The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 9

_Father-River._

The name "Father of Waters" is a.s.signed, 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 wors.h.i.+p and apotheosis in many parts of the globe. The Muskogee Indians of the southeastern United States "gave to fire the highest Indian t.i.tle of honour, _grandfather_, and their priests were called 'fire-makers'" (529. 68). The ancient Aztecs called the G.o.d of fire "the oldest of the G.o.ds, _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 s.e.xual relations," and he was sometimes called _Xiuhtecutli_, "'G.o.d of the Green Leaf,' that is, of vegetable fecundity and productiveness."

He was wors.h.i.+pped 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, Herac.l.i.tus of Ephesus, who held that "fire is the element, and all things were produced in exchange for fire"; and Herac.l.i.tus, in the fragments in which he speaks of "G.o.d," 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 a.s.sistants 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 Pa.r.s.ees, 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 Pa.r.s.ee 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 sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s through or leap over the fire.

To Moloch ("King"), their G.o.d of fire, the Phoenicians used to sacrifice the first-born of their n.o.blest families. A later development of this cult seems to have consisted in making the child pa.s.s 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 a.s.sures 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 a.s.sociated. 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 G.o.ds," 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 G.o.d.

As Max Muller 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 G.o.d, whether in nature or in our mind" (510. 434).

In the Christian churches of to-day hymns of praise are sung to G.o.d 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 compa.s.sion, 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 wors.h.i.+p "; 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sing 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+nes out thy Maker!"

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

_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-G.o.d. Concerning the cave-wors.h.i.+p of the Mexican aborigines, Dr. Brinton says (413. 38, 50): "The intimate meaning of this cave-cult was the wors.h.i.+p of the Earth. The Cave-G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 a.n.a.logues 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 G.o.d, the Father, is Spirit, breath, wind.