The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 21

CHILDREN'S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES.

As for man, his days are as gra.s.s; 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 b.u.t.terflies,-- 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 b.u.t.tercups buskin' the th.o.r.n.y wands-- Sweetly singin' wi' the flower-branch wavin' in their hands.

Many savage nations wors.h.i.+p 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 gra.s.s; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth," and the old Greeks said beautifully, [greek: _oiaeper phyllon geneae, toiaede kai andron_], "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 b.u.t.terfly) to come forth from the coc.o.o.n; (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 _la.s.s_, 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 G.o.ddess of chast.i.ty, 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-sh.o.r.e; 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 G.o.d 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).

Cla.s.sical mythology, along with dryads and tree-nymphs of all sorts, furnishes us with a mult.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 "flouris.h.i.+ng 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 _a.s.sociation Record_ (October, 1892), published by the Young Women's Christian a.s.sociation of Worcester, Ma.s.s.:--

"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 Sat.u.r.day 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 antic.i.p.ate during the whole week.

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