The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 23

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 a.s.sociation 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 Gottingen. 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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. G.o.ds, 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 Overd.y.k.e. 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 gra.s.s 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 Chalons 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 _Katha sarit sagara_ ("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 pa.s.s by.

Herodotus repeats the tales that Cyrus was nursed and suckled by a b.i.t.c.h; 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 G.o.ds of old were suckled by animals whose primitive kins.h.i.+p with the race of man the folk had not forgotten.

Professor Rauber of Dorpat, in his essay on "h.o.m.o 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 Liege; the Irish boy brought up by sheep; the three Lithuanian bear-boys (1657, 1669, 1694); the girl of Oranienburg (1717); the two Pyrenaean 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 _h.o.m.o 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 t.i.tle _h.o.m.o sapiens ferus_ (Linnaeus) 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 lat.i.tude 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 a.s.sociated 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 ca.s.sia-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 Nokomis. His brother and mother died. Nokomis wrapped Manabush in dry, soft gra.s.s, 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, j.a.pan, recorded by Professor B. H.

Chamberlain, is the following concerning the Hare-G.o.d:--

"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 G.o.d] 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 s...o...b..a.l.l.s, and the s...o...b..a.l.l.s fell into this world of men. As it would have been a pity to waste heaven's snow, the s...o...b..a.l.l.s 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-G.o.d, 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 Luneburg 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sociated with childhood. Familiar is the pa.s.sage 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 n.o.ble 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d," 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 G.o.d," 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._