The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 7

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 enn.o.bling, 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 repet.i.tion. 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 G.o.d.--_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, h.e.l.lenic, 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 _fedan_, "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 a.n.a.logies in the tongues of primitive peoples. In the language of the Klamath Indians, of Oregon, the word for "father" is _t's.h.i.+shap_ (in the Modoc dialect, _p'tishap_), meaning "feeder, nourisher," from a radical _ts.h.i.+_, 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, t.i.t_, 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 ma.s.s 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 _pa_, "to protect, to guard,"--the father having been originally looked upon as the "protector," or "guarder." Max Muller, who offers the same derivation, remarks: "The father, as begetter, was called in Sanskrit _ganitar_, as protector and supporter of his posterity, however, _pitar_. For this reason, in the Veda both names together are used in order to give the complete idea of 'father.' In like manner, _matar_, 'mother,' is joined with _ganit_, 'genetrix,' and this shows that the word _matar_ must have soon lost its etymological signification and come to be a term, of respect and caress.

With the oldest Indo-Europeans, _matar_ meant 'maker,' from _ma_, '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 _atti_ of modern Swiss dialects. To the same root attach themselves Sanskrit _atta_, "mother, elder sister"; Ossetic _adda_, "little father (Vaterchen)"; Greek _rra_, Latin _atta_, "father"; Old Slavonic _oti-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; t.i.to, 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 Tsims.h.i.+an, 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 j.a.pan, 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 wors.h.i.+p; 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 G.o.ds" (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 relations.h.i.+p 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, j.a.panese, 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 a.s.sume 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 "G.o.d." Both, it would seem, stand in close connection with "Father."

To quote from Dr. von Held: "Fathers.h.i.+p (Vaterschaft, _patriarcha_), lords.h.i.+p (Herrentum), and kings.h.i.+p (Konigtum) are, therefore (like _rex_ and [Greek: _Basileus_]), ideas not only linguistically, but, to even a greater degree really, cognate, having altogether very close relations.h.i.+p to the word and idea 'G.o.d.' 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 n.o.bler t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle "father of the people." The name _pater patrice_ was not borne by the Caesars alone, for the Roman Senate conferred the t.i.tle 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 t.i.tle upon the base of the statue erected to Andrea Doria. One of the later Byzantine Emperors, Andronicus Palaeologus, even went so far as to a.s.sume this honoured t.i.tle. 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 G.o.d, 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 t.i.tle 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 Was.h.i.+ngton," 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.