A History of Nursery Rhymes Part 3

The pixies' glee enamoured me, They were as merry as merry could be.

"They held in each hand a gold rope of sand, To every blue-bell that grew in the dell They tied a strand, Then the fairies and pixies and goblins and elves Danced to the music of the bells By themselves, merry, merry little selves."

To the kingdom of elf-land few English nursery poems have any reference.

Our continental neighbours have preserved a few, but the major number are found in versions of the folk-lore tales belonging to the people dwelling in the hilly districts of remote parts of Europe. Norway, Switzerland, Italy, and even Poland present weird romances, and our own country folk in the "merrie north country," and in the lowlands of "bonnie Scotland," add to the collection. The age to which most of them may be traced is uncertain; at all events, they bear evidences of belonging to a period when nature worship was universal, and the veneration of the mysterious in life common to our ancestors. The Second Stone Age men, it is said, cremated their dead who were worthy of reverence, and worshipped their shades, and the nursery tales of pixies and goblins and elves are but the mythical remains of their once prevailing religion--universal the world over. The inception of this ancestral worship probably took place during that period known as the Neolithic Age, when the moon, stars, and sun no longer remained the mysterious in life to be feared and worshipped. In the dreary process of evolution a gradual development took place, and nature worship and ancestral veneration evolved into the more comprehensive systems of Buddha, Confucius, and the later polytheism of Greece, Ancient Tuscany, and Rome, leaving high and dry, stranded, as it were, in Northern Europe, Ireland, and North Britain, an undisturbed residuum of ante-chronological man's superst.i.tions. Evidences of primitive man's religion are seen in the customs and practices of our rural folk to-day.

In vast forest districts, or in hilly regions far away from the refining influences of social contact, the old-time superst.i.tions lingered, changing little in the theme, and inspiring the succeeding generations, as they unfolded in the long roll-call of life, with the same fears of the mystery of death and of a future life. One of the customs of recent practice is fitly described as follows:--

In Yorkshire and in north-west Irish homesteads, and even far away in the East amongst the Armenian peasantry, a custom was, until late years, in vogue, of providing a feast for the departed relatives on certain fixed dates. All Hallows' Eve being one of the occasions a meal was prepared, and the feast spread as though ordinary living visitants were going to sit round the "gay and festive board." The chain hanging down from the centre of the chimney to the fireplace was removed--a boundary line of the domestic home--but at these times especial care was taken to remove it so that the "pixies and goblins and elves" could have a licence to enter the house. In spite of Christian teaching and other widening influences the belief remained fixed in the minds of the rural cla.s.ses that elves, goblins, sprites, pixies, and the manes were stern realities.

The Erl King of Goethe, a sprite endowed with more than human pa.s.sions, elegantly portrays the modern idea of an old theme. How he haunted the regions of the Black Forest in Thuringia, s.n.a.t.c.hing up children rambling in the shades of the leafed wood, to kill them in his terrible shambles.

The King of the Wood and the Spirit of the Waters were both early among the terrors of old-time European peasantry's superst.i.tions.

Another surviving custom, carried out with much picturesque ceremony, is common to the peoples of the Balkan States. In time of water-famine, more particularly in Servia, the girls go through the neighbouring villages singing a Dodolo song of--

"We go through the village, The clouds go in the sky; We go faster, Faster go the clouds; They have overtaken us, And wetted the corn and wine."

Precisely as the hawthorn bushes were stripped of their blossoms by Maying parties in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so in Servia the ballet of the leaf-dressed girl, encircled by a party of holiday-makers, proceeds through the hamlets invoking not the Fair Flora, but the Spirit of the Waters; the central figure, the girl in green, being besprinkled by each cottager.

The Greeks, Bulgarians, and Roumanians observe a similar ceremony, but on the confines of Russia so intense is the belief in the superst.i.tion of the water goblin that in times of long drought a traveller journeying along the road has often been seized by the ruthless hands of the villagers and ceremoniously flung into a rivulet--a sacrifice to appease the spirit that lay in the waters. In Ireland the fairy-tale of Fior Usga--Princess Spring-water--has a kindred meaning; she, so the legend relates, sank down in a well with her golden pitcher, and the flood-gates opened and swamped the parched and barren countryside near Kinsale.

In Germany, when a person is drowned, people recollect the fancies of childhood, and exclaim, "The River Spirit claims its yearly sacrifice."

Even the hard-reasoning Scotch, years ago, clung to the same superst.i.tious fancy which oftentimes prevented some of the most selfish of their race from saving their drowning fellows. "He will do you an injury if you save him from the water" was one of their fears. In England, too, the north-country people speak of the River Sprite as Jenny Greenteeth, and children dread the green, slimy-covered rocks on a stream's bank or on the brink of a black pool. "Jenny Greenteeth will have thee if thee goest on't river banks" is the warning of a Lancashire mother to her child.

The Irish fisherman's belief in the Souls' Cages and the Merrow, or Man of the Sea, was once held in general esteem by the men who earned a livelihood on the sh.o.r.es of the Atlantic. This Merrow, or Spirit of the Waters, sometimes took upon himself a half-human form, and many a sailor on the rocky coast of Western Ireland has told the tale of how he saw the Merrow basking in the sun, watching a storm-driven ship. His form is described as that of half man, half fish, a thing with green hair, long _green teeth_, legs with scales on them, short arms like fins, a fish's tail, and a huge red nose. He wore no clothes, and had a c.o.c.ked hat like a sugar-loaf, which was carried under the arm--never to be put on the head unless for the purpose of diving into the sea. At such times he caught all the souls of those drowned at sea and put them in cages made like lobster pots.

The child's tale of the German fisherman and his wife tells the same story--

"O Man of the Sea, come list unto me, For Alice, my wife, the plague of my life, Hath sent me to beg a boon of thee."

Unless such past credulities as these be considered it would be most difficult to account for many of the sayings of child-days, and the archaic ideas that have drifted into our folk-lore tales. On all hands it is admitted that it is no unusual thing to find a game or practice outliving the serious performance of which it is an imitation. The condition of a people who originally held such mystic and crude ideas is seen to-day in types of aborigines and uncivilised races.

In Halmahero, a large island to the west of New Guinea, a wizard goes through a ceremony somewhat similar to the Servian village maid's.

Cutting down branches, he dips them into the water and sprinkles the parched ground.

In Ceram the outer barks of certain trees are cast on the surface of running streams and rivulets and dedicated to the spirits that lie in the waters, that after this offering they may arise from the depths of the deep and clothe the earth with a cloud of mist.

THE CORN SPIRIT.

Another spirit, dreaded by all European peoples, was the Spirit of the Corn. In Russia especially children of the rural cla.s.s sing songs of a very distant age, mother handing down to child themes unexposed to foreign influence. It is true the Church has altered the application of many by dressing up afresh pagan observances in Christian costumes.

There are several, but one of the songs of the Russian serf to his prattling offspring ill.u.s.trates this statement. Before reading it, it should be borne in mind that Ovsen is the Teutonic _Sun G.o.d_ who possessed a boar, and that the antiquity of the song belongs to a time when the Russian peasant's forefathers worshipped the glories of the heavens, deifying the Sun for his fire and l.u.s.tre.

The translation of this poem of the fire worshippers is taken from Ralston's _Songs of the Russian People_, and runs as follows. Imagine the crooning voice of the old Slav woman singing it to her nurse child.

"In the forest, in the pine forest, There stood a pine tree, Green and s.h.a.ggy.

Oh Ovsen! Oh Ovsen!

"The Boyars came, Cut down the pine, Sawed it into planks, Built a bridge, Fastened it with nails.

Oh Ovsen! Oh Ovsen!

"Who will go Over the bridge?

Ovsen will go there, And the New Year.

Oh Ovsen! Oh Ovsen!"

Another song asks--

"On what will he come?

On a dusky swine.

What will he chase?

A brisk little pig."

The present singers of songs about Ovsen receive presents in lieu of the old contributions towards a sacrifice to the G.o.ds. The habit is to ask in some such words as these--

"Give us a pig for Vasily's Eve."

Pigs' trotters used to be offered as a sacrifice at the beginning of the New Year, and the custom still prevails in Russia of proffering such dishes at this time. The compliments of the season are commemorated by giving away the feet of the "brisk little pig." The first day of the New Year was Ovsen's day, but now consecrated to the memory of St. Basil the Great. The previous evening was called St. Basil's Eve, or Vasily's Eve. In one of the little Russian songs it is said--

"Ilya comes on Vasily's Day,"

meaning on St. Basil's, or New Year's Day, comes the Sun-G.o.d, or thunder-bearer, originally Pevan, who, under Christian influences, becomes Elijah, or Ilya.

"Ilya comes on Vasily's Day; He holds a whip of iron wire, And another of tin.

Hither he comes, Thither he waves, Corn grows."

This supports the inference that the agriculturist was a nature worshipper. But quite apart from sun worshippers, and their songs about corn-growing, the children of the rural cla.s.ses in many other parts of Europe have fixed ideas, or beliefs, in the "Spirit of the Cornfield"; their sayings are represented by different figures, "a mad dog in the corn," "a wolf in the corn," are found amongst the many shibboleths of the youngsters playing in the fields prior to harvest-time. That they dread the wavy movement of the grain-laden stalks is certain, and the red poppy, the blue cornflower, the yellow dandelion, and the marguerite daisy, although plucked by tiny hands on the fringe of the fields, it is not often tiny feet trample down the golden stalks. At nightfall, in Germany, an old peasant, observing the gentle undulating motion of the ripe crop while seated before his cottage, will exclaim--

"There goes the rye-wolf. The wolf is pa.s.sing through the corn."

In some parts the "corn spirit" was said to be a cow.

"The cow's in the corn."

In one of our home counties--Hertfordshire--it is a "mare," and the custom of "crying the mare" has allusion to the corn spirit, and is spoken of in some villages to-day. There are several rhymes that carry a notice of cornfield games.

"Ring a ring a rosies, A pocket full of posies.

Hush!--The Cry?--Hush!--The Cry?

All fall down."

"Little boy blue come blow me thy horn, The sheep in the meadow, The cow's in the corn.

Where is the boy that looks after the sheep?

Under the haystack fast asleep."

The "Little Boy Blue" rhyme, it has been urged, had only reference to the butcher's boy. The rhyme is very much older than the blue-smocked butcher's boy, and in truth it may be said the butcher boy of a century ago wore white overalls.

The former rhyme, "Ring a Ring a Rosies," is known in Italy and Germany.