The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 17

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 bluht 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 couch where childhood lies, A more delicious trance is given, Lit up by rays from seraph eyes, And glimpses of remembered heaven.--_W. M. Praed_.

O for boyhood's time of June, Crowding years in one brief moon!--_Whittier_.

_Golden Age_.

The English word _world_, as the Anglo-Saxon _weorold_, Icelandic _verold_, and Old High German _weralt_ indicate, signified originally "age of man," or "course of man's life," and in the mind of the folk the life of the world and the life of man have run about the same course. By common consent the golden age of both was at the beginning, _ab ovo_. With Wordsworth, unlettered thousands have thought:--

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!"

_Die Kindheit ist ein Augenblick Gottes_, "childhood is a moment of G.o.d," said Achim Ton Arnim, and Hartley Coleridge expresses the same idea in other words:--

"But Heaven is kind, and therefore all possess, Once in their life, fair Eden's simpleness."

This belief in the golden age of childhood,--_die heilige Kinderzeit_, the heaven of infancy,--is ancient and modern, world-wide, shared in alike by primitive savage and nineteenth-century philosopher. The peasant of Brittany thinks that children preserve their primal purity up to the seventh year of their age, and, if they die before then, go straight to heaven (174. 141), and the great Chinese philosopher, linking together, as others have done since his time, the genius and the child, declared that a man is great only as he preserves the pure ideas of his childhood, while Coleridge, in like fashion tells us: "Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the power of manhood."

Everywhere we hear the same refrain:--

"Aus der Jugendzeit, aus der Jugendzeit, Klingt ein Lied immerdar; O wie liegt so weit, o wie liegt so weit, Was mein einst war!"

The Paradise that man lost, the Eden from which he has been driven, is not the G.o.d-planted Garden by the banks of Euphrates, but the "happy days of angel infancy," and "boyhood's time of June," the childhood out of which in the fierce struggle--for existence the race has rudely grown, and back to which, for its true salvation, it must learn to make its way again. As he, who was at once genius and child, said, nearly twenty centuries ago: "Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven."

When we speak of "the halcyon days of childhood," we recall an ancient myth, telling how, in an age when even more than now "all Nature loved a lover," even the G.o.ds watched over the loves of Ceyx and Halcyone. Ever since the kingfisher has been regarded as the emblem, of lasting fidelity in love. As Ebers aptly puts it: "Is there anywhere a sweeter legend than that of the Halcyons, the ice-birds who love each other so tenderly that, when the male becomes enfeebled by age, his mate carries him on her outspread wings whithersoever he wills; and the G.o.ds desiring to reward such faithful love cause the sun to shine more kindly, and still the winds and waves on the 'Halcyon Days' during which these birds are building their nests and brooding over their young" (390. II. 269).

Of a special paradise for infants, something has been said elsewhere. Of Srahmanadzi, the other world, the natives of Ashanti say: "There an old man becomes young, a young man a boy, and a boy an infant. They grow and become old. But age does not carry with it any diminution of strength or wasting of body. When they reach the prime of life, they remain so, and never change more" (438. 157).

The Kalmucks believe that some time in the future "each child will speak immediately after its birth, and the next day be capable of undertaking its own management" (518. I. 427). But that blissful day is far off, and the infant human still needs the overshadowing of the G.o.ds to usher him into the real world of life.

_Guardian Angels and Deities._

Christ, speaking his memorable words about little children to those who had inquired who was greatest in the kingdom of heaven, uttered the warning: "See that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." In the hagiology of the Christian churches, and in the folk-lore of modern Europe, the idea contained in our familiar expression "guardian angel" has a firm hold; by celestial watchers and protectors the steps of the infant are upheld, and his mind guided, until he reaches maturity, and even then the guardian spirit often lingers to guide the favoured being through all the years of his life (191. 8). The natives of Ashanti believe that special spirits watch over girls until they are married, and in China there is a special mother-G.o.ddess who guards and protects childhood.

Walter Savage Landor has said:--

"Around the child bend all the three Sweet Graces,--Faith, Hope, Charity,"

and the "three Fates" of cla.s.sic antiquity, the three Norns of Scandinavian mythology, the three Sudieicky or fate-G.o.ddesses of the Czechs of Bohemia, the three fate- and birth-G.o.ddesses of the other Slavonic peoples, the three [Greek: _Moirai_] of Modern Greece, the three Phat.i.te of Albania, the three white ladies, three virgins, three Mary's, etc., of German legend of to-day, have woven about them a wealth of quaint and curious lore (326. I. 42-47).

The survival of the old heathen belief alongside the Christian is often seen, as, e.g., at Palermo, in Sicily, where "the mother, when she lifts the child out of the cradle, says aloud: _'Nuome di Dio_, In G.o.d's name,' but quickly adds sotto voce: _'Cu licenzi, signuri mui_, By your leave, Ladies.'" The reference is to the "three strange ladies,"

representing the three Fates, who preside over the destiny of human beings.

Ploss has discussed at length the G.o.ddesses of child-birth and infancy, and exhibited their relations to the growing, fertilizing, regenerative powers of nature, especially the earth, sun, moon, etc.; the Hindu _Bhavani_ (moon-G.o.ddess); the Persian _Anahita_; the a.s.syrian _Belit_, the spouse of _Bel_; the Phoenician _Astarte_; the Egyptian _Isis_; the Etruscan _Mater matuta_; the Greek _Hera Eileithyia, Artemis_,; the Roman _Diana, Lucina, Juno_; the Phrygian _Cybele_; the Germanic _Freia, Holla, Gude, Harke_; the Slavonic _Siwa, Libussa, Zlata Baba_ ("the golden woman"); the ancient Mexican _Itzcuinam, Yohmaltcitl, Tezistecatl_; the Chibchan rainbow-G.o.ddess _Cuchavira_; the j.a.panese _Kojasi Kwanon_, and hundreds more.

The number of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses presiding over motherhood and childhood is legion; in every land divine beings hover about the infant human to protect it and a.s.sure the perpetuity of the race. In ancient Rome, besides the divinities who were connected with generation, the embryo, etc., we find, among others, the following tutelary deities of childhood:--

_Parca_ or _Partula_, the G.o.ddess of child-birth; _Diespiter_, the G.o.d who brings the infant to the light of day; _Opis_, the divinity who takes the infant from within the bosom of mother-earth; _Vatica.n.u.s_, the G.o.d who opens the child's mouth in crying; _Cunina_, the protectress of the cradle and its contents; _Rumina_, the G.o.ddess of the teat or breast; _Ossipaga_, the G.o.ddess who hardens and solidifies the bones of little children; _Carna_, the G.o.ddess who strengthens the flesh of little children; _Diva potina_, the G.o.ddess of the drink of children; _Diva edusa_, the G.o.ddess of the food of children; _Cuba_, the G.o.ddess of the sleep of the child; _Levana_, the G.o.ddess who lifts the child from the earth; _Stata.n.u.s_, the G.o.d, and _Dea Statina_, the G.o.ddess, of the child's standing; _Fabulinus_, the G.o.d of the child's speech; _Abeona_ and _Adiona_, the protectresses of the child in its goings out and its comings in; _Deus catus pater_, the father-G.o.d who "sharpens" the wits of children; _Dea mens_, the G.o.ddess of the child's mind; _Minerva_, the G.o.ddess who is the giver of memory to the child; _Numeria_, the G.o.ddess who teaches the child to count; _Voleta_, the G.o.ddess, and _Volumnus_ the G.o.d, of will or wishing; _Venilia_, the G.o.ddess of hope, of "things to come"; _Deus conus_, the G.o.d of counsel, the counsel-giver; _Peragenor_ or _Agenona_, the deity of the child's action; _Cam?na_, the G.o.ddess who teaches the child to sing, etc.

(398.188).

Here the child is overshadowed, watched over, taught and instructed by the heavenly powers:--

"But to the couch where childhood lies A more delicious trance is given, Lit up by rays from seraph eyes, And glimpses of remembered heaven."

In line with the poet's thought, though of a ruder mould, is the belief of the Iroquois Indians recorded by Mrs. Smith: "When a living nursing child is taken out at night, the mother takes a pinch of white ashes and rubs it on the face of the child so that the spirits will not trouble, because they say that a child still continues to hold intercourse with the spirit-world whence it so recently came" (534. 69).

_Birth-Myths_.

President Hall has treated of "The Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School" (252), but we yet lack a like elaborate and suggestive study of "The Contents of Parents' Minds on Entering the Nursery." We owe to the excellent investigation carried on by Princ.i.p.al Russell and his colleagues at the State Normal School in Worcester, Ma.s.s., "Some Records of the Thoughts and Reasonings of Children" (194), and President Hall has written about "Children's Lies" (252a), but we are still without a correspondingly accurate and extensive compilation of "The Thoughts and Reasonings of Parents," and a plain, unbia.s.sed register of the "white lies" and equivoques, the fictions and epigrammatic myths, with which parents are wont to answer, or attempt to answer, the manifold questions of their tender offspring. From time immemorial the communication between parent (and nurse) and child, between the old of both s.e.xes and little children, far from being yea and nay, has been cast in the mould of the advice given in the German quatrain:--

"Ja haltet die Aequivocabula nur fest, Sind sie doch das einzige Mittel, Dem Kind die Wahrheit zu bergen und doch Zu brauchen den richtigen t.i.tel."

["Hold fast to the words that we equivoques call; For they are indeed the only safe way To keep from the children the truth away, Yet use the right name after all."]

Around the birth of man centres a great cycle of fiction and myth. The folk-lore respecting the provenience of children may be divided into two categories. The first is represented by our "the doctor brought it,"

"G.o.d sent it," and the "van Moor" of the peasantry of North Friesland, which may signify either "from the moor," or "from mother." The second consists of renascent myths of bygone ages, distorted, sometimes, it is true, and recast. As men, in the dim, prehistoric past, ascribed to their first progenitors a celestial, a terrestrial, a subterranean, a subaqueous origin, a coming into being from animals, birds, insects, trees, plants, rocks, stones, etc.,--for all were then akin,--so, after long centuries have rolled by, father, mother, nurse, older brother or sister, speaking of the little one in whom they see their stock renewed, or their kinship widened, resurrect and regild the old fables and rejuvenate and reanimate the lore that lay sunk beneath the threshold of racial consciousness. Once more "the child is father of the man"; his course begins from that same spring whence the first races of men had their remotest origins. George Macdonald, in the first lines of his poem on "Baby" (337. 182):--

"Where did you come from, baby dear?

Out of the _everywhere_ into here,"