The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 37

The use of drawing straws or blades of gra.s.s from the hand to determine who is "it," or who shall begin the game, the blowing of the dandelion in seed, the counting of apple-pips, or the leaves on a twig, and a hundred other expedients belong to the same category. All these are oracles, whose priest and interpreter is the child; first, in "those sweet, childish days that were as long as twenty days are now," and then again when love rules the heart and the appeal to the arbitrament of nature--for not alone all mankind but all nature loves a lover--is made in deepest faith and confidence. In the golden age of childhood and in the springtime of love all nature is akin to man. The dandelion is especially favoured as an oracle of children, and of those who are but "children of a larger growth." To quote from Folkard (448. 309):--

"The dandelion is called the rustic oracle; its flowers always open about 5 A.M. and shut at 8 P.M., serving the shepherd for a clock.

'Leontodons unfold On the swart turf their ray-encircled gold, With Sol's expanding beam the flowers unclose, And rising Hesper lights them to repose.'--_Darwin_.

As the flower is the shepherd's clock, so are the feathery seedtufts his barometer, predicting calm or storm. These downy seedb.a.l.l.s, which children blow off to find out the hour of day, serve for other oracular purposes. Are you separated from the object of your love? Carefully pluck one of the feathery heads; charge each of the little feathers composing it with a tender thought; turn towards the spot where the loved one dwells; blow, and the seed-ball will convey your message faithfully. Do you wish to know if that dear one is thinking of you?

blow again; and if there be left upon the stalk a single aigrette, it is a proof you are not forgotten. Similarly, the dandelion is consulted as to whether the lover lives east, west, north, or south, and whether he is coming or not.

'Will he come? I pluck the flower leaves off, And, at each, cry yes, no, yes; I blow the down from the dry hawkweed, Once, twice--hah! I it flies amiss!'--Scott."

Many interesting details about flower-oracles may be read in the pages of Friend (453) and Folkard (448) and in Mr. Dyer's chapters on _Plants and the Ceremonial Use_ (435. 145-162), _Children's Rhymes and Games_ (435. 232-242), etc.

Beasts, birds, and insects are also the child's oracles. Mr. Callaway tells us that among the Amazulu, when cattle are lost, and the boys see the bird called _Isi pungumangati_ sitting on a tree, "they ask it where the cattle are, and go in the direction in which it points with its head." The insect known as the _mantis_, or "praying insect,"

is used for a similar purpose (417. 339). In the Sollinger forest (Germany), on St. Matthew's day, February 24, the following practice is in vogue: A girl takes a girl friend upon her back and carries her to the nearest sheep-pen, at the door of which both knock. If a lamb is the first to bleat, the future husbands of both girls will be young; if an old sheep bleats first, they will both marry old men (391. II. 10).

_The Child as Oracle in the Primitive Community._

In primitive social economy the services of the child, as an unprejudiced or oracular decider of fates and fortunes, were often in demand. In the community of Pudu-vayal, in the Carnatic (southeastern India), "when the season for cultivation arrives, the arable land in the village is allotted to the several shareholders in the following manner: The names of each lot and each share-holder are written on pieces of the leaf of the palm-tree, such as is used for village records, and the names of each division of land to be allotted are placed in a row. A child, selected for the purpose, draws by lot a leaf with the name of the princ.i.p.al share-holder, and places under it a number, thus,--

1--Tannappa. 2--Nina. 3--Narrappa. 4--Malliyan.

It is thus settled by lottery that Tannappa and his under-share-holders are to cultivate the land of the princ.i.p.al share lotted under No. 1.

Tannappa next proceeds to settle in the same way each under-shareholder's portion included in his princ.i.p.al share, and so on, until the sixty-four shareholders receive each his allotment (461. 32)."

At Haddenham, in the county of Buckingham, England, a somewhat similar practice survived: "The method of deciding the ownership, after the meadow was plotted out, was by drawing lots. This was done by cutting up a common dock-weed into the required number of pieces to represent the lots, a well understood sign being carved on each piece, representing crows' feet, hog-troughs, and so on. These were placed in a hat and shaken up. Before this could be done, however, notice must be given by one of the men, calling out, at the top of his voice, 'Harko,' and using some sort of rigmarole, calling people to witness that the lots were drawn fairly and without favour.... The hat being shaken up, and one of the boys standing by, looking on with the greatest interest, is pitched upon as a disinterested person to draw the lots, and each owner had to 'sup up' with the lot that fell to him" (461.270).

In the manor of Aston, in the parish of Bampton, Oxfordshire, a like custom prevailed: "When the gra.s.s was fit to cut, the gra.s.s stewards and Sixteens [stewards] summoned the freeholders and tenants to a general meeting, and the following ceremony took place: Four of the tenants came forward, each bearing his mark cut on a piece of wood, which, being thrown into a hat, were shaken up and drawn by a boy. The first drawing ent.i.tled its owner to have his portion of the common meadow in set one, the second drawn in set two, etc., and thus four of the tenants have obtained their allotments. Four others then came forward, and the same process is repeated until all the tenants have received their allotments" (461. 166).

In Kilkenny, "when the division is made out, lots are prepared. Each man takes a bit of stick or particular stone, well marked; these are enveloped in a ball of clay, and a child or stranger is called to place each ball upon some one of the lots, by which each man's share is determined" (461. 141).

The Kaffir boy who is to tend the calves in the kraal, while his fellows sport and romp about, is selected by lot: "As many blades of gra.s.s as there are boys are taken, and a knot is made on the end of one of them.

The biggest boy holds the blades between the fingers and thumb of his closed hand, and whoever draws the blade with the knot has to act as herdsman" (543. 221). Nowadays, children are employed to turn roulette-wheels, sort cards, pick out lottery-tickets, select lucky numbers, set machinery going for the first time, and perform other like actions; for, though men are all "children of fortune," there is something about real children that brings luck and prospers all enterprises of chance and hazard.

Unconscious action and selection by children have no doubt profoundly influenced individual men and society at times. De Quincey tells us that "the celebrated Dr. Doddridge is said to have been guided in a primary act of choice, influencing his whole after life, by a few chance words from a child reading aloud to his mother." The story of the conversion of drunken John Stirling by the nave remark of his four-year-old boy, as the mother was reading Matthew xxv. 31-33, "Will father be a goat, then, mother?" finds parallels in other lives and other lands (191.356).

Here may be considered as belonging some of the "guessing-games,"

certain of which, in forms remarkably like those in use to-day, were known to the ancients, as Mr. Newell has pointed out, from references in Xenophon and Petronius Arbiter (313. 147-152).

_Oracular Games_.

As we of to-day see in the sports and games of children some resemblance to the realities of life of our ancestors of long ago, and of those primitive peoples who have lingered behind in the march, of culture, so have the folk seen in them some echo, some oracular reverberation, of the deeds of absent elders, some forecast of the things to come.

Among the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia, the following belief is current regarding twins: "While they are children their mother can see by their plays whether her husband, when he is out hunting, will be successful or not. When the twins play about and feign to bite each other, he will be successful; if they keep quiet, he will return empty-handed" (404. 92).

In Saxon Transylvania, "when children play games in which dolls and the like are buried, play church, or sing hymns in the street, it is thought to foretell the approaching death of some one in the place" (392 (1893).18).

Similar superst.i.tions attach to others of the games and sports of childhood, in which is reproduced the solemn earnest of an earlier manhood; for, with some peoples, the conviction that what is acted in pantomime must occur at a later date in all its reality, finds ready acceptance, and hence children are sometimes even now debarred from carrying out some of their games, from a vague fear that ill will come of them in the manner indicated.

CHAPTER XXI.

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 for rain, carry me in procession.' The babe was carried in procession, and the rain fell abundantly" (191.356). Brewer informs us that in 1716 "Mrs. Hicks and her daughter (a child nine years of age) were hung at Huntingdon [England], for 'selling their souls to the devil; and raising a storm by pulling off their stockings and making a lather of soap'" (191. 344). Saints and witches had power to stop rains and lay storms as well as to bring them on.

H. F. Feilberg has given us an interesting account of "weather-making,"

a folk-custom still in vogue in several parts of Denmark. It would appear that this strange custom exists in Djursland, Samse, Sejere, Nexele, in the region of Kallundborg. Here "the women 'make weather' in February, the men in March, all in a fixed order, usually according to the numbers of the tax-register. The pastor and his wife, each in his and her month, 'make weather' on the first of the month, after them the other inhabitants of the village. If the married men are not sufficient to fill out the days of the months, the unmarried ones and the servants are called upon,--the house-servant perhaps 'making weather' in the morning, the hired boy in the afternoon, and in like manner the kitchen-maid and the girl-servant" (392 (1891). 56, 58). In this case we have a whole family, household, community of "weather-makers," old and young, and are really taken back to a culture-stage similar to that of the Caribs and Chibchas of America, with whom the chief was weather-maker as well as ruler of his people (101. 57).

_The "Bull-Roarer."_

In Mr. Andrew Lang's _Custom and Myth_ there is an entertaining chapter on "The Bull Roarer," which the author identifies with the [Greek: rombos] mentioned by Clemens of Alexandria as one of the toys of the infant Dionysus. The "bull-roarer," known to the modern English boy, the ancient Greek, the South African, the American Indian, etc., is in actual use to-day by children,--Mr. Lang does not seem to be aware of the fact,--as a "wind-raiser," or "weather-maker." Mr. Gregor, speaking of northeastern Scotland, says: "During thunder it was not unusual for boys to take a piece of thin wood a few inches wide and about half a foot long, bore a hole in one end of it, and tie a few yards of twine into the hole. The piece of wood was rapidly whirled around the head under the belief that the thunder would cease, or that the thunder-bolt would not strike. It went by the name of the 'thunner-spell'" (246. 153).

Among the Kaffirs, according to Mr. Theal:--

"There is a kind of superst.i.tion connected with the _nowidu_ [the South African 'bull-roarer'], that playing with it invites a gale of wind. Men will, on this account, often prevent boys from using it when they desire calm weather for any purpose" (543. 223).

Dr. Boas tells us that the Shushwap Indians of British Columbia attribute supernatural powers to twins, and believe: "They can make good and bad weather. In order to produce rain they take a small basket filled with water, which they spill into the air. For making clear weather, they use a small stick to the end of which a string is tied. A small flat piece of wood is attached to the end of the string, and this implement is shaken. Storm is produced by strewing down on the ends of spruce branches" (404. 92).

The Nootka Indians have a like belief regarding twins: "They have the power to make good and bad weather. They produce rain by painting their faces with black colour and then washing them, or by merely shaking their heads" (404. 40).

Among some of the Kwakiutl Indians, upon the birth of twins "the father dances for four days after the children have been born, with a large square rattle. The children, by swinging this rattle, can cure disease and procure favourable winds and weather" (404. 62).

In Prussia, when it snows, the folk-belief is "the angels are shaking their little beds," and Grimm's story of "Old Mother Frost" has another rendering of the same myth: "What are you afraid of, my child! Stop with me: if you will put all things in order in my house, then all shall go well with you; only you must take care that you make my bed well, and shake tremendously, so that the feathers fly; then it snows upon earth.

I am Old Mother Frost."

An Eskimo legend states that thunder and lightning are caused by an adult person and a child, who went up in the sky long, long ago; they carry a dried seal-skin, which, when rattled, makes the thunder, and torches of tar, which, when waved, cause the lightning.

The Mississaga Indians explain a fierce storm of thunder and lightning by saying that "the young thunder-birds up in the sky are making merry and having a good time." In like manner, the Dakotas account for the rumbling of thunder, "because the old thunder-bird begins the peal and the young ones take it up and continue."

In the poetry of the ancient Aryans of Asia the wind is called "the heavenly child," some idea of which survives in the old pictures in books representing the seasons, and in maps, where infants or cherubs are figured as blowing at the various points of the compa.s.s. But to return to rain-making. Grimm has called attention to several instances in Modern Europe where the child figures as "rain-maker."

_Girl Rain-Makers_.

One of the charms in use in the Rhine country of Germany in the eleventh century, as recorded by Burchard of Worms, was this: "A little girl, completely undressed and led outside the town, had to dig up henbane with the little finger of her right hand, and tie it to the little toe of her right foot; she was then solemnly conducted by the other maidens to the nearest river, and splashed with water" (462. II. 593).

In Servia the rain-maker is well known, and the procedure is as follows: "A girl, called the _dodola_, is stript naked, but so wrapt up in gra.s.s, herbs, and flowers, that nothing of her person is to be seen, not even the face. Escorted by other maidens, _dodola_ pa.s.ses from house to house; before each house they form a ring, she standing in the middle and dancing alone. The goodwife comes out and empties a bucket of water over the girl, who keeps dancing and whirling all the while; her companions sing songs, repeating after every line the burden _oy dodo, oy dodo le_." Following is one of the rain-songs:--