The Child And Childhood In Folk-Thought - free ebook by Alexander Francis Chamberlain

TO

Dedicates this Book "Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Führen; Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur Und Lust zu fabulieren."— Goethe ....

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PREFATORY NOTE.

The present volume is an elaboration and amplification of lectures on "The Child in Folk-Thought," delivered by the writer at the summer school held at Clark University in 1894. In connection with the interesting topic of "Child-Study" which now engages so much the attention of teachers and parents, an attempt is here made to indicate some of the chief child-activities among primitive peoples and to point out in some respects their survivals in the social institutions and culture-movements of to

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I. CHILD-STUDY

III. THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (Continued)...

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CHILD-STUDY.

Oneness with Nature is the glory of Childhood; oneness with Childhood is the glory of the Teacher.— G. Stanley Hall . Homes ont l'estre comme metaulx, Vie et augment des vegetaulx, Instinct et sens comme les bruts, Esprit comme anges en attributs. [Man has as attributes: Being like metals, Life and growth like plants, Instinct and sense like animals, Mind like angels.]— Jehan de Meung . The Child is Father of the Man.— Wordsworth . And he [Jesus] called to him a little child, and

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THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER.

A good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.— English Proverb . The first poet, the first priest, was the first mother. The first empire was a woman and her children.— O. T. Mason . When society, under the guidance of the "fathers of the church," went almost to destruction in the dark ages, it was the "mothers of the people" who saved it and set it going on the new right path. — Zmigrodski (adapted). The story of civilization is the story of the mother. — Zmigrodski . One mother is more vener

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CHAPTER III.

THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER ( Continued ). To the child its mother should be as God.— G. Stanley Hall . A mother is the holiest thing alive.— Coleridge . God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.— Henry Ward Beecher . When the social world was written in terms of mother-right, the religious world was expressed in terms of mother-god. There is nothing more charming than to see a mother with a child in her arms, and nothing more venerable than a mother

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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 god.— 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 ter

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THE NAME CHILD.

Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen [Dear children have many names].— German Proverb . Child or boy, my darling, which you will.— Swinburne . Men ever had, and ever will have, leave To coin new words well-suited to the age. Words are like leaves, some wither every year, And every year a younger race succeeds.— Roscommon . Child and its Synonyms . Our word child —the good old English term; for both babe and infant are borrowed—simply means the "product of the womb" (compare Gothic kilthei

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THE CHILD IN THE PRIMITIVE LABORATORY.

As if no mother had made you look nice.— Proverbial Saying of Songish Indians. Spare the rod and spoil the child.— Hebrew Proverb. Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.— Daniel v. 27. He has lost his measure.— German Saying. "Licking into Shape." Pope, in the Dunciad , has the well-known lines:— "So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care, Each growing lump, and brings it to a bear," a conceit found in Burton, Montaigne, Byron, and other writers, and based upon an old folk-beli

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THE BRIGHT SIDE OF CHILD-LIFE: PARENTAL AFFECTION.

These are my jewels.— Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi) . A simple child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What should it know of death?— Wordsworth . Children always turn towards the light.— Hare . That I could bask in Childhood's sun And dance o'er Childhood's roses!— Praed . Grief fills the room up of my absent child.— Shakespeare . Parental Love . In his essay on The Pleasures of Home , Sir John Lubbock makes the following statement (494. 102):— "In

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CHILDHOOD THE GOLDEN AGE.

Heaven lies about us in our infancy.— Wordsworth . Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes.— Achim v. Arnim . Wahre dir den Kindersinn, Kindheit blüht in Liebe bin, Kinderzeit ist heil'ge Zeit, Heidenkindheit—Christenheit. — B. Goltz . Happy those early days, when I Shined in my angel infancy. — Henry Vaughan . Childhood shall be all divine.— B. W. Proctor . But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess, Once in their life, fair Eden's simpleness.— H. Coleridge . But to the co

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CHILDREN'S FOOD.

Der Mensch ist, was er isst.— Feuerbach . For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.— Coleridge . Man did eat angels' food.— Psalm ixxviii. 25. Honey . Der Mensch ist, was er isst ,—"man is what he eats,"—says Feuerbach, and there were food-philosophies long before his time. Among primitive peoples, the food of the child often smacks of the Golden Age. Tennyson, in Eleanore , sings:— "Or, the yellow-banded bees, Through half-open lattices Coming in the scented breeze,

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CHILDREN'S SOULS.

The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar.— Wordsworth . And rest at last where souls unbodied dwell In ever-flowing meads of Asphodel. — Homer (Pope's Transl .). Baptism . With certain Hindu castes, the new-born child is sprinkled with cold water, "in order that the soul, which, since its last existence, has remained in a condition of dreamy contemplation, may be brought to the consciousness that it has to go through a new period

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CHILDREN'S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES.

As for man, his days are as grass; 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 butterflies,— 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 buttercups buskin' the thorny wands— Sweetly singin' wi' the flower-branch wavin' in their hands. Many savage nations worship tre

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CHILDREN'S ANIMALS, BIRDS, ETC.

My brother, the hare, … my sisters, the doves. — St. Francis of Assisi. Love of animals is inborn. The child that has had no pets is to be pitied.— G. Stanley Hall. 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 ste

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CHILD-LIFE AND EDUCATION IN GENERAL.

The mother's heart is the child's school-room.— Henry Ward Beecher . The father is known from the child.— German Proverb . Learn young, learn fair, Learn auld, learn mair. — Scotch Proverb. We bend the tree when it is young.— Bulgarian Proverb . Fools and bairns should na see things half done. — Scotch Proverb . No one is born master.— Italian Proverb . Mother as Teacher . Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu is a favourite dictum of philosophy; primitive peoples might, perhaps, b

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THE CHILD AS MEMBER AND BUILDER OF SOCIETY.

In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.— Ruskin . Children generally hate to be idle; all the care is then that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them.— Locke . Look into our childish faces; See you not our willing hearts? Only love us—only lead us; Only let us know y

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THE CHILD AS LINGUIST.

But what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a cry.—Tennyson. Yet she carried a doll as she toddled alone, And she talked to that doll in a tongue her own.—Joaquin Miller. Among savages, children are, to a great extent, the originators of idiomatic diversities.—Charles Rau. It was as impossible for the first child endowed with this faculty not to speak in the presence of a companion similarly endowed, as it would be for a

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THE CHILD AS ACTOR AND INVENTOR.

The child is a born actor. The world's a theatre, the earth a stage, Which God and Nature do with actors fill.— Heywood . Man is an imitative creature, and the foremost leads the flock. — Schiller . Imitative Games . In her article on Imitation in Children , Miss Haskell notes the predilection of children for impersonation and dramatic expression, giving many interesting examples. S. D. Warren, in a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Brookly

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THE CHILD AS POET, MUSICIAN, ETC.

Poeta nascitur, non fit.— Latin Proverb . As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.— Pope . The Child and Music . "Music," said quaint old Thomas Puller, "is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune," and Wallaschek, in his recent volume on Primitive Music , has shown how every nation under heaven, even the most savage and barbarous of peoples, have had a share in the work of civilization. Music has been called "the language of the go

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THE CHILD AS TEACHER AND WISEACRE.

The child is father of the man,— Wordsworth . And wiser than the gray recluse This child of thine.— Whittier . And still to Childhood's sweet appeal The heart of genius turns, And more than all the sages teach From lisping voices learns.— Whittier . Wisdom of Childhood . In his beautiful verses—forming part of one of the best child-poems in our language— "And still to childhood's sweet appeal The heart of genius turns, And more than all the sages teach From lisping voices

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THE CHILD AS JUDGE.

So, Holy Writ in Babes hath judgment shown, Where Judges have been babes.— Shakespeare . O wise young judge I— Shakespeare . The Child as Judge Shakespeare in All's Well that Ends Well , makes Helen say to the King:— "He that of greatest works is finisher, Oft does them by the weakest minister: So, Holy Writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes." And in the history of the human race, appeal has often been made to the innocence and imputed discernment of the child

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THE CHILD AS ORACLE-KEEPER AND ORACLE- INTERPRETER.

Enfants et fous sont devins [Children and fools are soothsayers]. — French Proverb. Children pick up words as chickens peas, And utter them again as God shall please.— English Proverb . The fresh face of a child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable seer.— Novalis . Child-Oracles . "Children and fools speak the truth," says an old and wide-spread proverb, and another version includes him who is drunken, making a trinity of truth-tellers. In like manne

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THE CHILD AS WEATHER-MAKER.

Rain, rain, go away, Come again, another day.— Children's Rhyme. Perhaps the most naive tale in which, the child figures as a weather-maker occurs in the life-story of St. Vincent Ferrier (1357-1419 A.D.), who is credited with performing, in twenty years, no fewer than 58,400 miracles. While the saint was not yet a year old, a great dearth prevailed in Valencia, and one day, while his mother was lamenting over it, "the infant in swaddling-clothes said to her distinctly, 'Mother, if you wish

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THE CHILD AS HEALER AND PHYSICIAN.

Fingunt se medicos quivis idiota, sacerdos, Iudæus, monachus, histrio, rasor, anus. [Any unskilled person, priest, Jew, monk, actor, barber, old woman, turns himself into a physician.]— Medical Proverb . The Child as Healer and Physician . Though Dr. Max Bartels' (397) recent treatise—the best book that has yet appeared on the subject of primitive medicine—has no chapter consecrated to the child as healer and physician, and Mr. Black's Folk-Medicine (401) contains but a few items under the rubri

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THE CHILD AS SHAMAN AND PRIEST.

Nearer the gates of Paradise than we Our children breathe its air, its angels see; And when they pray, God hears their simple prayer, Yea, even sheathes his sword, in judgment bare. — R. H. Stoddard. The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is nature's priest.— Wordsworth . Priestly Training . Instruction in the priestly art in Africa begins sometimes almost at birth. Bastian informs us (529. 58):— "Women who have been long barren, or who have lost their children

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THE CHILD AS HERO, ADVENTURER, ETC.

O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother!— Shakespeare. Who can foretell for what high cause This Darling of the Gods was born?— Marvell. The haughty eye shall seek in vain What innocence beholds; No cunning finds the keys of heaven, No strength its gate unfolds. Alone to guilelessness and love That gate shall open fall; The mind of pride is nothingness, The childlike heart is all.— Whittier. Carlyle has said: "The History of the World is the Biography of Great Men." He

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THE CHILD AS FETICH, DEITY, GOD.

Childhood shall be all divine.— Proctor . A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink, Might tempt, should Heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss.— Swinburne . Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad godhead felt within A baby's eyes.— Swinburne . The Child as Fetich. It is easy to understand how, among barbarous or semi-civilized peoples, children born deformed or with any strange marking or defect should be looked upon as objects of

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THE CHRIST-CHILD.

The holy thing that is to be born shall be called the Son of God.— Luke i. 35. There is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is anointed Lord.— Luke ii. 11. Great little One! whose all-embracing birth Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.— Richard Crashaw. Our Babe, to show his Godhead true, Can in his swaddling hands control the damnèd crew.— Milton. The heart of Nature feels the touch of Love; And Angels sing: "The Child is King! See in his heart

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PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT PARENTS, FATHER AND MOTHER.

1. Be a father to virtue, but a father-in-law to vice. 2. Bread is our father, but kasha [porridge] is our mother. — Russian . 3. Call not that man wretched, who, whatever ills he suffers, has a child he loves.— Southey . 4. Children suck the mother when they are young, and the father when they are old. 5. Children see in their parents the past, they again in their children the future; and if we find more love in parents for their children than in children for their parents, this is sad and natu

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PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE CHILD, MANKIND, GENIUS, ETC.

1. Argument is like an arrow from a cross-bow, which has great force, though shot by a child.— Bacon . 2. Childhood often holds a truth in its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, and which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.— Ruskin . 3. Children always turn toward the light.— Hare . 4. Der grösste Mensch bleibt stets ein Menschenkind. [The greatest man always remains a son of man.]— Goethe . 5. Dieu aide á trois sortes de personnes,—aux fous, aux enfants, et aux ivro

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PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE MOTHER AND CHILD.

1. A child may have too much of its mother's blessing. 2. A kiss from my mother made me a painter.— Benj. West. 3. Ama sinhesten, ezduenac, ain zuna. [Who does not follow his mother will follow his stepmother, i.e. who will not hear must feel.]— Basque . 4. A mother curses not her son.— Sanskrit . 5. An ounce o' mother-wit is worth a pound o' clergy.— Scotch . 6. As if he had fallen out of his mother's mouth (i.e. so like his mother).— Low German . 7. Barmherzige Mütter ziehen grindige Töchter.

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PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT FATHER AND CHILD.

1. An dem Kind kennt man den Vater wohl. [The father is known from the child.]— German . 2. Bone does not let go flesh, nor father son.— Angolese . 3. Bose Kinder machen den Vater fromm. [Bad children make the father good.]— German . 4. Chi non ha figluoli non sa qualche cosa sia amore. [Who has not children knows not what love is.]— Italian . 5. Child's pig, but father's bacon. 6. Ein Vater ernahrt ehei zehn Kinder, denn zehn Kinder einen Vater. [One father can better nourish ten children, than

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PROVERBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT CHILDHOOD, YOUTH, AND AGE.

1. A' are guid lasses, but where do a' the ill wives come frae? — Scotch . 2. Age does not make us childish, as people say; it only finds us still true children.— Goethe . 3. Aliud legunt pueri, aliud viri, aliud senes. [Children read one way, men another, old men another.]— Terence . 4. A man at five may be a fool at fifteen. 5. A man at sixteen will prove a child at sixty. 6. An old knave is no babe. 7. A smiling boy seldom proves a good servant. 8. Auld folk are twice bairns.— Scotch . 9. Aus

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PBOVEKBS, SAYINGS, ETC., ABOUT THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD.

1. A beltless bairn cannot lie.— Scotch. 2. A burnt child dreads the fire. 3. A child is a Cupid become visible.— Novalis. 4. A daft nurse makes a wise wean.— Scotch. 5. A growing youth has a wolf in his belly. 6. A hungry belly has no ears. 7. A lisping lass is good to kiss. 8. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. 9 An infant crying in the night, An infant crying for the light; And with no language but a cry.— Tennyson. 10. A pet lamb makes a cross ram. 11. A reasonable word should be re

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A, PEOPLES.

Afghan, 377,379,385,389. Angolese, 385,386,387,391. Arabic, 388,400. Badaga, 384. Basque, 382,387. Bulgarian, 393. Chinese, 377. Danish, 377,378,395. Dutch, 391,392,396. Egyptian, 381. English, 376,377,380,382,383,384,385,387,388,390,392,393,394, 395,396,397,398,399,400,401. French, 379,380,383,385,388,395,398,399,400. Frisian, 380,385,392,396,397,399,401. Gaelic, 376,395. German,378,380,382,383,384,385,387,388,390,392,393,396,397,398, 399,400,401. Greek, 393,395. Hebrew, 383. Hindu, 377. Italia

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B, AUTHORS, ETC.

Alcibiades, 383. Aristotle, 400. Auerbach, 378, 389. Bacon, 377, 379, 380, 388, 396. Ballon, 396. Barrie, 392, 393. Beecher, 377, 383. Bible, 377, 378, 388. Blake, 391. Burns, 381. Carlyle, 380. Chamisso, 396. Chapman, 393. Cicero, 380. Coleridge, 379, 380. Cornelia, 378. Cowper, 380. Dante, 379. Dickens, 381. Disraeli, 393. Dryden, 379, 380. Emerson, 379, 380, 381, 390, 393, 395. Eötvös, 376. Euripides, 389. Fénelon, 395. Franklin, 398. Froebel, 400. Goethe, 378, 379, 380, 381, 385, 389, 390, 3

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CONCLUSION.

In these pages the "Child in Primitive Culture" has been considered in many lands and among many peoples, and the great extent of the activities of childhood among even the lowest races of men fully demonstrated. That the child is as important to the savage, to the barbarous peoples, as to the civilized, is evident from the vast amount of lore and deed of which he is the centre both in fact and in fiction. The broader view which anthropologists and psychologists are coming to take of the primiti

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A. MOTHER, FATHER, FAMILY, SOCIETY.

1. ACHELIS, T.: Die Entwickelung der Ehe. Berlin, 1893. 125 S. 8vo. 2. Actes du congrès international des uvres et institutions féminines. Paris, 1890. 539 pp. 8vo. 3. ADAM, L.: Du genre dans les diverses langues. Paris, 1883. 36 pp. 8vo. 4. ANDERSEN, HANS C.: La Mère. Conte de Hans Christian Andersen en 22 Langues, St. Pétersbourg, 1894. 5. AVERY, J.: Polyandry in India and Thibet. Amer. Antiq. and Or. Journ. Vol. IV., pp. 48-53. 6. BACHOFEN, J. J.: Das Mutterrecht. Eine Untersuchung über die G

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B. CHILDREN, CHILDHOOD, CHILD-LIFE, ETC.

176. "A.," and MENELLA SMEDLEY: Poems Written for a Child. 177. "A.," and MENELLA SMEDLEY: The Child's World. 178. ADAMS, J. D.: Child-Life and Girlhood of Remarkable Women. New York, 1894. 179. AMÉLINEAU, E.: La Morale Égyptienne quinze siècles avant notre ère. Paris, 1892. lxxxviii, 261 pp. 8vo. 180. America's Shame: Symposium on the Age of Consent Laws in the United States. Arena (Boston). Vol. XI. (1895), pp. 192-215. 180 a. AYRTON, M. C.: Child-Life in Japan. London, 1879. xx, 125 pp. 181.

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C. GENERAL.

388. D'ALVIELLA, COUNT GOBLET: Lectures on the Origin and Growth of the Conception of God as illustrated by Anthropology and History. (Hibbert Lectures, 1891.) London, 1892. xvi, 296 pp. 8vo. 389. American Anthropologist (Washington): Vols. I.-VIII. (1888-1895). 390. American Notes and Queries (Phila.) Vols. I.-VI. (1888-1891). 391. Am Urdhs-Brunnen (Dahrenwurth bei Lunden, Holstein). I.-VII. Bde. (1881-1890). 392. Am Ur-Quell (Lunden). I.-VI. Bde. (1890-1895). Continuation of No. 391. 393. ANDE

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THE INSTITUTES OF EDUCATION: COMPRISING A RATIONAL INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY.

Professor of the Institutes and History of Education, University of Edinburgh; Author of "Metaphysica" and "Ethica" etc. 16mo. Price $1.00, net. "That book is strongest which makes the reader think the most keenly, vigorously, and wisely, and, judged by this standard, this seems to be the most useful book of the season. We would put it in the hands of a working teacher more quickly than any other book that has come to our desk for many a month."— Journal of Education....

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A COURSE OF LECTURES ON THE GROWTH AND MEANS OF TRAINING THE MENTAL FACULTY.

BY FRANCIS WARNER, M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S. (Eng.). Physician to the London Hospital; Lecturer on Therapeutics and on Botany at the London Hospital College; Formerly Hunterian Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in the Royal College of Surgeons of England. 12mo. Cloth. Price 90 cents, net. "It is original, thorough, systematic, and wonderfully suggestive. Every superintendent should study this book. Few works have appeared lately which treat the subject under consideration with such orig

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