, St. Chrysostom owed his "golden mouth." The story runs thus: "St. Chrysostom was a dull boy at school, and so disturbed was he by the ridicule of his fellows, that he went into a church to pray for help to the Virgin. A voice came from the image: 'Kiss me on the mouth, and thou shalt be endowed with all learning.' He did this, and when he returned to his schoolfellows they saw a golden circle about his mouth, and his eloquence and brilliancy astounded them" (347. 621).

Among the natives of the Andaman Islands, Mr. Man informs us, "Kisses are considered indicative of affection, but are only bestowed upon infants" (498. 79).

Tears.

"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking at the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more."

Thus sang the great English laureate, and to the simple folk—the treasure-keepers of the lore of the ages—his words mean much.

Pliny, the Elder, in his Natural History, makes this statement: "Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she [Nature] abandon to cries and lamentations;" the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon, in the Apocrypha, expresses himself in like manner: "When I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice I uttered was crying, as all others do." Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, bluntly resumes both: "He is born naked, and falls a-whining at the first."

The Spaniards have a proverb, brusque and cynical:—

"Des que naeí lloré, y cada dia nace porqué.
[I wept as soon as I was born, and every day explains why.]"

A quaint legend of the Jewish Rabbis, however, accounts for children's tears in this fashion:—

"Beside the child unborn stand two angels, who not only teach it the whole Tora [the traditional interpretation of the Mosaic law], but also let it see all the joys of Paradise and all the torments of Hell. But, since it may not be that a child should come into the world endowed with such knowledge, ere it is born into the life of men an angel strikes it on the upper lip, and all wisdom vanishes. The dimple on the upper lip is the mark of the stroke, and this is why new-born babes cry and weep" (385. 6).

Curiously enough, as if to emphasize the relativity of folk-explanations, a Mussulman legend states that it is "the touch of Satan" that renders the child "susceptible of sin from its birth," and that is the reason why "all children cry aloud when they are born" (547. 249).

Henderson tells us that in the north and south of England "nurses think it lucky for the child to cry at its baptism; they say that otherwise the baby shows that it is too good to live." But there are those also who believe that "this cry betokens the pangs of the new birth," while others hold that it is "the voice of the Evil Spirit as he is driven out by the baptismal water" (469. 16).

Among the untaught peasantry of Sicily, the sweet story goes that "Mary sends an angel from Heaven one day every week to play with the souls of the unbaptized children [in hell]; and when he goes away, he takes with him, in a golden chalice, all the tears which the little innocents have shed all through the week, and pours them into the sea, where they become pearls" (449. 326).

Here again we have a borrowing from an older myth. An Eastern legend has it that when Eden was lost, Eve, the mother of all men, wept bitterly, and "her tears, which flowed into the ocean, were changed into costly pearls, while those which fell on the earth brought forth all beautiful flowers" (547. 34). In the classic myth, the pearl is said to have been born of the tears of Venus, just as a Greek legend makes ælektron come from the tears of the sisters of Phaëthon, the daughters of the sun, and Teutonic story turns the tears of the goddess Freyja into drops of gold (462. III. 1218).

In the Kalevala we read how, after the wonderful harping of Wäinämöinen, the great Finnish hero, which enchanted beasts, birds, and even fishes, was over, the musician shed tears of gratitude, and these, trickling down his body and through his many garments, were transmuted into pearls of the sea.

Shakespeare, in King Henry V., makes Exeter say to the King,—

"But all my mother came into mine eyes,
And gave me up to tears,"—

and the tears of the mother-god figures in the folk-lore of many lands. The vervain, or verbena, was known as the "Tears of Isis," as well as the "Tears of Juno,"—a name given also to an East Indian grass (Coix lacryma). The lily of the valley, in various parts of Europe, is called "The Virgin's Tears," "Tears of Our Lady," "Tears of St. Mary." Zmigrodzki notes the following belief as current in Germany: "If the mother weeps too much, her dead child comes to her at night, naked and trembling, with its little shirt in its hand, and says: 'Ah, dearest mother, do not weep! See! I have no rest in the grave; I cannot put on my little shirt, it is all wet with your tears.'" In Cracow, the common saying is, "God forbid that the tears of the mother should fall upon the corpse of her child." In Brittany the folk-belief is that "the dead child has to carry water up a hill in a little bucket, and the tears of the mother increase its weight" (174. 141).

The Greeks fabled Eos, the dawn-goddess, to have been so disconsolate at the death of Memnon, her son, that she wept for him every morning, and her tears are the dewdrops found upon the earth. In the mythology of the Samoans of the Pacific, the Heaven-god, father of all things, and the Earth-goddess, mother of all things, once held each other in firm embrace, but were separated in the long ago. Heaven, however, retains his love for earth, and, mourning for her through the long nights, he drops many tears upon her bosom,—these, men call dewdrops. The natives of Tahiti have a like explanation for the thick-falling rain-drops that dimple the surface of the ocean, heralding an approaching storm,—they are tears of the heaven-god. The saying is:—

"Thickly falls the small rain on the face of the sea,
They are not drops of rain, but they are tears of Oro."
(Tylor, Early Hist. of Mankind, p. 334.)

An Indian tribe of California believe that "the rain is the falling tears of Indians sick in heaven," and they say that it was "the tears of all mankind, weeping for the loss of a good young Indian," that caused the deluge, in which all were drowned save a single couple (440. 488).

Oriental legend relates, that, in his utter loneliness after the expulsion from Paradise, "Adam shed such an abundance of tears that all beasts and birds satisfied their thirst therewith; but some of them sunk into the earth, and, as they still contained some of the juices of his food in Paradise, produced the most fragrant trees and spices." We are further told that "the tears flowed at last in such torrents from Adam's eyes, that those of his right started the Euphrates, while those of his left set the Tigris in motion" (547. 34).

These are some of the answers of the folk to the question of
Shakespeare:—

"What's the matter,
That this distempered messenger of wet,
The many-coloured Iris, rounds thine eye?"

And many more are there that run along the lines of Scott's epigrammatic summation:—

"A child will weep a bramble's smart,
A maid to see her sparrow part,
A stripling for a woman's heart:
But woe betide a country, when
She sees the tears of bearded men."

Cradles.

According to Mr. Powers: "The conspicuous painstaking which the Modok squaw expends upon her baby-basket is an index of her maternal love. And indeed the Modok are strongly attached to their offspring,—a fact abundantly attested by many sad and mournful spectacles witnessed in the closing scenes of the war of 1873. On the other hand, a California squaw often carelessly sets her baby in a deep, conical basket, the same in which she carries her household effects, leaving him loose and liable to fall out. If she makes a baby-basket, it is totally devoid of ornament; and one tribe, the Miwok, contemptuously call it 'the dog's nest.' It is among Indians like these that we hear of infanticide" (519. 257).

The subject of children's cradles, baby-baskets, baby-boards, and the methods of manipulating and carrying the infant in connection therewith, have been treated of in great detail by Ploss (325), Pokrovski, and Mason (306), the second of whom has written especially of the cradles in use among the various peoples of European and Asiatic Eussia, with a general view of those employed by other races, the last with particular reference to the American aborigines. The work is illustrated, as is also that of Ploss, with many engravings. Professor Mason thus briefly sums up the various purposes which the different species of cradle subserve (306. 161-162):—

"(1) It is a mere nest for the helpless infant.

"(2) It is a bed so constructed and manipulated as to enable the child to sleep either in a vertical or a horizontal position.

"(3) It is a vehicle in which the child is to be transported, chiefly on the mother's back by means of a strap over the forehead, but frequently dangling like a bundle at the saddle-bow. This function, of course, always modifies the structure of the cradle, and, indeed, may have determined its very existence among nomadic tribes.

"(4) It is indeed a cradle, to be hung upon the limbs to rock, answering literally to the nursery-rhyme:—

'Rock-a-bye baby upon the tree-top,
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
When the bough bends, the cradle will fall,
Down will come baby, and cradle, and all.'

"(5) It is also a playhouse and baby-jumper. On many—nearly all—specimens may be seen dangling objects to evoke the senses, foot-rests by means of which the little one may exercise its legs, besides other conveniences anticipatory of the child's needs.

"(6) The last set of functions to which the frame is devoted are those relating to what we may call the graduation of infancy, when the papoose crawls out of its chrysalis little by little, and then abandons it altogether. The child is next seen standing partly on the mother's cincture and partly hanging to her neck, or resting like a pig in a poke within the folds of her blanket."

Professor Mason sees in the cradle-board or frame "the child of geography and of meteorology," and in its use "a beautiful illustration of Bastian's theory of 'great areas.'" In the frozen North, for example, "the Eskimo mother carries her infant in the hood of her parka whenever it is necessary to take it abroad. If she used a board or a frame, the child would perish with the cold."

The varieties of cradles are almost endless. We have the "hood" (sometimes the "boot") of the Eskimo; the birch-bark cradle (or hammock) of several of the northern tribes (as in Alaska, or Cape Breton); the "moss-bag" of the eastern Tinné, the use of which has now extended to the employés of the Hudson's Bay Company; the "trough-cradle" of the Bilqula; the Chinook cradle, with its apparatus for head-flattening; the trowel-shaped cradle of the Oregon coast; the wicker-cradle of the Hupas; the Klamath cradle of wicker and rushes; the Pomo cradle of willow rods and wicker-work, with rounded portion for the child to sit in; the Mohave cradle, with ladder-frame, having a bed of shredded bark for the child to lie upon; the Yaqui cradle of canes, with soft bosses for pillows; the Nez Percé cradle-board with buckskin sides, and the Sahaptian, Ute, and Kootenay cradles which resemble it; the Moki cradle-frame of coarse wicker, with an awning; the Navajo cradle, with wooden hood and awning of dressed buckskin; the rude Comanche cradle, made of a single stiff piece of black-bear skin; the Blackfoot cradle of lattice-work and leather; the shoe-shaped Sioux cradle, richly adorned with coloured bead-work; the Iroquois cradle (now somewhat modernized), with "the back carved in flowers and birds, and painted blue, red, green, and yellow." Among the Araucanians of Chili we meet with a cradle which "seems to be nothing more than a short ladder, with cross-bars," to which the child is lashed. In the tropical regions and in South America we find the habit of "carrying the children in the shawl or sash, and bedding them in the hammock." Often, as in various parts of Africa, the woman herself forms the cradle, the child clinging astride her neck or hips, with no bands or attachments whatever. Of woman as carrier much may be read in the entertaining and instructive volume of Professor Mason (113). The primitive cradle, bed, and carrier, was the mother.

Father and Child.

With many of the more primitive races, the idea so tritely expressed in our familiar saying, "He is a chip of the old block,"—patris est filius, "he is the son of his father,"—and so beautifully wrought out by Shakespeare,—

"Behold, my lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter
And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip,
The trick of his frown, his forehead; nay, the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles,
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger,"

has a strong hold, making itself felt in a thousand ways and fashions. The many rites and ceremonies, ablutions, fastings, abstentions from certain foods and drinks, which the husband has to undergo and submit to among certain more or less uncivilized peoples, shortly before, or after, or upon, the occasion of the birth of a child, or while his wife is pregnant, arise, in part at least, from a firm belief in the influence of parent upon child and the intimate sympathy between them even while the latter is yet unborn. Of the Indians of British Guiana, Mr. im Thurn says, they believe that if the father should eat the flesh of the capybara, the child would have large protruding teeth like that animal, while if he should eat that of the labba, the child's skin would be spotted. "Apparently there is also some idea that for the father to eat strong food, to wash, to smoke, to handle weapons, would have the same result as if the new-born baby ate such food, washed, smoked, or played with edged tools." The connection between the father and the child, the author thinks, is thought by these Indians to be much closer than that existing between the mother and her offspring (477. 218). Much has been written about, and many explanations suggested for, this ancient and widespread custom. The investigations of recent travellers seem to have cast some light upon this difficult problem in ethnology.

Dr. Karl von den Steinen (536. 331-337) tells us that the native tribes of Central Brazil not only believe that the child is "the son of the father," but that it is the father. To quote his own significant words: "The father is the patient in so far as he feels himself one with the new-born child. It is not very difficult to see how he arrives at this conclusion. Of the human egg-cell and the Graafian follicle the aborigine is not likely to know anything, nor can he know that the mother lodges the thing corresponding to the eggs of birds. For him the man is the bearer of the eggs, which, to speak plainly and clearly, lays in the mother, and which she hatches during the period of pregnancy. In the linguistic material at hand we see how this very natural attempt to explain generation finds expression in the words for 'father', 'testicle,' and 'egg.' In Guarani tub means 'father, spawn, eggs,' tupia 'eggs,' and even tup-i, the name of the people (the -i is diminutive) really signifies 'little father,' or 'eggs,' or 'children,' as you please; the 'father' is 'egg,' and the 'child' is 'the little father.' Even the language declares that the 'child' is nothing else than the 'father.' Among the Tupi the father was also accustomed to take a new name after the birth of each new son; to explain this, it is in no way necessary to assume that the 'soul' of the father proceeds each time into the son. In Karaïbi we find exactly the same idea; imu is 'egg,' or 'testicles,' or 'child.'"

Among other cognate tribes we find the same thoughts:—

In the Ipurucoto language imu signifies "egg."

In the Bakaïrí language imu signifies "testicles."

In the Tamanako language imu signifies "father."

In the Makusi language imu signifies "semen."

In several dialects imu-ru signifies "child."

Dr. von den Steinen further observes: "Among the Bakaïrí 'child' and 'small' are both iméri, 'the child of the chief,' píma iméri; we can translate as we please, either 'the child of the chief,' or 'the little chief,' and in the case of the latter form, which we can use more in jest of the son, we are not aware that to the Indian the child is really nothing more than the little chief, the miniature of the big one. Strange and hardly intelligible to us is this idea when it is a girl that is in question. For the girl, too, is 'the little father,' and not 'the little mother'; it is only the father who has made her. In Bakaïrí there are no special words for 'son' and 'daughter,' but a sex-suffix is added to the word for child when a distinction is necessary; píma iméri may signify either the son or the daughter of the chief. The only daughter of the chief is the inheritrix of possession and rank, both of which pass over with her own possession to the husband." The whole question of the "Couvade" and like practices finds its solution in these words of the author: "The behaviour of the mother, according as she is regarded as more or less suffering, may differ much with the various tribes, while the conduct of the father is practically the same with all She goes about her business, if she feels strong enough, suckles her child, etc. Between the father and the child there is no mysterious correlation; the child is a multiplication of him; the father is duplicated, and in order that no harm may come to the helpless, irrational creature, a miniature of himself, he must demean himself as a child" (536. 338).

The close relationship between father and child appears also in folk-medicine, where children (or often adults) are preserved from, or cured of, certain ailments and diseases by the application of blood drawn from the father.

In Bavaria a popular remedy against cramps consisted in "the father pricking himself in the finger and giving the child in its mouth three drops of blood out of the wound," and at Rackow, in Neu Stettin, to cure epilepsy in little children, "the father gives the child three drops of blood out of the first joint of his ring-finger" (361. 19). In Annam, when a physician cures a small-pox patient, it is thought that the pocks pass over to his children, and among the Dieyerie of South Australia, when a child has met with an accident, "all the relatives are beaten with sticks or boomerangs on the head till the blood flows over their faces. This is believed to lessen the pain of the child" (397. 60, 205).

Among some savage and uncivilized peoples, the father is associated closely with the child from the earliest days of its existence. With the Mincopies of the Andaman Islands, it is the father who, "from the day of its birth onwards presses the skull and body of the child to give them the proper form," and among the Macusi Indians of Guiana, the father "in early youth, pierces the ear-lobe, the lower lip, and the septum of the nose," while with the Pampas Indians of the Argentine, in the third year of the child's life, the child's ears are pierced by the father in the following fashion: "A horse has its feet tied together, is thrown to the ground, and held fast. The child is then brought out and placed on the horse, while the father bores its ears with a needle" (326.1.296,301).

With some primitive peoples the father evinces great affection for his child. Concerning the natives of Australia whom he visited, Lumholtz observes: "The father may also be good to the child, and he frequently carries it, takes it in his lap, pats it, searches its hair, plays with it, and makes little boomerangs which he teaches it to throw. He, however, prefers boys to girls, and does not pay much attention to the latter" (495.193). Speaking of another region of the world where infanticide prevailed,—the Solomon Islands,—Mr. Guppy cites not a few instances of parental regard and affection. On one occasion "the chief's son, a little shapeless mass of flesh, a few months old, was handed about from man to man with as much care as if he had been composed of something brittle." Of chief Gorai and his wife, whose child was blind, the author says: "I was much struck with the tenderness displayed in the manner of both the parents towards their little son, who, seated in his mother's lap, placed his hand in that of his father, when he was directed to raise his eyes towards the light for my inspection" (466. 47).

Of the Patwin Indians of California, who are said to rank among the lowest of the race, Mr. Powers tells us: "Parents are very easygoing with their children, and never systematically punish them, though they sometimes strike them in momentary anger. On the Sacramento they teach them how to swim when a few weeks old by holding them on their hands in the water. I have seen a father coddle and teeter his baby in an attack of crossness for an hour with the greatest patience, then carry him down to the river, laughing good-naturedly, gently dip the little brown smooth-skinned nugget in the waves clear under, and then lay him on the moist, warm sand. The treatment was no less effectual than harmless, for it stopped the perverse, persistent squalling at once" (519. 222). Such demonstrations of tenderness have been supposed to be rare among the Indians, but the same authority says again: "Many is the Indian I have seen tending the baby with far more patience and good-nature than a civilized father would display" (519. 23). Concerning the Eskimo, Eeclus observes: "All over Esquimaux Land fathers and mothers vie with one another in spoiling their offspring, never strike, and rarely rebuke them" (523. 37).

Among the Indians of British Guiana, according to Mr. im Thurn, both mother and father are "very affectionate towards the young child." The mother "almost always, even when working, carries it against her hip, slung in a small hammock from her neck or shoulder," while the father, "when he returns from hunting, brings it strange seeds to play with, and makes it necklaces and other ornaments." The young children themselves "seem fully to reciprocate the affection of their parents; but as they grow older, the affection on both sides seems to cool, though, in reality, it perhaps only becomes less demonstrative" (477. 219).

Everywhere we find evidence of parental affection and love for children, shining sometimes from the depths of savagery and filling with sunshine at least a few hours of days that seem so sombre and full of gloom when viewed afar off.

Mr. Scudder has treated at considerable length the subject of "Childhood in Literature and Art" (350), dealing with it as found in Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Early Christian, English, French, German, American, literature, in mediæval art, and in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales. Of Greek the author observes: "There is scarcely a child's voice to be heard in the whole range of Greek poetic art. The conception is universally of the child, not as acting, far less as speaking, but as a passive member of the social order. It is not its individual so much as its related life which is contemplated." The silent presence of children in the rôles of the Greek drama is very impressive (350. 21). At Rome, though childhood is more of a "vital force" than in Greece, yet "it is not contemplated as a fine revelation of nature." Sometimes, in its brutal aspects, "children are reckoned as scarcely more than cubs," yet with refinement they "come to represent the more spiritual side of the family life." The folktale of Romulus and Remus and Catullus' picture of the young Torquatus represent these two poles (350. 32). The scant appearances of children in the Old Testament, the constant prominence given to the male succession, are followed later on by the promise which buds and flowers in the world-child Jesus, and the childhood which is the new-birth, the golden age of which Jewish seers and prophets had dreamt. In early Christianity, it would appear that, with the exception of the representation in art of the child, the infant Christ, "childhood as an image had largely faded out of art and literature" (350. 80). The Renaissance "turned its face toward childhood, and looked into that image for the profoundest realization of its hopes and dreams" (350. 102), and since then Christianity has followed that path. And the folk were walking in these various ages and among these different peoples humbly along the same road, which their geniuses travelled. Of the great modern writers and poets, the author notes especially Wordsworth, through whom the child was really born in our literature, the linker together of the child and the race; Rousseau, who told of childhood as "refuge from present evil, a mournful reminiscence of a lost Paradise, who (like St. Pierre) preached a return to nature, and left his own offspring to the tender mercy of a foundling asylum"; Luther, the great religious reformer, who was ever "a father among his children"; Goethe, who represents German intellectualism, yet a great child-artist; Froebel, the patron saint of the kindergarten; Hans Andersen, the "inventor" of fairy-tales, and the transformer of folk-stories, that rival the genuine, untouched, inedited article; Hawthorne, the child-artist of America.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHILDHOOD THE GOLDEN AGE.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.—Wordsworth.

Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes.—Achim v. Arnim.

Wahre dir den Kindersinn,
Kindheit blüht in Liebe bin,
Kinderzeit ist heil'ge Zeit,
Heidenkindheit—Christenheit.
—B. Goltz.

Happy those early days, when I Shined in my angel infancy.
—Henry Vaughan.

Childhood shall be all divine.—B. W. Proctor.

But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess,
Once in their life, fair Eden's simpleness.—H. Coleridge.

But to the couch where childhood lies,
A more delicious trance is given,
Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered heaven.—W. M. Praed.

O for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon!—Whittier.

Golden Age.

The English word world, as the Anglo-Saxon weorold, Icelandic veröld, and Old High German weralt indicate, signified originally "age of man," or "course of man's life," and in the mind of the folk the life of the world and the life of man have run about the same course. By common consent the golden age of both was at the beginning, ab ovo. With Wordsworth, unlettered thousands have thought:—

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"

Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes, "childhood is a moment of God," said Achim Ton Arnim, and Hartley Coleridge expresses the same idea in other words:—

"But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess,
Once in their life, fair Eden's simpleness."

This belief in the golden age of childhood,—die heilige Kinderzeit, the heaven of infancy,—is ancient and modern, world-wide, shared in alike by primitive savage and nineteenth-century philosopher. The peasant of Brittany thinks that children preserve their primal purity up to the seventh year of their age, and, if they die before then, go straight to heaven (174. 141), and the great Chinese philosopher, linking together, as others have done since his time, the genius and the child, declared that a man is great only as he preserves the pure ideas of his childhood, while Coleridge, in like fashion tells us: "Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the power of manhood."

Everywhere we hear the same refrain:—

"Aus der Jugendzeit, aus der Jugendzeit,
Klingt ein Lied immerdar;
O wie liegt so weit, o wie liegt so weit,
Was mein einst war!"

The Paradise that man lost, the Eden from which he has been driven, is not the God-planted Garden by the banks of Euphrates, but the "happy days of angel infancy," and "boyhood's time of June," the childhood out of which in the fierce struggle—for existence the race has rudely grown, and back to which, for its true salvation, it must learn to make its way again. As he, who was at once genius and child, said, nearly twenty centuries ago: "Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven."

When we speak of "the halcyon days of childhood," we recall an ancient myth, telling how, in an age when even more than now "all Nature loved a lover," even the gods watched over the loves of Ceyx and Halcyone. Ever since the kingfisher has been regarded as the emblem, of lasting fidelity in love. As Ebers aptly puts it: "Is there anywhere a sweeter legend than that of the Halcyons, the ice-birds who love each other so tenderly that, when the male becomes enfeebled by age, his mate carries him on her outspread wings whithersoever he wills; and the gods desiring to reward such faithful love cause the sun to shine more kindly, and still the winds and waves on the 'Halcyon Days' during which these birds are building their nests and brooding over their young" (390. II. 269).

Of a special paradise for infants, something has been said elsewhere. Of Srahmanadzi, the other world, the natives of Ashanti say: "There an old man becomes young, a young man a boy, and a boy an infant. They grow and become old. But age does not carry with it any diminution of strength or wasting of body. When they reach the prime of life, they remain so, and never change more" (438. 157).

The Kalmucks believe that some time in the future "each child will speak immediately after its birth, and the next day be capable of undertaking its own management" (518. I. 427). But that blissful day is far off, and the infant human still needs the overshadowing of the gods to usher him into the real world of life.

Guardian Angels and Deities.

Christ, speaking his memorable words about little children to those who had inquired who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven, uttered the warning: "See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." In the hagiology of the Christian churches, and in the folk-lore of modern Europe, the idea contained in our familiar expression "guardian angel" has a firm hold; by celestial watchers and protectors the steps of the infant are upheld, and his mind guided, until he reaches maturity, and even then the guardian spirit often lingers to guide the favoured being through all the years of his life (191. 8). The natives of Ashanti believe that special spirits watch over girls until they are married, and in China there is a special mother-goddess who guards and protects childhood.

Walter Savage Landor has said:—

"Around the child bend all the three
Sweet Graces,—Faith, Hope, Charity,"

and the "three Fates" of classic antiquity, the three Norns of Scandinavian mythology, the three Sudiêicky or fate-goddesses of the Czechs of Bohemia, the three fate- and birth-goddesses of the other Slavonic peoples, the three [Greek: Moirai] of Modern Greece, the three Phatite of Albania, the three white ladies, three virgins, three Mary's, etc., of German legend of to-day, have woven about them a wealth of quaint and curious lore (326. I. 42-47).

The survival of the old heathen belief alongside the Christian is often seen, as, e.g., at Palermo, in Sicily, where "the mother, when she lifts the child out of the cradle, says aloud: 'Nuome di Dio, In God's name,' but quickly adds sotto voce: 'Cu licenzi, signuri mui, By your leave, Ladies.'" The reference is to the "three strange ladies," representing the three Fates, who preside over the destiny of human beings.

Ploss has discussed at length the goddesses of child-birth and infancy, and exhibited their relations to the growing, fertilizing, regenerative powers of nature, especially the earth, sun, moon, etc.; the Hindu Bhavani (moon-goddess); the Persian Anahita; the Assyrian Belit, the spouse of Bel; the Phoenician Astarte; the Egyptian Isis; the Etruscan Mater matuta; the Greek Hera Eileithyia, Artemis,; the Roman Diana, Lucina, Juno; the Phrygian Cybele; the Germanic Freia, Holla, Gude, Harke; the Slavonic Siwa, Libussa, Zlata Baba ("the golden woman"); the ancient Mexican Itzcuinam, Yohmaltcitl, Tezistecatl; the Chibchan rainbow-goddess Cuchavira; the Japanese Kojasi Kwanon, and hundreds more.

The number of gods and goddesses presiding over motherhood and childhood is legion; in every land divine beings hover about the infant human to protect it and assure the perpetuity of the race. In ancient Rome, besides the divinities who were connected with generation, the embryo, etc., we find, among others, the following tutelary deities of childhood:—

Parca or Partula, the goddess of child-birth; Diespiter, the god who brings the infant to the light of day; Opis, the divinity who takes the infant from within the bosom of mother-earth; Vaticanus, the god who opens the child's mouth in crying; Cunina, the protectress of the cradle and its contents; Rumina, the goddess of the teat or breast; Ossipaga, the goddess who hardens and solidifies the bones of little children; Carna, the goddess who strengthens the flesh of little children; Diva potina, the goddess of the drink of children; Diva edusa, the goddess of the food of children; Cuba, the goddess of the sleep of the child; Levana, the goddess who lifts the child from the earth; Statanus, the god, and Dea Statina, the goddess, of the child's standing; Fabulinus, the god of the child's speech; Abeona and Adiona, the protectresses of the child in its goings out and its comings in; Deus catus pater, the father-god who "sharpens" the wits of children; Dea mens, the goddess of the child's mind; Minerva, the goddess who is the giver of memory to the child; Numeria, the goddess who teaches the child to count; Voleta, the goddess, and Volumnus the god, of will or wishing; Venilia, the goddess of hope, of "things to come"; Deus conus, the god of counsel, the counsel-giver; Peragenor or Agenona, the deity of the child's action; Camna, the goddess who teaches the child to sing, etc. (398.188).

Here the child is overshadowed, watched over, taught and instructed by the heavenly powers:—

"But to the couch where childhood lies
A more delicious trance is given,
Lit up by rays from seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered heaven."

In line with the poet's thought, though of a ruder mould, is the belief of the Iroquois Indians recorded by Mrs. Smith: "When a living nursing child is taken out at night, the mother takes a pinch of white ashes and rubs it on the face of the child so that the spirits will not trouble, because they say that a child still continues to hold intercourse with the spirit-world whence it so recently came" (534. 69).

Birth-Myths.

President Hall has treated of "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School" (252), but we yet lack a like elaborate and suggestive study of "The Contents of Parents' Minds on Entering the Nursery." We owe to the excellent investigation carried on by Principal Russell and his colleagues at the State Normal School in Worcester, Mass., "Some Records of the Thoughts and Reasonings of Children" (194), and President Hall has written about "Children's Lies" (252a), but we are still without a correspondingly accurate and extensive compilation of "The Thoughts and Reasonings of Parents," and a plain, unbiassed register of the "white lies" and equivoques, the fictions and epigrammatic myths, with which parents are wont to answer, or attempt to answer, the manifold questions of their tender offspring. From time immemorial the communication between parent (and nurse) and child, between the old of both sexes and little children, far from being yea and nay, has been cast in the mould of the advice given in the German quatrain:—

"Ja haltet die Aequivocabula nur fest,
Sind sie doch das einzige Mittel,
Dem Kind die Wahrheit zu bergen und doch
Zu brauchen den richtigen Titel."

["Hold fast to the words that we equivoques call;
For they are indeed the only safe way
To keep from the children the truth away,
Yet use the right name after all.">[

Around the birth of man centres a great cycle of fiction and myth. The folk-lore respecting the provenience of children may be divided into two categories. The first is represented by our "the doctor brought it," "God sent it," and the "van Moor" of the peasantry of North Friesland, which may signify either "from the moor," or "from mother." The second consists of renascent myths of bygone ages, distorted, sometimes, it is true, and recast. As men, in the dim, prehistoric past, ascribed to their first progenitors a celestial, a terrestrial, a subterranean, a subaqueous origin, a coming into being from animals, birds, insects, trees, plants, rocks, stones, etc.,—for all were then akin,—so, after long centuries have rolled by, father, mother, nurse, older brother or sister, speaking of the little one in whom they see their stock renewed, or their kinship widened, resurrect and regild the old fables and rejuvenate and reanimate the lore that lay sunk beneath the threshold of racial consciousness. Once more "the child is father of the man"; his course begins from that same spring whence the first races of men had their remotest origins. George Macdonald, in the first lines of his poem on "Baby" (337. 182):—

"Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here,"

has expressed a truth of folk-lore, for there is scarcely a place in the "everywhere" whence the children have not been fabled to come. Children are said to come from heaven (Germany, England, America, etc.); from the sea (Denmark); from lakes, ponds, rivers (Germany, Austria, Japan); from moors and sand-hills (northeastern Germany); from gardens (China); from under the cabbage-leaves (Brittany, Alsace), or the parsley-bed (England); from sacred or hollow trees, such as the ash, linden, beech, oak, etc. (Germany, Austria); from inside or from underneath rocks and stones (northeastern Germany, Switzerland, Bohemia, etc.). It is worthy of note how the topography of the country, its physiographic character, affects these beliefs, which change with hill and plain, with moor and meadow, seashore and inland district. The details of these birth-myths may be read in Ploss (326. I. 2), Schell (343), Sundermann (366). Specially interesting are the Kindersee ("child-lake"), Kinderbaum ("child-tree"), and Kinderbrunnen ("child-fountain") of the Teutonic lands,—offering analogies with the "Tree of Life" and the "Fountain of Eternal Youth" of other ages and peoples; the Titistein, or "little children's stone," and the Kindertruog ("child's trough") of Switzerland, and the "stork-stones" of North Germany.

Dr. Haas, in his interesting little volume of folk-lore from the island of Rügen, in the Baltic, records some curious tales about the birth of children. The following practice of the children in that portion of Germany is significant: "Little white and black smooth stones, found on the shore, are called 'stork-stones.' These the children are wont to throw backwards over their heads, asking, at the same time, the stork to bring them a little brother or sister" (466 a. 144). This recalls vividly the old Greek deluge-myth, in which we are told, that, after the Flood, Deucalion was ordered to cast behind him the "bones of his mother." This he interpreted to mean the "stones," which seemed, as it were, the "bones" of "mother-earth." So he and his wife Pyrrha picked up some stones from the ground and cast them over their shoulders, whereupon those thrown by Deucalion became men, those thrown by Pyrrha, women. Here belongs, also, perhaps, the Wallachian custom, mentioned by Mr. Sessions (who thinks it was "probably to keep evil spirits away"), in accordance with which "when a child is born every one present throws a stone behind him."

On the island of Rügen erratic blocks on the seashore are called Adeborsteine, "stork-stones," and on such a rock or boulder near Wrek in Wittow, Dr. Haas says "the stork is said to dry the little children, after he has fetched them out of the sea, before he brings them to the mothers. The latter point out these blocks to their little sons and daughters, telling them how once they were laid upon them by the stork to get dry." The great blocks of granite that lie scattered on the coast of Jasmund are termed Schwansteine, "swan-stones," and, according to nursery-legend, the children to be born are shut up in them. When a sister or brother asks: "Where did the little swan-child"—for so babies are called—"come from?" the mother replies: "From the swan-stone. It was opened with a key, and a little swan-child taken out." The term "swan-child" is general in this region, and Dr. Haas is inclined to think that the swan-myth is older than the stork-myth (466 a. 143, 144).

Curious indeed is the belief of the Hidatsa Indians, as reported by Dr. Matthews, in the "Makadistati, or house of infants." This is described as "a cavern near Knife River, which, they supposed, extended far into the earth, but whose entrance was only a span wide. It was resorted to by the childless husband or the barren wife. There are those among them who imagine that in some way or other their children come from the Makadistati; and marks of contusion on an infant, arising from tight swaddling or other causes, are gravely attributed to kicks received from his former comrades when he was ejected from his subterranean home" (433. 516).

In Hesse, Germany, there is a children's song (326. I. 9):—

Bimbam, Glöckchen,
Da unten steht ein Stöckchen,
Da oben steht ein golden Haus,
Da gucken viele schöne Kinder raus.

The current belief in that part of Europe is that "unborn children live in a very beautiful dwelling, for so long as children are no year old and have not yet looked into a mirror, everything that comes before their eyes appears to be gold." Here folk-thought makes the beginnings of human life a real golden age. They are Midases of the eye, not of the touch.

Children's Questions and Parents' Answers.

Another interesting class of "parents' lies" consists in the replies to, or comments upon, the questionings and remarks of children about the ordinary affairs of life. The following examples, selected from Dirksen's studies of East-Frisian Proverbs, will serve to indicate the general nature and extent of these.

1. When a little child says, "I am hungry," the mother sometimes answers, "Eat some salt, and then you will be thirsty, too."

2. When a child, seeing its mother drink tea or coffee, says, "I'm thirsty," the answer may be, "If you're thirsty, go to Jack ter Host; there's a cow in the stall, go sit under it and drink." Some of the variants of this locution are expressed in very coarse language (431. I. 22).

3. If a child asks, when it sees that its parent is going out, "Am I not going, too?" the answer is, "You are going along, where nobody has gone, to Poodle's wedding," or "You are going along on Stay-here's cart." A third locution is, "You are going along to the Kükendell fair" (Kükendell being a part of Meiderich, where a fair has never been held). In Oldenburg the answer is: "You shall go along on Jack-stay-at-home's (Janblievtohûs) cart." Sometimes the child is quieted by being told, "I'll bring you back a little silver nothing (enn silwer Nickske)" (431. I. 33).

4. If, when he is given a slice of bread, he asks for a thinner one, the mother may remark, "Thick pieces make fat bodies" (431. I. 35).

5. When some one says in the hearing of the father or mother of a child that it ought not to have a certain apple, a certain article of clothing, or the like, the answer is, "That is no illegitimate child." The locution is based upon the fact that illegitimate children do not enjoy the same rights and privileges as those born in wedlock (431. I. 42).

6. Of children's toys and playthings it is sometimes said, when they are very fragile, "They will last from twelve o'clock till midday" (431.1.43).

7. When any one praises her child in the presence of the mother, the latter says, "It's a good child when asleep" (431. I. 51).

8. In the winter-time, when the child asks its mother for an apple, the latter may reply, "the apples are piping in the tree," meaning that there are no longer any apples on the tree, but the sparrows are sitting there, crying and lamenting. In Meiderich the locution is "Apples have golden stems," i.e. they are rare and dear in winter-time (431. I. 75).

9. When the child says, "I can't sit down," the mother may remark, "Come and sit on my thumb; nobody has ever fallen off it" (i.e. because no one has ever tried to sit on it) (431. I. 92).

10. When a lazy child, about to be sent out upon an errand, protests that it does not know where the person to whom the message is to be sent lives, and consequently cannot do the errand, the mother remarks threateningly, "I'll show where Abraham ground the mustard," i.e. "I give you a good thrashing, till the tears come into your eyes (as when grinding mustard)" (431. I. 105).

11. When a child complains that a sister or brother has done something to hurt him, the mother's answer is, "Look out! He shall have water in the cabbage, and go barefoot to bed" (431. I. 106).

12. Sometimes their parents or elders turn to children and ask them "if they would like to be shown the Bremen geese." If the child says yes, he is seized by the ears and head with both hands and lifted off the ground. In some parts of Germany this is called "showing Rome," and there are variants of the practice in other lands (431. II. 14).

13. When a child complains of a sore in its eye, or on its neck, the answer is: "That will get well before you are a great-grandmother" (431. II. 50).

14. When one child asks for one thing and another for something else, the mother exclaims petulantly, "One calls out 'lime,' the other 'stones.'" The reference is to the confusion of tongues at Babel, which is assumed to have been of such a nature that one man would call out "lime," and another "stones" (431. II. 53).

15. When a child asks for half a slice of bread instead of a whole one, the mother may say, "Who doesn't like a whole, doesn't like a half either" (431. II. 43).

16. When a child says, "That is my place, I sat there," the reply is, "You have no place; your place is in the churchyard" (i.e. a grave) (431. II. 76).

When the child says "I will," the mother says threateningly, "Your 'will' is in your mother's pocket." It is in her pocket that she carries the rope for whipping the child. Another locution is, "Your will is in the corner" (i.e. the corner of the room in which stands the broomstick) (431. II. 81).

These specimens of the interchange of courtesies between the child and its parent or nurse might be paralleled from our own language; indeed, many of the correspondences will suggest themselves at once. The deceits practised in the Golden Age of childhood resemble those practised by the gods in the Golden Age of the world, when divine beings walked the earth and had intercourse with the sons and daughters of men.

"Painted Devils."

Even as the serpent marred the Eden of which the sacred legends of the Semites tell, so in the folk-thought does some evil sprite or phantom ever and anon intrude itself in the Paradise of childhood and seek its ruin.

Shakespeare has well said:—

"Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil,"

and the chronicle of the "painted devils," bogies, scarecrows, et id genus omne, is a long one, whose many chapters may be read in Ploss, Hartland, Henderson, Gregor, etc. Some of the "devils" are mild and almost gentlemen, like their lord and master at times; others are fierce, cruel, and bloodthirsty; their number is almost infinite, and they have the forms of women as well as of men.

Over a large portion of western Europe is found the nursery story of the "Sand-Man," who causes children to become drowsy and sleepy; "the sand-man is coming, the sand-man has put dust in your eyes," are some of the sayings in use. By and by the child gets "so fast asleep that one eye does not see the other," as the Frisian proverb puts it. When, on a cold winter day, her little boy would go out without his warm mittens on, the East Frisian mother says, warningly: De Fingerbiter is buten, "the Finger-biter is outside."

Among the formidable evil spirits who war against or torment the child and its mother are the Hebrew Lilith, the long-haired night-flier; the Greek Strigalai, old and ugly owl-women; the Roman Caprimulgus, the nightly goat-milker and child-killer, and the wood-god Silvanus; the Coptic Berselia; the Hungarian "water-man," or "water-woman," who changes children for criples or demons; the Moravian Vestice, or "wild woman," able to take the form of any animal, who steals away children at the breast, and substitutes changelings for them; the Bohemian Polednice, or "noon-lady," who roams around only at noon, and substitutes changelings for real children; the Lithuanian and Old Prussian Laume, a child-stealer, whose breast is the thunderbolt, and whose girdle is the rainbow; the Servian Wjeschtitza, or witches, who take on the form of an insect, and eat up children at night; the Russian "midnight spirit," who robs children of rest and sleep; the Wendish "Old mountain-woman"; the German (Brunswick) "corn-woman," who makes off with little children looking for flowers in the fields; the Röggenmuhme ( "rye-aunt"), the Tremsemutter, who walks about in the cornfields; the Katzenveit, a wood spirit, and a score of bogies called Popel, Popelmann, Popanz, Butz, etc.; the Scotch "Boo Man," "Bogie Man," "Jenny wi' the Airn Teeth," "Jenny wi' the lang Pock "; the English and American bogies, goblins, ogres, ogresses, witches, and the like; besides, common to all peoples, a host of werwolves and vampires, giants and dwarfs, witches, ogres, ogresses, fairies, evil spirits of air, water, land, inimical to childhood and destructive of its peace and enjoyment. The names, lineage, and exploits of these may be read in Ploss, Grimm, Hartland, etc.

In the time of the Crusades, Richard Cur de Lion, the hero-king of England, became so renowned among the Saracens that (Gibbon informs us) his name was used by mothers and nurses to quiet their infants, and other historical characters before and after him served to like purpose. To the children of Rome in her later days, Attila, the great Hun, was such a bogy, as was Narses, the Byzantian general (d. 568 A.D.), to the Assyrian children. Bogies also were Matthias Corvinus (d. 1490 A.D.), the Hungarian king and general, to the Turks; Tamerlane (Timur), the great Mongolian conqueror (d. 1405 A.D.), to the Persians; and Bonaparte, at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, in various parts of the continent of Europe. These, and other historical characters have, in part, taken the place of the giants and bogies of old, some of whom, however, linger, even yet, in the highest civilizations, together with fabulous animals (reminiscent of stern reality in primitive times), with which, less seriously than in the lands of the eastern world, childhood is threatened and cowed into submission.

The Ponka Indian mothers tell their children that if they do not behave themselves the Indaciñga (a hairy monster shaped like a human being, that hoots like an owl) will get them; the Omaha bogy is Icibaji; a Dakota child-stealer and bogy is Añungite or "Two Faces" (433. 386, 473). With the Kootenay Indians, of south-eastern British Columbia, the owl is the bogy with which children are frightened into good behaviour, the common saying of mothers, when their children are troublesome, being, "If you are not quiet, I'll give you to the owl" (203). Longfellow, in his Hiawatha, speaks of one of the bogies of the eastern Indians:—

"Thus the wrinkled old Nokomis
Nursed the little Hiawatha,
Rooked him in his linden cradle,
Stilled his fretful wail by saying,
'Hush! the naked bear will get thee!'"

Among the Nipissing Algonkian Indians, koko is a child-word for any terrible being; the mothers say to their children, "beware of the koko." Champlain and Lescarbot, the early chroniclers of Canada, mention a terrible creature (concerning which tales were told to frighten children) called gougou, supposed to dwell on an island in the Baie des Chaleurs (200. 239). Among the bogies of the Mayas of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton mentions: the balams (giant beings of the night), who carry off children; the culcalkin, or "neckless priest"; besides giants and witches galore (411. 174, 177).

Among the Gualala Indians of California, we find the "devil-dance," which Powers compares to the haberfeldtreiben of the Bavarian peasants,—an institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, he dashes at the squaws, capering, dancing, whooping; and they and the children flee for life, keeping several hundred yards between him and themselves." It is believed that, if they were even to touch his stick, their children would die (519. 194).

Among the Patwin, Nishinam, and Pomo Indians, somewhat similar practices are in vogue (519. 157, 160, 225). From the golden age of childhood, with its divinities and its demons, we may now pass to the consideration of more special topics concerning the young of the races of men.

CHAPTER IX.

CHILDREN'S FOOD.

Der Mensch ist, was er isst.—Feuerbach.

For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.—Coleridge.

Man did eat angels' food.—Psalm ixxviii. 25.

Honey.

Der Mensch ist, was er isst,—"man is what he eats,"—says Feuerbach, and there were food-philosophies long before his time. Among primitive peoples, the food of the child often smacks of the Golden Age. Tennyson, in Eleanore, sings:—

"Or, the yellow-banded bees,
Through half-open lattices
Coming in the scented breeze,
Fed thee, a child lying alone,
With white honey, in fairy gardens cull'd—
A glorious child dreaming alone,
In silk-soft folds, upon yielding down,
With the hum of swarming bees
Into dreamful slumber lull'd."

This recalls the story of Cretan Zeus, fed, when an infant, by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Ida with the milk of the goat Amalthæa and honey brought by the bees of the mountain.

In the sacred books of the ancient Hindus we read: "The father puts his mouth to the right ear of the new-born babe, and murmurs three times, 'Speech! Speech!' Then he gives it a name. Then he mixes clotted milk, honey, and butter, and feeds the babe with it out of pure gold" (460.129). Among the ancient Frisians and some other Germanic tribes, the father had the right to put to death or expose his child so long as it had not taken food; but "so soon as the infant had drunk milk and eaten honey he could not be put to death by his parents" (286. 69). The custom of giving the new-born child honey to taste is referred to in German counting-out rhymes, and the ancient Germans used to rub honey in the mouth of the new-born child. The heathen Czechs used to drop honey upon the child's lips, and in the Eastern Church it was formerly the custom to give the baptized child milk and honey to taste (392. II. 35). When the Jewish child, in the Middle Ages, first went to school, one of the ceremonial observances was to have him lick a slate which had been smeared with honey, and upon which the alphabet, two Bible verses, and the words "The Tora shall be my calling" were written; this custom is interestingly explanative of the passage in Ezekiel (iii. 3) where we read "Then I did eat it [the roll of a book given the prophet by God]; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness." There were also given to the child sweet cakes upon which Bible verses were written. Among the Jews of Galicia, before a babe is placed in the cradle for the first time, it is customary to strew into the latter little pieces of honey-comb. Among the Wotjaks we find the curious belief that those who, in eating honey, do not smear their mouth and hands with it, will die. With children of an older growth,—the second Golden Age,—honey and cakes again appear. Magyar maidens at the new moon steal honey and cakes, cook them, and mix a part in the food of the youth of their desires; among the White Russians, the bridal couple are fed honey with a spoon. Even with us "the first sweet month of matrimony," after the "bless you, my children" has been spoken by parents, church, and state, is called the "honey-moon," for our Teutonic ancestors were in the habit of drinking honey-wine or mead for the space of thirty days after marriage (392. IV. 118,211). In wedding-feasts the honey appears again, and, as Westermarck observes, the meal partaken of by the bride and bridegroom practically constitutes the marriage-ceremony among the Navajos, Santal, Malays, Hovas, and other primitive peoples (166. 419).

In Iceland, in ancient times, "the food of sucklings was sweetened by honey," and "in the mouths of weakly children a slice of meat was placed at which they sucked." Among other interesting items from Scandinavia, Ploss (326. II. 182) gives the following: "In Iceland, if the child has been suckled eight (at most, fourteen) days, it is henceforth placed upon the ground; near it is put a vessel with luke-warm whey, in which a reed or a quill is stuck, and a little bread placed before it. If the child should wake and show signs of hunger, he is turned towards the vessel, and the reed is placed in his mouth. When the child is nine months old, it must eat of the same food as its parents do."

In Shropshire, England, the first food given a child is a spoonful of sugar and butter, and, in the Highlands of Scotland, "at the birth of an infant the nurse takes a green stick of ash, one end of which she puts into the fire, and, while it is burning, receives in a spoon the sap that oozes from the other, which she administers to the child as its first food." This recalls the sap of the sacred ash of Scandinavian mythology. Solinus states that the ancient Irish mother "put the first food of her newborn son on the sword of her husband, and, lightly introducing it into his mouth, expressed a wish that he might never meet death otherwise than in war and amid arms," and a like custom is said "to have been kept up, prior to the union, in Annandale and other places along the Scottish border" (460. 129, 131).

Salt.

Among the Negritos of the Philippine Islands, when a child is born, one of the other children immediately gives it to eat some salt on the point of a knife (326. I. 258). The virtues of salt are recognized among many peoples. In the Middle Ages, when mothers abandoned their infants, they used to place beside them a little salt in token that they were unbaptized (326. I. 284); in Scotland, where the new-born babe is "bathed in salted water, and made to taste it three times, because the water was strengthening and also obnoxious to a person with the evil eye," the lady of the house first visited by the mother and child must, with the recital of a charm, put some salt in the little one's mouth. In Brabant, during the baptismal ceremony, the priest consecrates salt, given him by the father, and then puts a grain into the child's mouth, the rest being carefully kept by the father. The great importance of salt in the ceremonies of the Zuñi and related Indians of the Pueblos has been pointed out by Mr. Gushing.

Salt appears also at modern European wedding-feasts and prenuptial rites, as do also rice and meal, which are also among the first foods of some primitive races. Among the Badagas of the Nilgiri Hills, when the child is named (from twenty to thirty days after birth), the maternal uncle places three small bits of rice in its mouth (326. I. 284).

Folk-Medicine.

Among the Tlingit Indians, of Alaska, the new-born infant "is not given the breast until all the contents of its stomach (which are considered the cause of disease) are removed by vomiting, which is promoted by pressing the stomach" (403. 40), and among the Hare Indians, "the infant is not allowed food until four days after birth, in order to accustom it to fasting in the next world" (396. I. 121). The Songish Indians do not give the child anything to eat on the first day (404. 20); the Kolosh Indians, of Alaska, after ten to thirty months "accustom their children to the taste of a sea-animal," and, among the Arctic Eskimo, Kane found "children, who could not yet speak, devouring with horrible greediness, great lumps of walrus fat and flesh." Klutschak tells us how, during a famine, the Eskimo of Hudson's Bay melted and boiled for the children the blood-soaked snow from the spot where a walrus had been killed and cut up (326. II. 181).

In Culdaff, in the county of Donegal, Ireland, "an infant at its birth is forced to swallow spirits, and is immediately afterwards [strange anticipation of Dr. Robinson] suspended by the upper jaw on the nurse's forefinger. Whiskey is here the representative of the Hindu sôma, the sacred juice of the ash, etc., and the administration of alcoholic liquors to children of a tender age in sickness and disease so common everywhere but a few years ago, founded itself perhaps more upon this ancient belief than upon anything else" (401. 180).

The study of the food of sick children is an interesting one, and much of value may be read of it in Zanetti (173), Black (401), and other writers who have treated of folk-medicine. The decoctions of plants and herbs, the preparations of insects, reptiles, the flesh, blood, and ordure of all sorts of beasts (and of man), which the doctrines of signatures and sympathies, the craze of similia similibus, forced down the throat of the child, in the way of food and medicine, are legion in number, and must be read in Folkard and the herbalists, in Bourke (407), Strack, etc.

In some parts of the United States even snail-water and snail-soup are not unknown; in New England, as Mrs. Earle informs us (221. 6), much was once thought of "the admirable and most famous snail-water."

Milk and Honey.

As we have abundantly seen, the first food of the child is the "food of the gods," for so were honey and milk esteemed among the ancient Germans, Greeks, Slavs, Hindus, etc., and of the Paradise where dwelt the Gods, and into which it was fabled children were born, we have some recollection, as Ploss suggests, in the familiar "land flowing with milk and honey," into the possession of which the children of Israel entered after their long wandering in the wilderness (462. II. 696). Of the ancient Hindu god Agni, Letourneau (100. 315) observes: "After being for a long time fed upon melted butter and the alcoholic liquor from the acid asclepias, the sacred Sôma, he first became a glorious child, then a metaphysical divinity, a mediator living in the fathers and living again in the sons." It was the divine Sôma that, like the nectar of the Greeks, the elixirs of the Scandinavians, conferred youth and immortality upon those who drank it.

According to Moslem legend, after his birth, Abraham "remained concealed in a cave during fifteen months, and his mother visited him sometimes to nurse him. But he had no need of her food, for Allah commanded water to flow from one of Abraham's fingers, milk from another, honey from the third, the juice of dates from the fourth, and butter from the fifth" (547. 69).

Poison.

In the Gesta Romanorum (Cap. XI.) we read of the "Queen of the North," who "nourished her daughter from the cradle upon a certain kind of deadly poison; and when she grew up, she was considered so beautiful, that the sight of her alone affected one with madness." Moreover, her whole nature had become so imbued with poisons that "she herself had become the deadliest poison in existence. Poison was her element of life. With that rich perfume of her breath she blasted the very air. Her love would have been poison, her embrace death." Hawthorne's story of "Rappaccini's Daughter,"—"who ever since infancy had grown and blossomed with the plants whose fatal properties she had imbibed with the air she breathed,"—comes from the same original source (390. II. 172). Here we are taken back again to the Golden Age, when even poisons could be eaten without harm.

Priest and Food.

With the giving of the child's food the priest is often associated. In the Fiji Islands, at Vitilevu, on the day when the navel-string falls off, a festival is held, and the food of the child is blest by the priest with prayers for his life and prosperity. In Upper Egypt, a feast is held at the house of the father and the child consecrated by the cadi or a priest, to whom is brought a plate with sugar-candy. The priest chews the candy and lets the sweet juice fall out of his mouth into that of the child, and thus "gives him his name out of his mouth" (326. I. 284).

The over-indulgence of children in food finds parallels at a later period of life, when, as with the people of southern Nubia and the Sahara between Talifet and Timbuktu, men fatten girls before marriage, making them consume huge quantities of milk, butter, etc.

For children, among many primitive peoples, there are numerous taboos of certain classes and kinds of food, from religious or superstitious motives. This taboo-system has not lost all its force even to-day, as no other excuse can reasonably be offered for the refusal of certain harmless food to the young.

Tobacco.

Concerning certain Australian tribes, Lumholtz remarks: "Before the children are big enough to hold a pipe in their mouth they are permitted to smoke, and the mother will share her pipe with the nursing babe" (495. 193). In like manner, among the natives of the Solomon Islands, Mr. Guppy witnessed displays of precocity in this regard: "Bright-looking lads, eight or nine years of age, stood smoking their pipes as gravely as Haununo

Drink of Immortality.

Feeding the dead has been in practice among many primitive peoples. The mother, with some of the Indian tribes of New Mexico, used to drop milk from her breast on the lips of her dead babe; and in many parts of the world we meet with the custom of placing food near the grave, so that the spirits may not hunger, or of placing it in the grave or coffin, so that on its way to the spirit-land the soul of the deceased may partake of some refreshment. Among the ancient natives of Venezuela, "infants who died a few days after their birth, were seated around the Tree of Milk, or Celestial Tree, that distilled milk from the extremity of its branches"; and kindred beliefs are found elsewhere (448. 297).

We have also the tree associated beautifully with the newborn child, as Reclus records concerning the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills, in India: "Immediately the deliverance has taken place—it always happens in the open air—three leaves of the aforementioned tree [under which the mother and father have passed the night] are presented to the father, who, making cups of them, pours a few drops of water into the first, wherewith he moistens his lips; the remainder he decants into the two other leaves; the mother drinks her share, and causes the baby to swallow his. Thus, father, mother, and child, earliest of Trinities, celebrate their first communion, and drink the living water, more sacred than wine, from the leaves of the Tree of Life" (523. 201).

The sacred books of the Hebrews tell us that the race of man in its infancy became like the gods by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and in the legends of other peoples immortality came to the great heroes by drinking of the divine sap of the sacred tree, or partaking of some of its fruit. The ancient Egyptians believed that milk from the breast of the divine mother Isis conferred divinity and immortality upon him who drank of it or imbibed it from the sacred source. Wiedemann aptly compares with this the Greek story of the infancy of Hercules. The great child-hero was the son of the god Jupiter and Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, King of Argos. He was exposed by his mother, but the goddess Athene persuaded Hera to give him her breast (another version says Hermes placed Hercules on the breast of Hera, while she slept) and the infant Hercules drew so lustily of the milk that he caused pain to the goddess, who snatched him away. But Hercules had drunk of the milk of a goddess and had become immortal, and as one of the gods (167. 266).

CHAPTER X.

CHILDREN'S SOULS.

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.—Wordsworth.

And rest at last where souls unbodied dwell
In ever-flowing meads of Asphodel.
—Homer (Pope's Transl.).

Baptism.

With certain Hindu castes, the new-born child is sprinkled with cold water, "in order that the soul, which, since its last existence, has remained in a condition of dreamy contemplation, may be brought to the consciousness that it has to go through a new period of trial in this corporeal world" (326. II. 13). Perhaps, among the myriad rites and ceremonies of immersion and sprinkling to which the infant is submitted with other primitive peoples, some traces of similar beliefs may be found.

When the new world-religion was winning its way among the gentiles, baptism was the great barrier erected between the babe and the power of ill, spirits of air, earth, and water, survivals of old heathenism antagonistic to Christianity. Before that holy rite was performed, the child lay exposed to all their machinations. Baptism was the armour of the infant against the assaults of Satan and his angels, against the cunning of the wanderers from elfin-land, the fairy-sprites, with their changelings and their impish tricks.

Hence, the souls of still-born and unbaptized children came into the power of these evil ones and were metamorphosed into insects, birds, beasts, and the like, whose peculiar notes and voices betray them as having once been little children, or were compelled to join, the train of the wild huntsman, or mingle in the retinue of some other outcast, wandering sprite or devil; or, again, as some deceitful star, or will-o'-the-wisp, mislead and torment the traveller on moor and in bog and swamp, and guide him to an untimely death amid desert solitudes. Ploss, Henderson, and Swainson have a good deal to say on the subject of Frau Berctha and her train, the Wild Huntsman, the "Gabble Retchet," "Yeth Hounds," etc. Mr. Henderson tells us that, "in North Devon the local name is 'yeth hounds,' heath and heathen being both 'yeth' in the North Devon dialect. Unbaptized infants are there buried in a part of the churchyard set apart for the purpose called 'Chrycimers,' i.e. Christianless, hill, and the belief seems to be that their spirits, having no admittance into Paradise, unite in a pack of 'Heathen' or 'yeth' hounds, and hunt the Evil One, to whom they ascribe their unhappy condition" (469. 131, 132). The prejudice against unbaptized children lingers yet elsewhere, as the following extract from a newspaper published in the year 1882 seems to indicate (230. 272):—

"There is in the island of Mull a little burial-ground entirely devoted to unbaptized children, who were thus severed in the grave from those who had been interred in the hope of resurrection to life. Only one adult lies with the little babes—an old Christian woman—whose last dying request it was that she should be buried with the unbaptized children." The Rev. Mr. Thorn has given the facts poetic form and made immortal that mother-heart whose love made holy—if hallowed it needed to be—the lonely burial-ground where rest the infant outcasts:—

"A spot that seems to bear a ban,
As if by curse defiled:
No mother lies there with her babe,
No father by his child."

Among primitive peoples we find a like prejudice against still-born children and children who die very young. The natives of the Highlands of Borneo think that still-born infants go to a special spirit-land called Tenyn lallu, and "the spirits of these children are believed to be very brave and to require no weapon other than a stick to defend themselves against their enemies. The reason given for this idea is, that the child has never felt pain in this world and is therefore very daring in the other" (475. 199). In Annam the spirits of children still-born and of those dying in infancy are held in great fear. These spirits, called Con Ranh, or Con Lôn (from lôn, "to enter into life"), are ever seeking "to incorporate themselves in the bodies of others, though, after so doing, they are incapable of life." Moreover, "their names are not mentioned in the presence of women, for it is feared they might take to these, and a newly-married woman is in like manner afraid to take anything from a woman, or to wear any of the clothing of one, who has had such a child. Special measures are necessary to get rid of the Con Ranh" (397. 18-19). The Alfurus, of the Moluccas, "bury children up to their waists and expose them to all the tortures of thirst until they wrench from them the promise to hurl themselves upon the enemies of the village. Then they take them out, but only to kill them on the spot, imagining that the spirits of the victims will respect their last promise" (388. 81). On the other hand, Callaway informs us that the Zulu diviner may divine by the Amatongo (spirit) of infants, "supposed to be mild and beneficent" (417. 176).

Transmigration.

Wordsworth, in that immortal poem, which belongs to the jewels of the treasure-house of childhood, has sung of the birth of man:—

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But, trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy,"—

and the humbler bards of many an age, whose names have perished with the races that produced them, have thought and sung of soul-incarnation, metempsychosis, transmigration, and kindred concepts, in a thousand different ways. In their strangely poetical language, the Tupi Indians, of Brazil, term a child pitanga, "suck soul," from piter, "to suck," anga, "soul." The Seminole Indians, of Florida, "held the baby over the face of the woman dying in child-birth, so that it might receive her parting spirit" (409. 271). A similar practice (with the father) is reported from Polynesia. In a recently published work on "Souls," by Mrs. Mary Ailing Aber, we read:—

"Two-thirds of all the babies that are born in civilized lands to-day have no souls attached to them. These babies are emanations from their parents,—not true entities; and, unless a soul attaches itself, no ordinary efforts can carry one of them to the twentieth year. Souls do attach themselves to babies after birth sometimes so late as the third year. On the other hand, babies who have souls at birth sometimes lose them because the soul finds a better place, or is drawn away by a stronger influence; but this rarely occurs after the third year."

This somewhat outré declaration of modern spiritualism finds kindred in some of the beliefs of primitive peoples, concerning which there is much in Ploss, Frazer, Bastian, etc.

In one of the Mussulman stories of King Solomon, the Angel of Death descends in human form to take the soul of an aged man, whose wish was to die when he had met the mightiest prophet. He dies talking to the wise Hebrew king. Afterwards the Angel says to Solomon:—

"He [the angel, whose head reaches ten thousand years beyond the seventh heaven, whose feet are five hundred years below the earth, and upon whose shoulders stands the Angel of Death] it is who points out to me when and how I must take a soul. His gaze is fixed on the tree Sidrat Almuntaha, which bears as many leaves inscribed with names as there are men living on the earth.

"At each new birth a new leaf, bearing the name of the newly-born, bursts forth; and when any one has reached the end of his life, his leaf withers and falls off, and at the same instant I am with him to receive his soul….

"As often as a believer dies, Gabriel attends me, and wraps his soul in a green silken sheet, and then breathes it into a green bird, which feeds in Paradise until the day of the resurrection. But the soul of the sinner I take alone, and, having wrapped it in a coarse, pitch-covered, woollen cloth, carry it to the gates of Hell, where it wanders among abominable vapours until the last day" (547. 213, 214).

According to the belief of the Miao-tse, an aboriginal tribe of the province of Canton, in China, the souls of unborn children are kept in the garden of two deities called "Flower-Grandfather" and "Flower-Grandmother," and when to these have been made by a priest sacrifices of hens or swine, the children are let out and thus appear among men. As a charm against barrenness, these people put white paper into a basket and have the priest make an invocation. The white paper represents the deities, and the ceremony is called kau fa; i.e. "Flower Invocation."

In Japan, a certain Lake Fakone, owing its origin to an earthquake, and now surrounded by many temples, is looked upon as the abode of the souls of children about to be born (326. I. 3).

Certain Californian Indians, near Monterey, thought that "the dead retreated to verdant islands in the West, while awaiting the birth of the infants whose souls they were to form" (396. III. 525).

In Calabria, Italy, when a butterfly flits around a baby's cradle, it is believed to be either an angel or a baby's soul, and a like belief prevails in other parts of the world; and we have the classic personification of Psyche, the soul, as a butterfly.

Among the uneducated peasantry of Ireland, the pure white butterfly is thought to be the soul of the sinless and forgiven dead on the way to Paradise, whilst the spotted ones are the embodiments of spirits condemned to spend their time of purgatory upon earth, the number of the sins corresponding with the number of spots on the wings of the insect (418. 192).

In early Christian art and folk-lore, the soul is often figured as a dove, and in some heathen mythologies of Europe as a mouse, weasel, lizard, etc.

In various parts of the world we find that children, at death, go to special limbos, purgatories, or heavens, and the folk-lore of the subject must be read at length in the mythological treatises.

The Andaman Islanders "believe that every child which is conceived has had a prior existence, but only as an infant. If a woman who has lost a baby is again about to become a mother, the name borne by the deceased is bestowed on the fetus, in the expectation that it will prove to be the same child born again. Should it be found at birth that the babe is of the same sex as the one who died, the identity is considered to be sufficiently established; but, if otherwise, the deceased one is said to be under the ràu- (Ficus laccifera), in châ-itân- (Hades)." Under this tree, upon the fruit of which they live, also dwell "the spirits and souls of all children who die before they cease to be entirely dependent on their parents (i.e. under six years of age)" (498. 86, 93). There was a somewhat similar myth in Venezuela (448. 297).

Mr. Codrington gives some interesting illustrations of this belief from
Melanesia (25. 311):—

"In the island of Aurora, Maewo, in the New Hebrides, women sometimes have a notion that the origin, beginning, of one of their children is a cocoanut or a bread-fruit, or something of that kind; and they believe, therefore, that it would be injurious to the child to eat that food. It is a fancy of the woman, before the birth of the child, that the infant will be the nunu, which may be translated the echo, of such an object. Women also fancy that a child is the nunu of some dead person. It is not a notion of metempsychosis, as if the soul of the dead person returned in the new-born child; but it is thought that there is so close a connection that the infant takes the place of the deceased. At Mota, also, in the Banks Islands, there was the belief that each person had a source of his being, his origin, in some animate or inanimate thing, which might, under some circumstances, become known to him." As Mr. Codrington suggests, such beliefs throw light upon the probable origin of totemism and its development.

Spirit-World.

Mrs. Stevenson informs us that "although the Sia do not believe in a return of the spirits of their dead when they have once entered Shipapo [the lower world], there was once an exception to this." The priestly tale, as told to Mrs. Stevenson, is as follows (538. 143):—

"When the years were new, and this village had been built perhaps three years, all the spirits of our dead came here for a great feast. They had bodies such as they had before death; wives recognized husbands, husbands wives, children parents, and parents children. Just after sundown the spirits began arriving, only a few passing over the road by daylight, but after dark they came in great crowds and remained until near dawn. They tarried but one night; husbands and wives did not sleep together; had they done so, the living would have surely died. When the hour of separation came, there was much weeping, not only among the living, but the dead. The living insisted upon going with the dead, but the dead declared they must wait,—that they could not pass through the entrance to the other world; they must first die or grow old and again become little children to be able to pass through the door of the world for the departed. It was then that the Sia first learned all about their future home. They learned that the fields were vast, the pastures beautiful, the mountains high, the lakes and rivers clear like crystal, and the wheat and cornfields flourishing. During the day the spirits sleep, and at night they work industriously in the fields. The moon is father to the dead as the sun is father to the living, the dead resting when the sun travels, for at this time they see nothing; it is when the sun returns to his home at night that the departed spirits work and pass about in their world below. The home of the departed spirits is in the world first inhabited by the Sia."

We learn further: "It is the aim of the Sia to first reach the intermediate state at the time the body ceases to develop, and then return gradually back to the first condition of infancy; at such periods one does not die, but sleeps to awake in the spirit-world as a little child. Many stories have come to the Sia by those who have died only for a time; the heart becomes still and the lips cold, and the spirit passes to the entrance of the other world and looks in, but does not enter, and yet it sees all, and in a short time returns to inhabit its earthly body. Great alarm is felt when one returns in this way to life, but much faith is put in the stories afterwards told by the one who has passed over the road of death."

In the belief of these Indians of North America we see some foreshadowing of the declaration of Jesus, a rude expression of the fundamental thought underlying his words:—

"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in nowise enter therein."

Certain Siouan Indians think: "The stars are all deceased men. When a child is born, a star descends and appears on earth in human form; after death it reascends and appears as a star in heaven" (433. 508). How like this is the poet's thought:—

"Our birth, is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."

CHAPTER XI

CHILDREN'S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES.

As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he
flourishes.
—Psalm ciii. 15.

A child at play in meadows green,
Plucking the fragrant flowers,
Chasing the white-winged butterflies,—
So sweet are childhood's hours.

We meet wi' blythesome and kythesome cheerie weans,
Daffin' and laughin' far adoon the leafy lanes,
Wi' gowans and buttercups buskin' the thorny wands—
Sweetly singin' wi' the flower-branch wavin' in their hands.

Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first
feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise,
if some day when I am alone in a wood, one of the trees were to
speak to me.—Sir John Lubbock.

O who can tell
The hidden power of herbs, and might of magic spell?—Spenser.

Plant Life and Human Life.

Flowers, plants, and trees have ever been interwoven with the fate of man in the minds of poets and folk-thinkers. The great Hebrew psalmist declared: "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth," and the old Greeks said beautifully, [greek: oiæper phyllôn geneæ, toiæde kai andrôn], "as is the generation of leaves, so is also that of men"; or, to quote the words of Homer (Iliad, vi. 146):—

"Like as the generation of leaves, so also is that of men;
For the wind strews the leaves on the ground; but the forest,
Putting forth fresh buds, grows on, and spring will presently return.
Thus with the generation of men; the one blooms, the other fades away."

One derivation (a folk-etymology, perhaps) suggested for the Greek [Greek: anthropos] connects it with [Greek: anthos], making man to be "that which springs up like a flower." We ourselves speak of the "flower of chivalry," the "bloom of youth," "budding youth"; the poets call a little child a "flower," a "bud," a "blossom,"—Herrick even terms an infant "a virgin flosculet." Plants, beasts, men, cities, civilizations, grow and flourish; the selfsame words are applied to them all.

The same idea comes out strongly in the words relating to birth and childhood in the languages of many primitive peoples. With the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala the term boz has the following meanings: "to issue forth; (of flowers) to open, to blow; (of a butterfly) to come forth from the cocoon; (of chicks) to come forth from the egg; (of grains of maize) to burst; (of men) to be born"; in Nahuatl (Aztec), itzmolini signifies "to sprout, to grow, to be born"; in Delaware, an Algonkian Indian dialect, mehittuk, "tree," mehittgus, "twig," mehittachpin, "to be born," seem related, while gischigin means "to ripen, to mature, to be born."

In many tongues the words for "young" reveal the same flow of thought. In Maya, an Indian language of Yucatan, yax signifies "green, fresh, young"; in Nahuatl, yancuic, "green, fresh, new," and yancuic pilla, "a new-born babe"; in Chippeway, oshki, "new, fresh, young," whence oshkigin, "young shoot," oshkinawe, "lad, youth," oshkinig, "newly born," oshkinaiaa, "a new or young object," oshkiaiaans, "a young animal or bird," oshkiabinodji_, "babe, infant, new-born child"; in Karankawa, an Indian language of Texas, kwa'-an, "child, young," signifies literally "growing," from ka'-awan, "to grow" (said of animals and plants).

Our English words lad and lass, which came to the language from Celtic sources, find their cognate in the Gothic jugga-lauths, "young lad, young man," where jugga means "young," and lauths is related to the verb liudan, "to grow, to spring up," from which root we have also the German Leute and the obsolete English leet, for "people" were originally "the grown, the sprung up."

Maid (maiden), Anglo-Saxon moegd, Modern High German Magd, Gothic magaths (and here belongs also old English may) is an old Teutonic word for "virgin, young girl." The Gothic magaths is a derivative from magus, "son, boy, servant," cognate with Old Irish mac, "boy, son, youth," mog (mug), "slave," Old Norse mqgr, "son," Anglo-Saxon mago, "son, youth, servant, man," the radical of all these terms being mag, "to have power, to increase, to grow,"—the Gothic magus was properly "a growing (boy)," a "maid" is "a growing (girl)." The same idea underlies the month-name May, for, to the Romans, this was "the month of growth,"—flowery, bounteous May,—and dedicated to Maia, "the increaser," but curiously, as Ovid tells us, the common people considered it unlucky to marry in May, for then the rites of Bona Dea, the goddess of chastity, and the feasts of the dead, were celebrated.

Plant-Lore.

The study of dendanthropology and human florigeny would lead us wide afield. The ancient Semitic peoples of Asia Minor had their "Tree of Life," which later religions have spiritualized, and more than one race has ascribed its origin to trees. The Carib Indians believed that mankind—woman especially—were first created from two trees (509. 109). According to a myth of the Siouan Indians, the first two human beings stood rooted as trees in the ground for many ages, until a great snake gnawed at the roots, so that they got loose and became the first Indians. In the old Norse cosmogony, two human beings—man and woman—were created from two trees—ash and elm—that stood on the sea-shore; while Tacitus states that the holy grove of the Semnones was held to be the cradle of the nation, and in Saxony, men are said to have grown from trees. The Maya Indians called themselves "sons of the trees" (509. 180, 264).

Doctor Beauchamp reports a legend of the Iroquois Indians, according to which a god came to earth and sowed five handfuls of seed, and these, changing to worms, were taken possession of by spirits, changed to children, and became the ancestors of the Five Nations (480. IV. 297).

Classical mythology, along with dryads and tree-nymphs of all sorts, furnishes us with a multitude of myths of the metamorphosis of human beings into trees, plants, and flowers. Among the most familiar stories are those of Adonis, Crocus, Phyllis, Narcissus, Leucothea, Hyacinthus, Syrinx, Clytie, Daphne, Orchis, Lotis, Philemon and Baucis, Atys, etc. All over the world we find myths of like import.

A typical example is the Algonkian Indian legend of the transformation of Mishosha, the magician, into the sugar-maple,—the name aninatik or ininatik is interpreted by folk-etymology as "man-tree," the sap being the life-blood of Mishosha. Gluskap, the culture-hero of the Micmacs, once changed "a mighty man" into the cedar-tree.

Many of the peculiarities of trees and plants are explained by the folk as resulting from their having once been human creatures.

Grimm and Ploss have called attention to the widespread custom of planting trees on the occasion of the birth of a child, the idea being that some sort of connection between the plant and the human existed and would show itself sympathetically. In Switzerland, where the belief is that the child thrives with the tree, or vice versa, apple-trees are planted for boys and pear- or nut-trees for girls. Among the Jews, a cedar was planted for a boy and a pine for a girl, while for the wedding canopy, branches were cut from both these trees (385. 6). From this thought the orators and psalmists of old Israel drew many a noble and inspiring figure, such as that used by David: "The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon." Here belong also "flourishing like a green bay-tree," and the remark of the Captain in Shakespeare's King Richard Second:—

"'Tis thought the king is dead. We will not stay;
The bay-trees in our country are all withered."

Child-Flowers and -Plants.

The planting of trees for the hero or the heroine and the belief that these wither when a death is near, blossom when a happy event approaches, and in many ways react to the fate and fortune of their human fellows, occur very frequently in fairy-tales and legends.

There is a sweet Tyrolian legend of "a poor idiot boy, who lived alone
in the forest and was never heard to say any words but 'Ave Maria.'
After his death a lily sprang up on his grave, on whose petals 'Ave
Maria' might be distinctly read." (416. 216).

An old Greek myth relates that the Crocus "sprang from the blood of the infant Crocus, who was accidentally struck by a metal disc thrown by Mercury, whilst playing a game" (448.299). In Ossianic story, "Malvina, weeping beside the tomb of Fingal, for Oscar and his infant son, is comforted by the maids of Morven, who narrate how they have seen the innocent infant borne on a light mist, pouring upon the fields a fresh harvest of flowers, amongst which rises one with golden disc, encircled with rays of silver, tipped with a delicate tint of crimson." Such, according to this Celtic legend, was the origin of the daisy (448. 308).

The peasants of Brittany believe that little children, when they die, go straight to Paradise and are changed into beautiful flowers in the garden of heaven (174. 141). Similar beliefs are found in other parts of the world, and a like imagery is met with among our poets. Well known is Longfellow's little poem "The Reaper and the Flowers," in which death, as a reaper, reaps not alone the "bearded grain," but also "the flowers [children] that grow between," for:—

"'My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,'
The reaper said, and smiled;
'Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.'"

And so:—

"The mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the field of light above."

According to a myth of the Chippeway Indians, a star once came down from heaven to dwell among men. Upon consulting with a young man in a dream as to where it should live, it was told to choose a place for itself, and, "at first, it dwelt in the white rose of the mountains; but there it was so buried that it could not be seen. It went to the prairie; but it feared the hoof of the buffalo. It next sought the rocky cliff; but there it was so high that the children whom it loved most could not see it." It decided at last to dwell where it could always be seen, and so one morning the Indians awoke to find the surface of river, lake, and pond covered with thousands of white flowers. Thus came into existence the beautiful water-lilies (440. 68-70).

Perhaps the most beautiful belief regarding children's flowers is that embodied in Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Angel, where the Danish prose-poet tells us: "Whenever a child dies, an angel from heaven comes down to earth and takes the dead child in his arms, spreads out his great white wings, and flies away over all the places the child has loved and picks quite a handful of flowers, which he carries up to the Almighty, that they may bloom in heaven more brightly than on earth. And the Father presses all the flowers to His heart; but He kisses the flower that pleases Him best, and the flower is then endowed with a voice and can join in the great chorus of praise" (393.341).

Star-Flowers.

Beside this, however, we may perhaps place the following quaint story of
"The Devils on the Meadows of Heaven," of which a translation from the
German of Rudolph Baumbach, by "C. F. P.," appears in the Association
Record (October, 1892), published by the Young Women's Christian
Association of Worcester, Mass.:—

"As you know, good children, when they die, come to Heaven and become angels. But if you perhaps think they do nothing the sweet, long day but fly about and play hide-and-seek behind the clouds, you are mistaken. The angel-children are obliged to go to school like the boys and girls on the earth, and on week days must be in the angel-school three hours in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. There they write with golden pens on silver slates, and instead of ABC-books they have story-books with gay-coloured pictures. They do not learn geography, for of what use in Heaven is earth-knowledge; and in eternity one doesn't know the multiplication table at all. Dr. Faust is the angel-school teacher. On earth he was an A.M., and on account of a certain event which does not belong here, he is obliged to keep school in Heaven three thousand years more before the long vacation begins for him. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons the little angels have holiday; then they are taken to walk on the Milky Way by Dr. Faust. But Sunday they are allowed to play on the great meadow in front of the gate of Heaven, and that they joyfully anticipate during the whole week.

"The meadow is not green, but blue, and on it grow thousands and thousands of silver and golden flowers. They shine in the night and we men call them stars.

"When the angels are sporting about before the gate of Heaven, Dr. Faust is not present, for on Sunday he must recover from the toil of the past week. St. Peter, who keeps watch at the Heavenly gate, then takes charge. He usually sees to it that the play goes on properly, and that no one goes astray or flies away; but if one ever gets too far away from the gate, then he whistles on his golden key, which means 'Back!'

"Once—it was really very hot in Heaven—St. Peter fell asleep. When the angels noticed this, they ceased swarming hither and thither and scattered over the whole meadow. But the most enterprising of them went out on a trip of discovery, and came at last to the place where the world is surrounded by a board fence. First they tried to find a crack somewhere through which they might peep, but as they found no gap, they climbed up the board fence and hung dangling and looking over. Yonder, on the other side, was hell, and before its gate a crowd of little devils were just running about. They were coal-black, and had horns on their heads and long tails behind. One of them chanced to look up and noticed the angels, and immediately begged imploringly that they would let them into Heaven for a little while; they would behave quite nice and properly. This moved the angels to pity, and because they liked the little black fellows, they thought they might perhaps allow the poor imps this innocent pleasure.

"One of them knew the whereabouts of Jacob's ladder. This they dragged to the place from the lumber-room (St. Peter had, luckily, not waked up), lifted it over the fence of boards, and let it down into hell. Immediately the tailed fellows clambered up its rounds like monkeys, the angels gave them their hands, and thus came the devils upon Heaven's meadows.

"At first they behaved themselves in a quite orderly manner. Modestly they stepped along and carried their tails on their arms like trains, as the devil grandmother, who sets great value on propriety, had taught them. But it did not last long; they became frolicsome, turned wheels and somersaults, and shrieked at the same time like real imps. The beautiful moon, who was looking kindly out of a window in Heaven, they derided, thrust out their tongues and made faces (German: long noses) at her, and finally began to pluck up the flowers which grew on the meadow and throw them down on the earth. Now the angels grew frightened and bitterly repented letting their evil guests into Heaven. They begged and threatened, but the devils cared for nothing, and kept on in their frolic more madly. Then, in terror, the angels waked up St. Peter and penitently confessed to him what they had done. He smote his hands together over his head when he saw the mischief which the imps had wrought. 'March in!' thundered he, and the little ones, with drooping wings, crept through the gate into Heaven. Then St. Peter called a few sturdy angels. They collected the imps and took them where they belonged.

"The little angels did not escape punishment. Three Sundays in succession they were not allowed in front of Heaven's gate, and, if they were taken to walk, they were obliged to first unbuckle their wings and lay aside their halos; and it is a great disgrace for an angel to go about without wings and halo.

"But the affair resulted in some good, after all. The flowers which the devils had torn up and thrown upon the earth took root and increased from year to year. To be sure, the star-flower lost much of its heavenly beauty, but it is still always lovely to look at, with its golden-yellow disk, and its silvery white crown of rays.

"And because of its Heavenly origin, a quite remarkable power resides in it. If a maiden, whose mind harbours a doubt, pulls off, one by one, the white petals of the flower-star, whispering meanwhile a certain sentence at the fall of the last little petal, she is quite sure of what she desires to know."

The very name Aster is suggestive of star-origin and recalls the lines of Longfellow:—

"Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine."

The reference seems to be to Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, of Coblentz, in whose Märchen ohne Ende, a forget-me-not is spoken of as "twinkling as brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth" (390. II. 149).

Another contribution to floral astrology is the brief poem of H. M.
Sweeny in the Catholic World for November, 1892:—

"The Milky Way is the foot-path
Of the martyrs gone to God;
Its stars are the flaming jewels
To show us the way they trod.

"The flowers are stars dropped lower,
Our daily path to light,
In daylight to lead us upward
As those jewels do at night."

Flower-oracles are discussed in another section, and the "language of flowers" of which the poet tells,—

"In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bower
On its leaves a mystic language bears,"

must be studied in Dyer, Friend, and Folkard, or in the various booklets which treat of this entertaining subject.

Though in Bohemia it is believed that "seven-year-old children will become beautiful by dancing in the flax," and in some parts of Germany "when an infant seems weakly and thrives slowly, it is placed naked upon the turf on Midsummer Day, and flax-seed is sprinkled over it; the idea being, that, as the flax-seed grows, so the child will gradually grow stronger" (435. 278, 279); flowers and plants are sometimes associated with ill-luck and death. In Westphalia and Thuringia the superstition prevails that "any child less than a year old, who is permitted to wreathe himself with flowers, will soon die." In the region about Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, England, the red campion (Lychnis diurna) is known as "mother-die," the belief being that, if children gather it, some misfortune is sure to happen to the parents. Dyer records also the following: "In West Cumberland, the herb-robert (Geranium robertianum) is called 'death come quickly,' from a like reason, while in parts of Yorkshire, the belief is that the mother of a child who has gathered the germander speedwell (Veronica chamoedrys) will die ere the year is out" (435. 276).

Children's Plant-Names.

Mr. H. C. Mercer, discussing the question of the presence of Indian corn in Italy and Europe in early times, remarks (Amer. Naturalist, Vol. XXVIII., 1894, p. 974):—

"An etymology has been suggested for the name Grano Turco [Turkish grain], in the antics of boys when bearded and moustached with maize silk, they mimic the fierce looks of Turks in the high 'corn.' We cannot think that the Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less American in its origin than the maize itself. So the American lad playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn to Italy for his inspiration."

In the interesting lists of popular American plant-names, published by Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen (400), are found the following in which the child is remembered:—

Babies' breath, Galium Mollugo. In Eastern Massachusetts.
Babies' breath, Muscari botryoides. In Eastern Massachusetts.
Babies' feet, Polygala paucifolia. In New Hampshire.
Babies' slippers, Polygala paucifolia. In Western Massachusetts.
Babies' toes, Polygala paucifolia. In Hubbardston, Mass.
Baby blue-eyes, Nemophila insignis. In Sta. Barbara, Cal.
Blue-eyed babies, Houstonia coerulea. In Springfield, Mass.
Boys and girls, Dicentra cucullaria. In New York.
Boys' love, Artemisia absinthium. In Wellfleet, Mass.
Death-baby, Phallus sp. (?). In Salem, Mass.
Girls and boys, Dicentra cucullaria. In Vermont.
Little boy's breeches, Dicentra cucullaria. In Central Iowa.

"Blue-eyed babies" is certainly an improvement upon "Quaker ladies," the name by which the Houstonia is known in some parts of New England; "death-baby" is a term that is given, Mrs. Bergen tells us, "from the fancy that they foretell death in the family near whose house they spring up. I have known of intelligent people rushing out in terror and beating down a colony of these as soon as they appeared in the yard."

The parents have not been entirely forgotten, as the following names show:—

Mother's beauties, Calandrina Menziesii. In Sta. Barbara, Cal.
Mother of thousands, Tradescantia crassifolia (?). In Boston, Mass.
Daddy-nuts, Tilia sp. (?). In Madison, Wis.

At La Crosse, Wis., the Lonicera talarica, is called "twin sisters," a name which finds many analogues.

As we have seen, the consideration of children as flowers, plants, trees, traverses many walks of life. Floral imagery has appealed to many primitive peoples, perhaps to none more than to the ancient Mexicans, with whom children were often called flowers, and the Nagualists termed Mother-Earth "the flower that contains everything," and "the flower that eats everything"—being at once the source and end of life (413. 54).

A sweet old German legend has it that the laughter of little children produced roses, and the sweetest and briefest of the "good-night songs" of the German mothers is this:—

"Guten Abend, gute Nacht!
Mit Rosen bedacht,
Mit Näglein besteckt;
Morgen früh, wenn's Gott will,
Wirst du wieder geweckt."

CHAPTER XII.

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS, BIRDS, ETC.

My brother, the hare, … my sisters, the doves.
—St. Francis of Assisi.

Love of animals is inborn. The child that has had no pets is to
be pitied.—G. Stanley Hall.

For what are the voices of birds—
Aye, and of beasts,—but words, our words,
Only so much more sweet?—Browning.

I know not, little Ella, what the flowers
Said to you then, to make your cheek so pale;
And why the blackbird in our laurel bowers
Spoke to you, only: and the poor pink snail
Fear'd less your steps than those of the May-shower
It was not strange those creatures loved you so,
And told you all. 'Twas not so long ago
You were yourself a bird, or else a flower.
—Lord Lytton (Owen Meredith).

Children and Young Animals.

The comparisons sometimes made of children with various of the lower animals, such as monkeys, bears, pigs, etc., come more naturally to some primitive peoples, who, as Ploss has pointed out, suckle at the breast the young of certain animals simultaneously with their own offspring. In this way, the infant in the Society Islands comes early into association with puppies, as he does also among several of the native tribes of Australia and America; so was it likewise in ancient Rome, and the custom may yet be found among the tent-gypsies of Transylvania, in Persia, and even within the present century has been met with in Naples and Göttingen. The Maori mother, in like manner, suckles young pigs, the Arawak Indian of Guiana young monkeys (as also do the Siamese), the natives of Kamtschatka young bears. An old legend of the city of Breslau has it that the fashion certain ladies have of carrying dogs around with them originated in the fact that Duke Boleslau, in the last quarter of the eleventh century, punished the women of Breslau, for some connubial unfaithfulness, by taking away their suckling children and making them, carry instead puppies at the breast (392. I. 61).

Of the Arekuna of Guiana, Schomburgk tells us:—"They bring up children and monkeys together. The monkeys are members of the family, eat with the other members, are suckled by the women, and have great affection for their human nurses. Oftentimes a woman is to be seen with a child and a monkey at the breast, the two nurselings quarrelling" (529. 13).

The young children of the less nomadic tribes grow up in close association with the few domestic animals possessed by their parents, tumbling about with the puppies on the wigwam-floor or racing with them around the camp-stead.

The history of totemism and fetichism, primitive medicine, and the arts connected therewith, their panaceas, talismans, and amulets, show early association of the child with animals. In the village of Issapoo, on the island of Fernando Po, in Western Africa, there is fastened to a pole in the market-place a snake-skin, to touch which all infants born the preceding year are brought by their mothers during an annual festival (529. 32). In various parts of the world, novices and neophytes are put to dream or fast in seclusion until they see some animal which becomes their tutelary genius, and whose form is often tattooed upon their body.

Sir John Maundeville, the veracious mediaeval chronicler, reported that in Sicily serpents were used to test the legitimacy of children; "if the children be illegitimate, the serpents bite and kill them." Hartland cites, on the authority of Thiele, "a story in which a wild stallion colt is brought in to smell two babes, one of which is a changeling. Every time he smells one he is quiet and licks it; but, on smelling the other, he is invariably restive and strives to kick it. The latter, therefore, is the changeling" (258. 111).

Animal Nurses.

Akin to these practices are many of the forms of exposure and abandonment all over the world. Shakespeare, in The Winter's Tale, makes Antigonus say:—

"Come on (poor Babe).
Some powerful Spirit instruct the Kites and Ravens
To be thy Nurses. Wolves and Bears, they say
(Casting their savageness aside), have done
Like offices of pity."

An old Egyptian painting represents a child and a calf being suckled by the same cow, and in Palestine and the Canary Islands, goats are used to suckle children, especially if the mother of the little one has died (125. II. 393). The story of Psammetichus and the legend of Romulus and Remus find parallels in many lands. Gods, heroes, saints, are suckled and cared for in their infancy by grateful beasts.

Wild Children.

Doctor Tylor has discussed at some length the subject of "wild men and beast children" (376), citing examples from many different parts of the globe. Procopius, the chronicler of the Gothic invasion of Italy, states (with the additional information that he saw the child in question himself), that, after the barbarians had ravaged the country, "an infant, left by its mother, was found by a she-goat, which suckled and took care of it. When the survivors came back to their deserted homes, they found the child living with its adopted mother, and called it Aegisthus." Doctor Tylor calls attention to the prevalence of similar stories in Germany after the destruction and devastation of the Napoleonic wars; there appears to be record of several children wild or animal-reared having, during this period, been received into Count von Recke's asylum at Overdyke. Many of these tales we need not hesitate to dismiss as purely fabulous, though there may be truth in some of the rest. Among the best-known cases (some of which are evidently nothing more than idiots, or poor wandering children) are: Peter, the "Wild Boy" of Hameln (in 1724); the child reported in the Hessian Chronicle as having been found by some hunters living with wolves in 1341; the child reported by Bernard Connor as living with she-bears, and the child found with bears at Grodno in Poland; the wolf-child of the Ardennes, mentioned by Koenig, in his treatise on the subject; the Irish boy said to feed on grass and hay, found living among the wild sheep; the girl found living wild in Holland in 1717; the two goat-like boys of the Pyrenees (in 1719); the amphibious wild girl of Châlons sur Marne (in 1731); the wild boy of Bamberg, who lowed like an ox; and, the most renowned of all, Kaspar Hauser. This celebrated "wild boy" has recently been made the subject of a monograph by the Duchess of Cleveland (208), of which the first words are these: "The story of Kaspar Hauser is both curious and instructive. It shows on how commonplace and unpromising a foundation a myth of European celebrity may rest." Sir William Sleeman has something to say of "beast-children" in the Kingdom of Oude (183), and Mr. Ball, who writes of wolf-reared children in India, calls attention to the fact that in that country there seems to have been no instance of a wolf-reared girl (183. 474).

In the Kathâ sarit sâgara ("Ocean of the River of Story"), a work belonging to the twelfth century, there is the story of the immoral union of a yaksha, or jin, and the daughter of a holy man, who was bathing in the Granges. The relatives of the girl by magic changed the two guilty persons into a lion and a lioness. The latter soon died, but gave birth to a human child, which the lion-father made the other lionesses suckle. The baby grew up and became "the world-ruling king, Satavahana" (376. 29). Another Hindu story tells how the daughter of a Brahman, giving birth to a child while on a journey, was forced to leave it in a wood, where it was suckled and nursed by female jackals until rescued by merchants who happened to pass by.

Herodotus repeats the tales that Cyrus was nursed and suckled by a bitch; Zeus figures as suckled by a goat; Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome according to the ancient legend, were nursed by a she-wolf; and others of the heroes and gods of old were suckled by animals whose primitive kinship with the race of man the folk had not forgotten.

Professor Rauber of Dorpat, in his essay on "Homo Sapiens Ferus" (335), discusses in detail sixteen cases of wild children (including most of those treated by Tylor) as follows: the two Hessian wolf-children, boys (1341-1344); the Bamberg boy, who grew up among the cattle (at the close of the sixteenth century); Hans of Liège; the Irish boy brought up by sheep; the three Lithuanian bear-boys (1657, 1669, 1694); the girl of Oranienburg (1717); the two Pyrenæan boys (1719); Peter, the wild boy of Hameln (1724); the girl of Songi in Champagne (1731); the Hungarian bear-girl (1767); the wild man of Cronstadt (end of eighteenth century); the boy of Aveyron (1795). It will be noticed that in this list of sixteen cases but two girls figure.

As a result of his studies Professor Rauber concludes: "What we are wont to call reason does not belong to man as such; in himself he is without it. The appellation Homo sapiens does not then refer to man as such, but to the ability under certain conditions of becoming possessed of reason. It is the same with language and culture of every sort. The title Homo sapiens ferus (Linnæus) is in a strict sense unjustifiable and a contradiction in itself." To prehistoric man these wild children are like, but they are not the same as he; they resemble him, but cannot be looked upon as one and the same with him. From the stand-point of pedagogy, Professor Rauber, from the consideration of these children, feels compelled to declare that "the ABC-school must be replaced by the culture-school." In other words: "The ABC is not, as so many believe, the beginning of all wisdom. In order to be able to admeasure this sufficiently, prehistoric studies are advisable, nay, necessary. Writing is a very late acquisition of man. In the arrangement of a curriculum for the first years of the culture-school, reading and writing are to be placed at the end of the second school year, but never are they to begin the course … Manual training ought also to be taken up in the schools; it is demanded by considerations of culture-history" (335.133).

Animal Stories.

Professor W. H. Brewer of New Haven, discussing the "instinctive interest of children in bear and wolf stories," observes (192): "The children of European races take more interest in bear and wolf stories than in stories relating to any other wild animals. Their interest in bears is greater than that in wolves, and in the plays of children bears have a much more conspicuous part. There is a sort of fascination in everything relating to these animals that attracts the child's attention from a very early age, and 'Tell me a bear story' is a common request long before it learns to read." After rejecting, as unsatisfactory, the theory that would make it a matter of education with each child,—"the conservative traditions of children have preserved more stories about bears and wolves, parents and nurses talk more about them, these animals have a larger place in the literature for children; hence the special interest,"—Professor Brewer expresses his own belief that "the special interest our children show towards these two animals is instinctive, and it is of the nature of an inherited memory, vague, to be sure, yet strong enough to give a bend to the natural inclinations." He points out that the bear and the wolf are the two animals "which have been and still are the most destructive to human life (and particularly to children) in our latitude and climate," and that "several of the large breeds of dogs,—the wolf-hound proper, the mastiff (particularly the Spanish mastiff), and even the St. Bernard,—were originally evolved as wolf-dogs for the protection of sheep and children." His general conclusion is: "The fear inspired by these animals during the long ages of the childhood of our civilization, and the education of the many successive generations of our ancestors in this fear, descends to us as an inherited memory, or, in other words, an instinct. While not strong, it is of sufficient force to create that kind of fascination which stories of bears and wolves have in children before the instincts are covered up and obscured by intellectual education. The great shaggy bear appeals more strongly to the imagination of children, hence its superior value to play 'boo' with."

Rabbit and Hare.

The rabbit and the hare figure in many mythologies, and around them, both in the Old World and the New, has grown up a vast amount of folk-lore. The rabbit and the child are associated in the old nursery-rhyme:—

"Bye, bye, Baby Bunting,
Papa's gone a-hunting,
To get a rabbit-skin,
To wrap Baby Bunting in,"

which reminds us at once of the Chinook Indians and the Flat Heads of the Columbia, with whom "the child is wrapped in rabbit-skins and placed in this little coffin-like cradle, from which it is not in some instances taken out for several weeks" (306.174).

An Irish belief explains hare-lip as having been caused, before the birth of the child, by the mother seeing a hare. The Chinese think that "a hare or a rabbit sits at the foot of the cassia-tree in the moon, pounding the drugs out of which the elixir of immortality is compounded" (401. 155).

The Ungava Eskimo, according to Turner, have a legend that the hare was once a little child, abused by its elders; "it ran away to dwell by itself. The hare has no tail, because as a child he had none; and he lays back his ears, when he hears a shout, because he thinks people are talking about him" (544. 263).

In a myth of the Menomoni Indians, reported by Dr. W. J. Hoffman, we read that Manabush [the great culture-hero] and a twin brother were born the sons of the virgin daughter of an old woman named Nokómis. His brother and mother died. Nokómis wrapped Manabush in dry, soft grass, and placed a wooden bowl over him. After four days a noise proceeded from the bowl, and, upon removing it, she saw "a little white rabbit with quivering ears." Afterwards, when grown up, and mourning for the death of his brother, Manabush is said to have hid himself in a large rock near Mackinaw, where he was visited by the people for many years. When he did not wish to see them in his human form, he appeared to them as "a little white rabbit with trembling ears" (389. (1890) 246). Of the white rabbit, the Great Hare, Manabush, Naniboju, etc., more must be read in the mythological essays of Dr. Brinton.

Among the tales of the Ainu of Yezo, Japan, recorded by Professor B. H.
Chamberlain, is the following concerning the Hare-god:—

"Suddenly there was a large house on top of a hill, wherein were six persons beautifully arrayed, but constantly quarrelling. Whence they came was not known. Thereupon [the god] Okikurumi came, and said: 'Oh, you bad hares! you wicked hares! Who should not know your origin? The children in the sky were pelting each other with snowballs, and the snowballs fell into this world of men. As it would have been a pity to waste heaven's snow, the snowballs were turned into hares, and those hares are you. You who live in this world of mine, this world of human beings, must be quiet. What is it that you are brawling about?' With these words, Okikurumi seized a fire-brand, and beat each of the six with it in turn. Thereupon all the hares ran away. This is the origin of the hare-god, and for this reason the body of the hare is white, because made of snow, while its ears, which are the part which was charred by the fire, are black" (471. 486).

The Mayas of Yucatan have a legend of a town of hares under the earth (411. 179).

In Germany we meet with the "Easter-Hare" (Oster-Hase). In many parts of that country the custom prevails at or about Easter-tide of hiding in the garden, or in the house, eggs, which, the children are told, have been laid by the "Easter-hare." Another curious term met with in northeastern Germany is "hare-bread" (Hasenbrod). In Quedlinburg this name is given to bread (previously placed there intentionally by the parents) picked up by children when out walking with their parents or elders. In Lüneburg it is applied to dry bread given a hungry child with an exhortation to patience. In the first case, the little one is told that the hare has lost it, and in the second, that it has been taken away from him. The name "hare-bread" is also given to bread brought home by the parents or elders, when returning from a journey, the children being told that it has been taken away from the hare.

In the shadow-pictures made on the wall for the amusement of children the rabbit again appears, and the hare figures also in children's games.

Squirrel.

According to the belief of certain Indians of Vancouver Island, there once lived "a monstrous old woman with wolfish teeth, and finger-nails like claws." She used to entice away little children whom she afterwards ate up. One day a mother, who was about to lose her child thus, cried out to the spirits to save her child in any way or form. Her prayer was answered, and "The Great Good Father, looking down upon the Red Mother, pities her; lo! the child's soft brown skin turns to fur, and there slides from the ogress's grip, no child, but the happiest, liveliest, merriest little squirrel of all the West,—but bearing, as its descendants still bear, those four dark lines along the back that show where the cruel claws ploughed into it escaping" (396. III. 52-54).

Elsewhere, also, the squirrel is associated with childhood. Familiar is the passage in Longfellow's Hiawatha, where the hero speaks to the squirrel, who has helped him out of a great difficulty:—

"Take the thanks of Hiawatha,
And the name which now he gives you;
For hereafter, and forever,
Boys shall call you adjidaumo,
Tail in air the boys shall call you."

Seals.

Those noble and indefatigable missionaries, the Moravians, have more than once been harshly criticised in certain quarters, because, in their versions of the Bible, in the Eskimo language, they saw fit to substitute for some of the figurative expressions employed in our rendering, others more intelligible to the aborigines. In the New Testament Christ is termed the "Lamb of God," but since, in the Arctic home of the Innuit, shepherds and sheep are alike unknown, the translators, by a most felicitous turn of language, rendered the phrase by "little seal of God," a figure that appealed at once to every Eskimo, young and old, men and women; for what sheep were to the dwellers on the Palestinian hillsides, seals are to this northernmost of human races. Rink tells us that the Eskimo mother "reserves the finest furs for her new-born infant," while the father keeps for it "the daintiest morsels from the chase," and, "to make its eyes beautiful, limpid, and bright, he gives it seal's eyes to eat" (523. 37).

Fish.

Mrs. Bramhall tells us how in Japan the little children, playing about the temples, feed the pet fishes of the priests in the temple-lake. At the temple of the Mikado, at Kioto, she saw "six or eight little boys and girls … lying at full length on the bank of the pretty lake." The fishes were called up by whistling, and the children fed them by holding over the water their open hands full of crumbs (189. 65). Other inhabitants of the sea and the waters of the earth are brought into early relation with children.

Crabs and Crawfishes.

Among the Yeddavanad, of the Congo, a mother tells her children concerning three kinds of crabs: "Eat kallali, and you will become a clever man; eat hullali, and you will become as brave as a tiger; eat mandalli, and you will become master of the house" (449. 297).

In the Chippeway tale of the "Raccoon and the Crawfish," after the former, by pretending to be dead, has first attracted to him and then eaten all the crawfish, we are told:—

"While he was engaged with the broken limbs, a little female crawfish, carrying her infant sister on her back, came up seeking her relations. Finding they had all been devoured by the raccoon, she resolved not to survive the destruction of her kindred, but went boldly up to the enemy, and said: 'Here, Aissibun (Raccoon), you behold me and my little sister. We are all alone. You have eaten up our parents and all our friends. Eat us, too!' And she continued to say: 'Eat us, too! Aissibun amoon, Aissibun amoon!' The raccoon was ashamed. 'No!' said he,' I have banqueted on the largest and fattest; I will not dishonour myself with such little prey.' At this moment, Manabozbo [the culture-hero or demi-god of these Indians] happened to pass by. 'Tyau,' said he to the raccoon, 'thou art a thief and an unmerciful dog. Get thee up into trees, lest I change thee into one of these same worm-fish; for thou wast thyself a shell-fish originally, and I transformed thee.' Manabozho then took up the little supplicant crawfish and her infant sister, and cast them into the stream. 'There,' said he, 'you may dwell. Hide yourselves under the stones; and hereafter you shall be playthings for little children'" (440. 411, 412).

Games.

The imitation of animals, their movements, habits, and peculiarities in games and dances, also makes the child acquainted at an early age with these creatures.

In the section on "Bird and Beast," appropriately headed by the words of the good St. Francis of Assisi—"My brother, the hare, … my sisters, the doves,"—Mr. Newell notices some of the children's games in which the actions, cries, etc., of animals are imitated. Such are "My Household," "Frog-Pond," "Bloody Tom," "Blue-birds and Yellow-birds," "Ducks fly" (313. 115).

Doves.

Not at Dodona and in Arcadia alone has the dove been associated with religion, its oracles, its mysteries, and its symbolism. In the childhood of the world, according to the great Hebrew cosmologist, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," and a later bard and seer of our own race reanimated the ancient figure of his predecessor in all its pristine strength, when in, the story of Paradise lost and found again, he told how, at the beginning, the creative spirit

"Dove-like sat brooding o'er the vast abyss."

In the childhood of the race, it was a dove that bore to the few survivors of the great flood the branch of olive, token that the anger of Jahveh was abated, and that the waters no longer covered the whole earth. In the childhood of Christianity, when its founder was baptized of John in the river Jordan, "Lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and the Spirit of God descended like a dove, and lighted on Him,"—and the "Heavenly Dove" Still beautifies the imagery of oratory and song, the art and symbolism of the great churches, its inheritors. In the childhood of man the individual, the dove has also found warm welcome. At the moment of the birth of St. Austrebertha (630-704 A.D.), as the quaint legend tells, "the chamber was filled with a heavenly odour, and a white dove, which hovered awhile above the house, flew into the chamber and settled on the head of the infant," and when Catherine of Racconigi (1486-1547 A.D.) was only five years old "a dove, white as snow, flew into her chamber and lighted on her shoulder"; strange to relate, however, the infant first took the bird for a tool of Satan, not a messenger of God. When St. Briocus of Cardigan, a Welsh saint of the sixth century, "was receiving the communion for the first time, a dove, white as snow, settled on his head, and the abbot knew that the young boy was a chosen vessel of honour" (191. 107, 108).

In a Swedish mother's hymn occurs the following beautiful thought:—

"There sitteth a dove so white and fair,
All on the lily spray,
And she listeneth how to Jesus Christ
The little children pray.

"Lightly she spreads her friendly wings,
And to Heaven's gate hath sped,
And unto the Father in Heaven she bears
The prayers which the children have said.

"And back she comes from Heaven's gate,
And brings, that dove so mild,
From the Father in Heaven, who hears her speak,
A blessing on every child.

"Then, children, lift up a pious prayer!
It hears whatever you say;
That heavenly dove so white and fair,
All on the lily spray" (379. 255).

The bird-messenger of childhood finds its analogue in the beliefs of some primitive tribes that certain birds have access to the spirit-land, and are the bearers of tidings from the departed. Into the same category fall the ancient practice of releasing a dove (or some other winged creature) at the moment of death of a human being, as a means of transport of his soul to the Elysian fields, and the belief that the soul itself took its flight in the form and semblance of a dove (509. 257).

The Haida Indians, of British Columbia, think that, "in the land of light, children often transform themselves into bears, seals, and birds," and wonderful tales are told of their adventures.

Hartley Coleridge found for the guardian angel of infancy, no apter figure than that of the dove:—

"Sweet infant, whom thy brooding parents love
For what thou art, and what they hope to see thee,
Unhallow'd sprites, and earth-born phantoms flee thee;
Thy soft simplicity, a hovering dove,
That still keeps watch from blight and bane to free thee,
With its weak wings, in peaceful care outspread,
Fanning invisibly thy pillow'd head,
Strikes evil powers with reverential dread,
Beyond the sulphurous bolts of fabled Jove,
Or whatsoe'er of amulet or charm
Fond ignorance devised to save poor souls from harm."

Perhaps the sweetest touch of childhood in all Latin literature is that charming passage in Horace (Carm. Lib. III. 4):—

"Me fabulosæ Vulture in Apulo,
Nutrices extra limen Apuliæ,
Ludo fatigatoque somno
Fronde nova puerum palumbes
Texere,"

which Milman thus translates:—

"The vagrant infant on Mount Vultur's side,
Beyond my childhood's nurse, Apulia's bounds,
By play fatigued and sleep,
Did the poetic doves
With young leaves cover."

The amativeness of the dove has lent much to the figurative language of that second golden age, that other Eden where love is over all. Shenstone, in his beautiful pastoral, says:—

"I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed,"

and the "love of the turtle," "billing and cooing," are now transferred to human affection. Venus, the goddess of love, and the boy-god Cupid ride in a chariot drawn by doves, which birds were sacred to the sea-born child of Uranus. In the springtime, when "the voice of the turtle is heard in the land," then "a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." If, from the sacred oaks of Dodona, to the first Greeks, the doves disclosed the oracles of Jove, so has "the moan of doves in immemorial elms" divulged to generation after generation of lovers the mission of his son of the bow and quiver.

Robin.

What the wood-pigeon was to Horace, the robin-redbreast has been to the children of old England. In the celebrated ballad of the "Children in the Wood", we are told that, after their murder by the cruel uncle,—

"No burial these pretty babes
Of any man receives,
Till Robin Redbreast piously
Did cover them with leaves."