The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 36

These decisions belong to the same category as that rendered by Solomon in the case of the two women, who both claimed the same child,--a judgment which has gone upon record in the Bible (1 Kings, iii.

16-28),--and a mult.i.tude of similar interpretations of justice found all over the world (191. 290).

Mr. Newell, speaking of children's games in which judicial procedures are imitated, but from whose decisions no serious results ever come, observes (313. 123):--

"In the ancient world, however, where the courts were a place of resort, and law was not a specialized profession, the case was different.

Maximus of Tyre tells us that the children had their laws and tribunals; condemnation extended to the forfeiture of toys. Cato the younger, according to Plutarch, had his detestation of tyranny first awakened by the punishment inflicted on a playmate by such a tribunal. One of the younger boys had been sentenced to imprisonment; the doom was duly carried into effect; but Cato, moved by his cries, rescued him."

_Children's Ideas of Right_.

Mr. Brown, of the formal School at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, has given us an excellent collection of _Thoughts and Reasonings of Children_ (194), and Signora Paola Lombroso, in her interesting and valuable _Essays on Child-Psychology_, has also contributed to the same subject (301. 45-72). A very recent study is that of _Children's Rights_, by Margaret E. Schallenberger (341), of Leland Stanford, Jr.

University, California. The last author has charted the opinions of a large number--some three thousand papers were collected--of boys and girls from six to sixteen years of age, upon the following case, the story being employed as specially appealing to children (341. 89):--

"Jennie had a beautiful new box of paints; and, in the afternoon, while her mother was gone, she painted all the chairs in the parlour, so as to make them look nice for her mother. When her mother came home, Jennie ran to meet her, and said, 'Oh mamma! come and see how pretty I have made the new parlour'; but her mamma took her paints away and sent her to bed. If you had been her mother, what would you have done or said to Jennie?"

From this extensive and most ingenious investigation, the following results are thought to have been obtained: "Young children are less merciful than older ones. When they appear cruel and resentful, we know that they are exercising what they honestly consider the right of revenge. Boys are less merciful than girls. Young children judge of actions by their results, older ones look at the motives which prompt them. If a young child disobeys a command and no bad result follows, he doesn't see that he has done wrong. Punishments which, have in them the idea of rest.i.tution are common to all ages. Girls consider the why more than boys; they explain to Jennie oftener than boys do. Threats and forced promises do not impress children" (341. 96).

_Jurisprudence of Child's Play_.

Pitre, the great Italian folklorist, has made a special study, though a very brief one, of the judgments rendered by children in games and plays,--the jurisprudence of child's play (323). His essay, which is devoted to the island of Sicily, touches upon a field which is likely to yield a rich harvest all over the world. The rules of the game; who shall play and who shall not; what is "out," "taw," "in"; when is one "it," "caught," "out"; what can one "bar," and what "choose,"--all these are matters which require the decisions of the youthful judiciary, and call for the frequent exercise of judgment, and the sense of justice and equity. Of the "Boy Code of Honour" some notice is taken by Gregor (246.

21-24). Mr. Newell thus describes the game of "Judge and Jury," as played at Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts (312.123): "A child is chosen to be judge, two others for jurors (or, to speak with our little informant, _juries_), who sit at his right and left hand. Each child must ask the permission of the judge before taking any step. A platter is brought in, and a child, rising, asks the judge, 'May I go into the middle of the room?' 'May I turn the platter?' 'On which side shall it fall?' If the platter falls on the wrong side, forfeit must be paid." In Germany and Switzerland there is a game of the trial of a thief. In the former country: "There is a king, a judge, an executioner, an accuser, and a thief. The parts are a.s.signed by drawing lots, but the accuser does not know the name of the thief, and, if he makes an error, has to undergo the penalty in his stead. The judge finally addresses the king, inquiring if his majesty approves of his decision; and the king replies, 'Yes, your sentence ent.i.tles you to my favour'; or, 'No, your sentence ent.i.tles you to so many blows.' Thus we see how modern child's play respects the dignity of the king as the fountain of law." In the Swiss version, as Mr. Newell remarks, "the memory of the severity of ancient criminal law is preserved," for "the thief flies, and is chased over stock and stone until caught, when he is made to kneel down, his cap pushed over his brows, and his head immediately struck off with the edge of a board" (313.124).

_Boy-Moots_.

The most interesting section, perhaps, of Mr. Johnson's _Rudimentary Society among Boys_, is that devoted to "Judicial Procedure" (272.

35-48). Fighting, arbitration, the ordeal and the wager have all been in use as modes of settling quarrels at the McDonogh School--such matters of dispute as arose having been left for the boys to settle among themselves without the control of the faculty. Indeed, the advice which Polonius gives to Laertes seems to have been ever present in the earlier days:--

"Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee."

Following the appeal to fists came the appeal to chance and luck--the "odd or even" marbles, the "longest straw," and like devices came into vogue. The arbitration of a bystander, particularly of "a big boy who could whip the others," and the "expedient of laying a wager to secure the postponement of a quarrel," are very common. But the most remarkable inst.i.tution at McDonogh is undoubtedly the boy-moot, one of whose decisions is reported in detail by Mr. Johnson,--an inst.i.tution in action "almost daily," and part and parcel of the life of the school.

None but the author's own words can justly portray it (272. 47, 48):--

"The crowd of boys a.s.sembled about the contestants, whose verdict decides the controversy, is, in many respects, the counterpart of a primitive a.s.sembly of the people in the folk-moot. Every boy has the right to express an opinion, and every boy present exercises his privilege, though personal prowess and great experience in matters of law have their full influence on the minds of the judges. The primitive idea that dispensing justice is a public trust, which the community itself must fulfil towards its members, is embodied in this usage of the 'McDonogh boys.' The judges are not arbitrators chosen by the disputants, nor are they public functionaries whose sole business is to preside over the courts; but the whole body of the population declares by word of mouth the right and wrong of the matter. This tumultuous body of school-fellows, giving decisions in quarrels, and determining questions of custom, reproduces with remarkable fidelity the essential character of the primitive a.s.sembly."

Mr. Johnson was struck with "the peace and good order generally prevalent in the community," which speaks well for the judicial system there in vogue.

The editor, in his introductory remarks, observes:--

"Every schoolboy and every college student in his upward way to real manhood represents the evolution of a primitive savage into a civilized being. Every school and college reproduces the developmental process of a human society in some of its most interesting aspects, such as government and law. There are all stages of social development in the student cla.s.s, from actual savagery, which frequently crops out in the very best schools and colleges, to effeminate forms of modern civilization. There are all degrees of inst.i.tutional government, from total anarchy and patriarchal despotism to Roman imperialism and const.i.tutional government; although it must be admitted that self-government among the student cla.s.s--said to obtain in some American schools and colleges--is not yet a chartered right. The regulation of student society by itself, or by all the powers that be, presents all phases of judicature, from the most savage ordeals to the most humane.

Student customs are full of ancient survivals, and some editions of 'College Laws' are almost as archaic as the Code of Manu. One of these days we shall perhaps find men investigating college jurisprudence, college government, and college politics from the comparative point of view, and writing the natural history of the student cla.s.s" (272. 3).

In the community of the sand-pile studied by Dr. Hall, "a general habit of settling disputes, often brought to issue with fists, by means of meetings and specifications, arose." There is room for a volume on the jurisprudence of childhood and youth, and every page would be of intensest interest and of value in the history of the evolution of the ideas of justice in the human race.

CHAPTER XX.

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 G.o.d 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 manner have the frenzy of wine and the madness of the G.o.ds been a.s.sociated in every age with oracle and sign, and into this oracular trinity enters also the child. Said De Quincey: "G.o.d speaks to children also, in dreams and by the oracles that lurk in darkness," and the poet Stoddard has clothed in exquisite language a similar thought:--

"Nearer the gate of Paradise than we, Our children breathe its air, its angels see; And when they pray, G.o.d hears their simple prayer, Yea, even sheathes his sword in judgment bare."

The pa.s.sage in Joel ii. 28, "Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions," might stand for not a few primitive peoples, with whom, once in childhood (or youth) and once again in old age, man communes with the spirits and the G.o.ds, and interprets the events of life to his fellows. The Darien Indians, we are told, "used the seeds of the _Datura sanguinea_ to bring on in children prophetic delirium in which they revealed hidden treasures" (545. II. 417).

One of the most curious of the many strange practices which the conservatism of the Established Church of England has continued down to the present is one in vogue at the parish church of St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire. A certain Dr. Eobert Wilde, who died in 1678, "bequeathed 50, the yearly interest of which was to be expended in the purchase of six Bibles, not exceeding the price of 7_s_. 6_d_ each, which should be 'cast for by dice' on the communion table every year by six boys and six girls of the town." The vicar was also to be paid 10_s_. a year for preaching an appropriate sermon on the Holy Scriptures. Public opinion has within recent years caused the erection of a table on the chancel steps, where the dice-throwing now takes place, instead of on the communion table as of old. Every May 26th the ceremony is performed, and in 1888 we are told: "The highest throw this year (three times with three dice) was 37, by a little girl. The vicar (the Rev. E. Tottenham) preached a sermon from the words, 'From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures'" (390 (1888). 113).

_The Child as Vision-Seer_.

In the history of the Catholic Church one cannot fail to be struck by the part played by children in the seeing of visions, especially of the Virgin. To St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano (A.D. 1274-1317), when fourteen years of age, the Virgin appeared and told her she should build a monastery before she died (191. 24); Jeanne de Maille (1332-1414) was but eleven when the Virgin Mary with the infant Jesus came before her in a vision; Catherine of Racconigi (1486-1547) was visited by the Virgin when only five years of age (191. 108); in 1075, Hermann of Cologne, while still a boy, saw in a vision the Virgin, who kissed him, and made a secret deposit of food on a certain stone for his benefit. In 1858 a vision of the Immaculate Conception appeared to Bernadetta Soubirous, a sickly child of fourteen, at Lourdes, in the Hautes Pyrenees. No one else saw this vision, said to have occurred on Shrove Tuesday (Feb. 11), four years after Pius IX. had proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The vision lasted for fourteen successive days (191. 484).

On Jan. 17, 1871, the Virgin is alleged to have appeared at Pontmain to several children, and a detailed account of the vision has been given by Mgr. Guerin, chamberlain of Pius IX., in his _Vie des Saints_, and this is digested in Brewer. The children who saw the apparition are described as follows: "Eugene Barbedette was the second son of a small farmer living in the village of Pontmain, in the diocese of Laval. He was twelve years old, and his brother Joseph was ten. The other two [Francoise Richer, Jeanne Marie Lebosse] were children from neighbouring cottages, called in to witness the sight. The parents of the children, the pastor of the village, Sister Vitaline, the abbot Guerin, all present, could see nothing, nor could any of the neighbours of outlying villages, who flocked to the place. Only the children mentioned, a sick child, and a babe in the arms of its grandmother, saw the apparition."

The description of the Virgin, as seen by Eugene Barbedette that starlight winter night, is quaint and nave in the extreme: "She was very tall, robed in blue, and her robe studded with stars. Her shoes were also blue, but had red rosettes. Her face was covered with a black veil, which floated to her shoulders. A crown of gold was on her head, but a red line was observed to run round the crown, symbolic of the blood shed by Christ for the sins of the world. Beneath her feet was a scroll, on which were written these words: 'Mais priez, mes enfants, Dieu vous exaucera, en peu de temps mon fils se laisse toucher' (Pray, my children, G.o.d will hear you, before long my son will be moved)." Mgr.

Guerin thus comments upon the miracle: "In order to make herself manifest to men, the Holy Virgin has chosen rather the simple eyes of childhood; for, like troubled waters, sinful souls would have but ill reflected her celestial image" (191. 26).

_Flower- and Animal-Oracles_.

Mr. Newell has a chapter on "Flower-Oracles" (313. 105-114), in which he gives many ill.u.s.trations of the practice noted in the lines of that nature-loving mediaeval German singer, with which he prefaces his remarks:--

"A spire of gra.s.s hath made me gay; It saith I shall find mercy mild.

I measured in the self-same way I have seen practised by a child."

"Come look and listen if she really does: She does, does not, she does, does not, she does.

Each time I try, the end so augureth.

That comforts me,--'tis right that we have faith."

The ox-eye daisy, the common daisy, the marguerite, the corn-flower, the dandelion, the rose, the pansy, the clover, and a score of other flowers and plants (to say nothing of bushes and trees) have their leaves and petals pulled off, their seeds counted, their fruit examined, their seed-tufts blown away, their markings and other peculiarities deciphered and interpreted to determine the fortune of little questioners, the character of the home they are to live in, the clothes they are to be married in, what they are to ride in, the profession they are to adopt, whether they are to marry, remain single, become monk or nun, whether they are to be drowned or hanged, rich or poor, honest or criminal, whether they are to go to h.e.l.l, purgatory, or paradise.