Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories Part 27

"Alexander the Great was born in the absence of his parents."

"What followed the murder of Becket?" "Henry II. received wacks with a birch."

"What is a watershed?" "A shed for keeping water in."

"A watershed is a house between two rivers so that a drop of water falling on one side of the roof runs into one river, and a drop on the other side goes into the other river."

"The battle of Waterloo was fought off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson led up one squadron and Collingwood the other. When it was over Wellington rode over the field by moonlight, and met Blucher, the French general, and they shook hands and were friends ever after."

"The Feudal System lies between the Humber and the Thames."

"Caractacus was a Roman Emperor who had conquered Britain. He had to abandon it shortly afterwards because it was overrun by the Picts and the Scots."

"The princ.i.p.al products of Kent are Archbishops at Canterbury."

"The chief clause in Magna Charta was that no free man should be put to death or imprisoned without his own consent."

"What and where are the Pyramids?" "The Pyramids is a kind of night-lights as is generally used in the bed-rooms, but you can get Clark's as well." "Where were the Kings of England crowned?" "On their heads."

"What were the most important Feudal dues?" "Friends.h.i.+p, courts.h.i.+p, marriage."

"What do you know of Dermot?" "Dermot's daughter married Magna Charta.

Dermot himself married Strongbow."

"What do you know of Dryden and Buckingham?" "Dryden and Buckingham were at first friends, but soon became contemporaries."

"What is Milton's chief work?" "Milton wrote a sensible poem called the 'Canterbury Tails.'"

"The gamut is a musical scale. The name is derived from gamut or catgut, the material from which the strings of musical instruments used to be made."

"An optimist is a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist is a man who looks after your feet."

"A man who looks on the bright side of things is called an optimist, and one who looks on the dull side is called a pianist."

Dr. Charles Wilson, in his general report on the Scottish Training Colleges, gives several curious answers which he had received from candidates and pupil-teachers. A young lady in commenting on the proverb, "Penny wise and pound foolish," wrote--"This proverb clearly shows that for every wise and good action a man does, he will commit two hundred and forty foolish bad ones."

Under examination by Dr. John Ker, a boy wrote regarding Oliver Cromwell--"Oliver Cromwell's eyes were of a dark grey, his nose was very large and of a deep, red colour, but underneath it was a truly religious soul." Another wrote--"By the Declaration of Indulgence people were allowed to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in their own way. Seven Bishops refused to do so.

They were accordingly put on their trial and found not guilty."

Another declared that the Salic Law says--"No one can be made King who was descended from a woman."

Speaking there of Oliver Cromwell, recalls the story of a boy's school essay which the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone was fond of telling--albeit, the great Commoner had no very lively sense of humour. The "G.O.M.'s"

comically-mixed youthful historian wrote--"Oliver Cromwell began his career by cutting off the head of his king, and when he was dying he said, 'Had I served my G.o.d with half the zeal I have served my king, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.'"

I have examples of other boys' essays not less surprising and entertaining.

"The horse," wrote a youthful Cuvier, in an essay on the "friend of man," "is a useful creacher. It eats corn, it is a sort of square animal with a leg at each corner, and has a head at one end and a tail at the other."

Here is a boy's essay on "Breath," well calculated to almost take any one's breath away--"Breath is made of air. We breathe with our lungs, our livers, and our kidneys. If it wasn't for our lights and our breath we should die when we slept. Our breath keeps life agoing through the nose when we are asleep. Boys that stay in a room all day should not breathe. They should wait till they get outdoors. Boys in a room make carbonicide. Carbonicide is more poisonous than mad dogs. A heap of soldiers was in a black hole in India and carbonicide got into that black hole and killed nearly every one afore morning. Girls kill the breath with corsets that squeeze the diagram. Girls can't run or holler like boys because their diagram is squeezed too much. If I was a girl, I'd rather be a boy so I can run and holler and have a good big diagram."

The next looks rather knowing for a lad of eleven-and-a-half; but Dr. T.

J. Macnamara, M.P., in an article on "Children's Witticisms,"

contributed to the _New Liberal Review_, vouches for its authenticity.

The subject reveals itself in the work: "What I expect to do in my holidays is the greater part of the time to mind the baby. Two years and a half old. Just old enough to run into a puddle or to fall downstairs.

Oh! what a glorious occupation, my aunt or Sunday-school teacher would say. But it is all very well for them; they ought to have a turn with him. I am going to have a game at tying doors, tying bundles of mud in paper, and then drop it on the pavement. I shall buy a bundle of wood and tie a piece of cord to it, and when some one goes to pick it up, lo! it has vanished--not lost, but gone before. I shall go b.u.t.terfly-catching, and catch some fish at Sn.o.b's Brighton (Lea Bridge).

I shall finish up by having a whacking, tearing my breeches, giving a boy two black eyes, and then wake up on Monday morning refreshed and quite happy to make the acquaintance of Mr.----'s cane."

Dr. M. quotes the following as well--the genuineness of which he also guarantees:--"Man goes fis.h.i.+ng, takes his rod and enough tackle to make a telegraph wire, and starts on his piscatorial expedition. He arrives, and happy man is he if he has not forgot something, a hook, his bait, or his float. He sits there, apparently contented; he catches a frog or some other fine specimen of natural history, and a cold, and a jolly good roasting from his bitter (_sic_) half, when he arrives with some mackerel which he had bought at the fish-monger's. He, poor man, did not know that they were sea-fish, but his wife did. When juveniles go fis.h.i.+ng, they take a willow, their ma's reel of best six cord, a pickle jar, and a few worms, and proceed to the New River quite happy. When they arrive they catch about fifty (a small thousand, they call it), and are thinking of returning home, when a gent, with N.R. on his hat, and a good ash stick in his hand, comes up, ''Ullo, there,' says he, 'what are you doing there?' 'Fis.h.i.+ng, sir,' answer they meekly. The man then takes away their fish and rod, and gives them some whales instead (on their back). And they return home sadder but wiser boys."

I can vouch myself for the genuineness of the next example, recently copied _verbatim_ from the original ma.n.u.script in the possession of a friend in the teaching profession in Glasgow. The general subject had been "Athletic Sports," and a boy wrote:--"Athletic sports is very useful football especially it strengthens the mussles all sports is good for the helth for some people I think the best game is rugby there is more fun in it than anything else I will give a description of football the Rangers have the best men that ever stood in the football park there is one man I know and that is Chas. Raisback and he is center and a nother good player is Bobby M'Coll his wright wing and J. Drummond is a nother good player I think this is all about athletic sports I have got to say and I will never forget the good wee rangers the result was on Sat.u.r.day Rangers 2 Morton 1. Good old Rangers." Isn't it beautiful? To the question, "With what weapon did Samson slay the Philistines?" the correct answer has already been given, or extracted, here; but I recall another, more ingenious, from a boy, who replied, "With the _axe_ of the Apostles."

"What are you talking about there?" demanded a teacher, addressing himself to the loquacious son of a railway porter. But the teacher received no response, and was obliged to ask another lad who sat next the delinquent, "What was George talking about?" "Please, sir, he was saying as his father's trousers is sent down to Brighton when they gets old, and they's made into _sugar_ there, and that's how 'tis sugar's gone down."

Home influences appeared in the answer of a child, whose father was a strong teetotaller, to the query, "Do you know the meaning of syntax?"

"Yes, syntax is the dooty upon spirits."

In reply to the question, "Why do we cook our food?" one child replied: "There are five ways of cooking potatoes. We should die if we eat our food raw." A second pupil wrote: "Food digested is when we put it into our mouths, our teeth chews it, and our mouth drops it down into our body. We should not eat so much bone-making food as flesh-making and warmth-giving foods, for, if we did, we should have too many bones, and that would make us look funny."

In answer to the question, "Mention any occupations that are injurious to health?" one child's reply was: "Occupations which are injurious to health are carbonic acid gas, which is impure blood." Another responded: "A stone-mason's work is injurious, because when he is chipping, he breathes in all the little chips, and they are taken into the lungs." A third advanced the theory that "A boot-maker's trade is very injurious, because they press the boots against the thorax, and therefore it presses the thorax in, and it touches the heart, and if they do not die, they are cripples for life."

Finally, here is an extract from an essay on "The Moon," which--in defiance of its t.i.tle--affords some very interesting glimpses of sublunary home life:--"To look at the white moon s.h.i.+nin threw your winder at night, sitting on the edge of the bed, and lissin to your father and mothers knives and forks rattlin on their plates while they are getting their nice suppers, is the prittist site you ever seed. When its liver and hunyens there a having, you can smell it all the way upstairs. It looks very brite and nearly all white. Once when they was a having fried fish and potaters I crept out of my bed-room to the top of the stairs all in the dark, just so as to have a better lissen and a nearer smell. I forget whether there was a moon that night. I don't think as there was, cose I got to the top of the stares afore I knew I was there, and I tumbled right down to the bottom of the stares, a bursting open the door at the bottom, and rolling into the room nearly as far as the supper table. My father thote of giving me the stick for it, but he let my mother give me a bit of fish on some bread, and told me to skittle off to bed again. I am sure there was not no moon, else I should have seed there wasn't a top stare when I put my foot out so slow. I only skratted my left eye and ear a bit with that last b.u.mp at the bottom, witch was a hard one, Stares are steeper than girls think, spes.h.i.+lly where the corner is."

CHILDREN'S STORIES.

The editor of a London literary journal was recently inviting men and women in prominent positions in public life to name for publication the books of their childhood. So far as I observed, none of the half-hundred or more who responded gave _Blue Beard_, _Cinderella_, _Little Red Riding Hood_, or any of the others in the same category that follow here. But I am none the less convinced that these old-time favourites, not yet unknown, though familiar to city children in the present generation mainly in their variegated and fantastic Christmas pantomime form, were in Scotland and England alike in the last century more essentially the books of childhood than any others known and read beyond the walls of the school-room. The travelling stationers and packmen carried them in their thousands, in chapbook form, into even the most remote parts of the country, where they were bartered for and explored with avidity. In many quarters, indeed, they were so familiar fifty years ago that the books on occasions could be dispensed with, and the elder members of families would recite the stories from memory for the delectation of the younger fry, when all foregathered in a crescent before the kitchen fire to wear out the long winter evenings. In this manner, under the dim-flickering light of an "oilie cruizie," in a straggling village in Perths.h.i.+re, did I learn first of Blue Beard and Jack the Giant Killer, and many another hero of chapbook literature. And my experience, I am sure, was by no means singular. Rather, I feel certain that while telling thus my own, I am expressing no less truly the experience of many thousands of men and women now beyond middle life who similarly were born and bred in any rural parish in Scotland. And, oh, the weird fascination of it all! There was no doubting of Blue Beard's reality; no hesitation in accepting as actual every extraordinary feat of Jack the Giant Killer. Both were as real in our innocent imagination as is now the personality of King Edward the Seventh. It never occurred to us then, as it does now, that the story of Blue Beard is only a gory and fantastic parody of the history of Eden--a temptation, a fall, and a rescue. And we had no concern about authors.h.i.+p. We did not know then, as we do now--and as few are yet aware, perhaps--that _Blue Beard_, _Cinderella_, and _Little Red Riding Hood_ were all written by Charles Perrault, a celebrated French literateur and poet, who was born in Paris in 1628, and died there in 1703. And to have been told, as we have recently been, on authority that Perrault's Blue Beard--the Comte Gilles de Rais--was no mere wife-killer (though he was such) but from his youth upwards, in the fifteenth century, a man of exquisite culture, and a soldier under Joan of Arc, would have made for disillusionment so emphatic as to have shred the tale of a serious amount of its blood-curdling charm. As I can still enjoy reading them, it is a real pleasure to embrace here these old-time examples of child literature. Such as follow--and all the more popular will be found in the list--are printed _verbatim_ from the chapbooks now un.o.btainable, except at a ransom price--and without individual comment--none being required.

BLUE BEARD.

There was, some time ago, a gentleman who was extremely rich: he had elegant town and country houses; his dishes and plates were of gold or silver; his rooms were hung with damask; his chairs and sofas were covered with the richest silks; and his carriages were all magnificently gilt with gold.

But, unfortunately, this gentleman had a blue beard, which made him so very frightful and ugly, that none of the ladies in the neighbourhood would venture to go into his company.

It happened that a lady of quality, who lived very near him, had two daughters, who were both extremely beautiful. Blue Beard asked her to bestow one of them upon him in marriage, leaving to herself the choice which of the two it should be.

They both, however, again and again refused to marry Blue Beard; but to be as civil as possible, they each pretended that they refused because she would not deprive her sister of the opportunity of marrying so much to her advantage. But the truth was, they could not bear the thought of having a husband with a blue beard: and, besides, they had heard of his having already been married to several wives, and n.o.body could tell what had afterwards become of them.

As Blue Beard wished very much to gain their favour, he invited the lady and her daughters, and some ladies who were on a visit at their house, to accompany him to one of his country seats, where they spent a whole week, during which nothing was thought of but parties for hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, music, dancing, collations, and the most delightful entertainments. No one thought of going to bed, and the nights were pa.s.sed in merriment of every kind.