The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 25

"'Nay!' said the grandmother; 'have you not heard, My poor, bad boy! of the fiery pit, And how, drop by drop, this merciful bird Carries the water that quenches it?

"'He brings cool dew in his little bill, And lets it fall on the souls of sin; You can see the mark on his red breast still Of fires that scorch as he drops it in.'"

Another popular story, however, relates that when Christ was on His way to Calvary, toiling beneath the burden of the cross, the robin, in its kindness, plucked a thorn from the crown that oppressed His brow, and the blood of the divine martyr dyed the breast of the bird, which ever since has borne the insignia of its charity. A variant of the same legend makes the thorn wound the bird itself and its own blood dye its breast.

According to a curious legend of the Chippeway Indians, a stern father once made his young son undergo the fasting necessary to obtain a powerful guardian spirit. After bravely holding out for nine days, he appealed to his father to allow him to give up, but the latter would not hear of it, and by the eleventh day the boy lay as one dead. At dawn the next morning, the father came with the promised food. Looking through a hole in the lodge, he saw that his son had painted his breast and shoulders as far as he could reach with his hands. When he went into the lodge, he saw him change into a beautiful bird and fly away. Such was the origin of the first robin-redbreast (440. 210). Whittier, in his poem, _How the Robin Came_, has turned the tale of the Red Men into song. As the father gazed about him, he saw that on the lodge-top--

"Sat a bird, unknown before, And, as if with human tongue, 'Mourn me not,' it said, or sung; 'I, a bird, am still your son, Happier than if hunter fleet, Or a brave before your feet Laying scalps in battle won.

Friend of man, my song shall cheer Lodge and corn-land; hovering near, To each wigwam I shall bring Tidings of the coming spring; Every child my voice shall know In the moon of melting snow When the maple's red bud swells, And the wind-flower lifts its bells.

As their fond companion Men shall henceforth own your son, And my song shall testify That of human kin am I.'"

_Stork._

The _Lieblingsvogel_ of German children is the stork, who, as parents say, brings them their little brothers and sisters, and who is remembered in countless folk and children's rhymes. The ma.s.s of child-literature in which the stork figures is enormous. Ploss has a good deal to say of this famous bird, and Carstens has made it the subject of a brief special study,--"The Stork as a Sacred Bird in Folk-Speech and Child-Song" (198). The latter says: "It is with a sort of awe (_Ehrfurcht_) that the child looks upon this sacred bird, when, returning with the spring he settles down on the roof, throwing back his beak and greeting the new home with a flap of his wings; or when, standing now on one foot, now on the other, he looks so solemnly at things, that one would think he was devoutly meditating over something or other; or, again, when, on his long stilt-like legs, he gravely strides over the meadows. With great attention we listened as children to the strange tales and songs which related to this sacred bird, as our mother told them to us and then added with solemn mien, 'where he keeps himself during the winter is not really known,' or, 'he flies away over the _Lebermeer_, whither no human being can follow.' 'Storks are enchanted (_verwunscht_) men,' my mother used to say, and in corroboration told the following story: 'Once upon a time a stork broke a leg. The owner of the house upon which the stork had its nest, interested himself in the unfortunate creature, took care of it and attended to it, and soon the broken leg was well again. Some years later, it happened that the kind-hearted man, who was a mariner, was riding at anchor near the North Sea Coast, and the anchor stuck fast to the bottom, so that nothing remained but for the sailor to dive into the depths of the sea. This he did, and lo! he found the anchor clinging to a sunken church-steeple. He set it free, but, out of curiosity, went down still deeper, and far down below came to a magnificent place, the inhabitants of which made him heartily welcome. An old man addressed him and informed him that he had been the stork whose leg the sailor had once made well, and that the latter was now in the real home of the storks.'" Carstens compares this story with that of Frau Holle, whose servant the stork, who brings the little children out of the child-fountain of the Gotterburg, would seem to be. In North Germany generally the storks are believed to be human beings in magical metamorphosis, and hence no harm must be done them. Between the household, upon whose roof the stork takes up his abode, and the family of the bird, a close relation is thought to subsist. If his young ones die, so will the children of the house; if no eggs are laid, no children will be born that year; if a stork is seen to light upon a house, it is regarded by the Wends of Lusatia as an indication that a child will be born there the same year; in Switzerland the peasant woman about to give birth to a child chants a brief appeal to the stork for aid. A great variety of domestic, meteorological, and other superst.i.tions are connected with the bird, its actions, and mode of life. The common Low German name of the stork, _Adebar_, is said to mean "luck-bringer"; in Dutch, he is called _ole vaer,_ "old father." After him the wood-anemone is called in Low German _Hannoterblume,_ "stork's-flower." An interesting tale is "The Storks," in Hans Christian Andersen.

_Bird-Language._

In the Golden Age, as the story runs, men were able to hold converse with the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, nor had a diversity of dialects yet sprung up among them. In Eden of old the whole world was of one tongue and one speech; nay more, men talked with the G.o.ds and with G.o.d. Many legends of primitive peoples there are telling how confusion first arose,--every continent has its Babel-myth,--and how men came at last to be unable to comprehend each other's speech. The Indians of Nova Scotia say that this occurred when Gluskap, the culture-hero of the Micmacs, after giving a parting banquet to all creatures of earth, sea, and air, "entered his canoe in the Basin of Minas, and, sailing westward in the moonlight, disappeared. Then the wolves, bears, and beavers, who had before been brothers, lost the gift of common language, and birds and beasts, hating one another, fled into the distant forests, where, to this day, the wolf howls and the loon utters its sad notes of woe" (418. 185).

The Mexican legend of the deluge states that the vessel in which were c.o.xc.o.x,--the Mexican Noah,--and his wife, Xochiquetzal, stranded on a peak of Colhuacan. To them were born fifteen sons, who, however, all came into the world dumb, but a dove gave them fifteen tongues, and thence are descended the fifteen languages and tribes of Anahuac (509.

517).

In later ages, among other peoples, the knowledge of the forgotten speech of the lower creation was possessed by priests and seers alone, or ascribed to innocent little children,--some of the power and wisdom of the bygone Golden Age of the race is held yet to linger with the golden age of childhood. In the beautiful lines,--

"O du Kindermund, o du Kindermund, Unbewuszter Weisheit froh, Vogelsprachekund, vogelsprachekund, Wie Salamo!"

the poet Ruckert attributes to the child that knowledge of the language of birds, which the popular belief of the East made part of the lore of the wise King Solomon. Weil (547. 191) gives the Mussulman version of the original legend:--

"In him [Solomon] David placed implicit confidence, and was guided by him in the most difficult questions, for he had heard, in the night of his [Solomon's] birth, the angel Gabriel exclaim, 'Satan's dominion is drawing to its close, for this night a child is born, to whom Iblis and all his hosts, together with all his descendants, shall be subject. The earth, air, and water with all the creatures that live therein, shall be his servants. He shall be gifted with nine-tenths of all the wisdom and knowledge which Allah has granted to mankind, and understand not only the languages of men, but those also of beasts and birds.'" Some recollection of this appears in Ecclesiastes (x. 20), where we read, "For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter," and in our own familiar saying "a little bird told me," as well as in the Bulbul-hezar or talking bird of the _Arabian Nights_, and its imitation "the little green bird who tells everything," in the _Fairy Tales_ of the Comtesse d'Aunoy.

The interpretation of the cries of birds and animals into human speech has also some light thrown upon it from this source. Various aspects of this subject have been considered by Hopf (474), Swainson (539), Treichel (372), Brunk, Grimm (462). The use of certain birds as oracles by children is well known. A cla.s.sical example is the question of the Low German child:--

"Kukuk van Hewen, "Wi lank sail ik lewen?'

["Cuckoo of Heaven, How long am I to live?"]

Of King Solomon we are told: "He conversed longest with the birds, both on account of their delicious language, which he knew as well as his own, as also for the beautiful proverbs that are current among them."

The interpretation of the songs of the various birds is given as follows:--

The cook: "Ye thoughtless men, remember your Creator."

The dove: "All things pa.s.s away; Allah alone is eternal."

The eagle: "Let our life be ever so long, yet it must end in death."

The hoopoo: "He that shows no mercy, shall not obtain mercy."

The kata: "Whosoever can keep silence goes through life most securely."

The nightingale: "Contentment is the greatest happiness."

The peac.o.c.k: "As thou judgest, so shalt thou be judged."

The pelican: "Blessed be Allah in Heaven and Earth."

The raven: "The farther from mankind, the pleasanter."

The swallow: "Do good, for you shall be rewarded hereafter."

The syrdak: "Turn to Allah, O ye sinners."

The turtle-dove: "It were better for many a creature had it never been born."

The King, it appears, chose the hoopoo and the c.o.c.k for his companions, and appointed the doves to dwell in the temple which he was to erect (547. 200, 201). In fairy-tale and folk-lore bird-speech constantly appears. A good example is the story "Wat man warm kann, wenn man blot de Vageln richti verstan deit," included by Klaus Groth in his _Quickborn_.

In the Micmac legend of the _Animal Tamers_, by collecting the "horns" of the various animals a youthful hero comes to understand their language (521. 347).

Longfellow, in his account of "Hiawatha's Childhood," has not forgotten to make use of the Indian tradition of the lore of language of bird and of beast possessed by the child:--

"Then the little Hiawatha Learned of every bird its language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How they built their nests in summer, Where they hid themselves in winter, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them 'Hiawatha's Chickens.'

"Of all the beasts he learned the language, Learned their names and all their secrets, How the beavers built their lodges, Where the squirrels hid their acorns, How the reindeer ran so swiftly, Why the rabbit was so timid, Talked with them whene'er he met them, Called them 'Hiawatha's Brothers.'"

In the Middle Ages the understanding of the language of birds, their _Latin_, as it was called, ranked as the highest achievement of human learning, the goal of wisdom and knowledge, and the thousand rhyming questions asked of birds by children to-day are evidence of a time when communication with them was deemed possible. Some remembrance of this also lingers in not a few of the lullabies and nursery-songs of a type corresponding to the following from Schleswig-Holstein:--

"Hor mal, lutje Kind Wo dut lutje Vagel singt Baben in de Hai!

Loop, lut Kind, un hal mi dat lut Ei."

Among the child-loving Eskimo we find many tales in which children and animals are a.s.sociated; very common are stories of children metamorphosed into birds and beasts. Turner has obtained several legends of this sort from the Eskimo of the Ungava district in Labrador. In one of these, wolves are the gaunt and hungry children of a woman who had not wherewithal to feed her numerous progeny, and so they were turned into ravening beasts of prey; in another the raven and the loon were children, whom their father sought to paint, and the loon's spots are evidence of the attempt to this day; in a third the sea-pigeons or guillemots are children who were changed into these birds for having scared away some seals. The prettiest story, however, is that of the origin of the swallows: Once there were some children who were wonderfully wise, so wise indeed that they came to be called _zulugagnak_, "like the raven," a bird that knows the past and the future. One day they were playing on the edge of a cliff near the village, and building toy-houses, when they were changed into birds.

They did not forget their childish occupation, however, and, even to this day, the swallows come to the cliff to build their nests or houses of mud,--"even the raven does not molest them, and Eskimo children love to watch them" (544. 262, 263). From time immemorial have the life and actions of the brute creation been a.s.sociated with the first steps of education and learning in the child.

CHAPTER XIII.

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_.