The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 43

A baby's feet, like sea-sh.e.l.ls pink, Might tempt, should Heaven see meet, An angel's lips to kiss.--_Swinburne_.

Their glance might cast out pain and sin, Their speech make dumb the wise, By mute glad G.o.dhead felt within A baby's eyes.--_Swinburne_.

_The Child as Fetich._

It is easy to understand how, among barbarous or semi-civilized peoples, children born deformed or with any strange marking or defect should be looked upon as objects of fear or reverence, fetiches in fact. Post informs us regarding certain African tribes (127. I. 285, 286):--

"The Wanika, Wakikuyu, and Wazegua kill deformed children; throttle them in the woods and bury them. The belief is, that the evil spirit of a dead person has got into them, and such a child would be a great criminal. The Somali let misformed children live, but regard them with superst.i.tious fear. In Angola all children born deformed are considered 'fetich.' In Loango dwarfs and albinos are regarded as the property of the king, and are looked upon as sacred and inviolable."

Here we see at least some of the reasons which have led up to the eulogy and laudation, as well as to the dread suspicion, of the dwarf and the hunchback, appearing in so many folk-tales. We might find also, perhaps, some dim conception of the occasional simultaneity of genius with physical defects or deformities, a fact of which a certain modern school of criminal sociologists has made so much.

Concerning albinos Schultze says (529. 82):--

"In Borneo albinos are objects of fear, as beings gifted with supernatural power; in Senegambia, if they are slaves, they are given their freedom, are exempted from all labour, and are cheerfully supported at others' expense. In Congo the king keeps them in his palace as 'fetiches which give him influence over the Europeans.' They are held in such respect that they may take whatever they will; and he who is deprived of his property by them, esteems himself honoured. In Loango they are esteemed above the Gangas (priests), and their hair is sold at a high price as a holy relic. Thus may a man become a fetich." At Moree, in West Africa, Ellis informs us, "Albinos are sacred to Aynfwa, and, on arriving at p.u.b.erty, become her priests and priestesses. They are regarded by the people as the mouth-pieces of the G.o.ddess." At Cooma.s.sie a boy-prisoner was painted white and consecrated as a slave to the tutelary deity of the market (438. 49, 88). Coeval with their revival of primitive language-moulds in their slang, many of our college societies and sporting clubs and a.s.sociations have revived the beliefs just mentioned in their mascots and luck-bringers--the other side of the shield showing the "Jonahs" and those fetiches of evil import. Even great actors, stock-brokers, and politicians have their mascots. We hear also of mascots of regiments and of ships. A little hunchback, a dwarf, a negro boy, an Italian singing-girl, a child dressed in a certain style or colour, all serve as mascots. Criminals and gamblers, those members of the community most nearly allied in thought and action with barbarous and primitive man, have their mascots, and it is from this source that we derive the word, which Andran, in his opera _La Mascotte_, has lifted to a somewhat higher plane, and now each family may have a mascot, a fetich, to cause them to prosper and succeed in life (390 (1888). 111, 112).

One of the derivations suggested for this word, viz. from _masque_ = _coiffe_, in the expression _ne coiffe_, "born with a caul,"

would make the _mascot_ to have been originally a child born with the caul on its head, a circ.u.mstance which, as the French phrase _etre ne coiffe_, "to be born lucky," indicates, betokened happiness and good-fortune for the being thus coming into the world. In German the caul is termed "Gluckshaube," "lucky hood," and Ploss gives many ill.u.s.trations of the widespread belief in the luck that falls to the share of the child born with one. A very curious custom exists in Oldenburg, where a boy, in order to be fortunate in love, carries his caul about with him (326. I. 12-14). Other accidents or incidents of birth have sufficed to make fetiches of children. Twins and triplets are regarded in many parts of the world as smacking of the supernatural and uncanny. The various views of the races of mankind upon this subject are given at length in Ploss (326. II. 267-275), and Post has much to say of the treatment of twins in Africa. In Unyoro twins are looked upon as "luck-bringers, not only for the family, but for the whole village as well. Great feasts are held in their honour, and if they die, the house in which they were born is burned down." Among the Ishogo, from fear that one of the pair may die, twins are practically isolated and _taboo_ until grown up (127. I. 282, 284).

To the Ovaherero, according to Ploss, "the birth of twins is the greatest piece of good-fortune that can fall to the lot of mortals," and such an event makes the parents "holy." Among this Kaffir people, moreover: "Every father of twins has the right to act as subst.i.tute for the village-chief in the exercise of his priestly functions. If the chief is not present, he can, for example, exorcise a sick person. Even the twin-child himself has all priestly privileges. For a twin boy there is no forbidden flesh, no forbidden milk, and no one would ever venture to curse him. If any one should kill a twin-child, the murderer's whole village would be destroyed. As a twin-boy, he inherits the priestly dignity at the death of the chief, and even when an older brother succeeds the father as possessor of the village, it is, however, named after the younger twin-brother, who is clothed with the priestly dignity" (326. II. 271-274).

Among the Songish Indians of Vancouver Island, it is believed that "twins, immediately after their birth, possess supernatural powers. They are at once taken to the woods and washed in a pond in order to become ordinary men." The Shushwap Indians believe that twins retain this supernatural power throughout their lives (404. 22, 92).

Of children whose upper teeth break out before the lower, some primitive tribes are in fear and dread, hastening to kill them, as do the Basutos, Wakikuyu, Wanika, Wazegua, and Wasawahili. Among the Wazaramo, another African people, such children "are either put to death, given away, or sold to a slave-holder, for the belief is that through them sickness, misfortune, and death would enter the house." The Arabs of Zanzibar, "after reading from the Koran, administer to such a child an oath that it will do no harm, making it nod a.s.sent with its head" (127. I. 287).

From what has preceded, we can see how hard it is sometimes to draw the line between the man as fetich and the priest, between the divinity and the medicine-man.

_Fetiches of Criminals._

It is a curious fact that St. Nicholas is at once the patron saint of children and of thieves,--the latter even Shakespeare calls "St.

Nicholas's clerks." And with robbers and the generality of evil-doers the child, dead or alive, is much of a fetich. Anstey's _Burglar Bill_ is humorously exaggerated, but there is a good deal of superst.i.tion about childhood lingering in the mind of the lawbreaker.

Strack (361) has discussed at considerable length the child (dead) as fetich among the criminal cla.s.ses, especially the use made of the blood, the hand, the heart, etc. Among the thieving fraternity in Middle Franconia it is believed that "blood taken up from the genitals of an innocent boy on three pieces of wood, and carried about the person, renders one invisible when stealing" (361. 41). The same power was ascribed to the eating of the hearts (raw) of unborn children cut out of the womb of the mother. Male children only would serve, and from the confession of the band of the robber-chief "King Daniel," who so terrified all Ermeland in the middle of the seventeenth century, it would appear that they had already killed for this purpose no fewer than fourteen women with child (361. 59). As late as 1815, at Heide in Northditmarsch, one Claus Dau was executed for "having killed three children and eaten their hearts with the belief of making himself invisible" (361. 61).

This eating of little children's hearts was thought not alone to confer the gift of invisibility, but "when portions of nine hearts had been eaten by any one, he could not be seized, no matter what theft or crime he committed, and, if by chance he should fall into the power of his enemies, he could make himself invisible and thus escape." The eating of three hearts is credited with the same power in an account of a robber of the Lower Rhine, in 1645. In the middle of the last century, there was executed at Bayreuth a man "who had killed eight women with child, cut them open, and eaten the warm, palpitating hearts of the children, in the belief that he would be able to fly, if he ate the hearts of nine such children" (361. 58).

Only a few years ago (April, 1888), at Oldenburg, a workman named Bliefernicht was tried for having killed two girls, aged six and seven years. The examination of the remains showed that "one of the bodies not only had the neck completely cut through, but the belly cut open, so that the entrails, lungs, and liver were exposed. A large piece of flesh had been cut out of the b.u.t.tocks and was nowhere to be found, the man having eaten it. His belief was, that whoever ate of the flesh of innocent girls, could do anything in the world without any one being able to make him answer for it" (361. 62).

Strack has much to say of the _main-de-gloire_ and the _chandelle magique._ Widespread among thieves is the belief in the "magic taper." At Meesow, in the Regenwald district of Pomerania, these tapers are made of the entrails of unborn children, can only be extinguished with milk, and, as long as they burn, no one in the house to be robbed is able to wake. It is of the hands, however, of unbaptized or unborn children that these tapers were most frequently made. At Nurnberg, in 1577 and 1701, there were executed two monsters who killed many women in their pursuit for this fetich; at Vechta, in Oldenburg, the finger of an unborn child "serves with thieves to keep asleep the people of the house they have entered, if it is simply laid on the table"; at Konow, the fat of a woman with child is used to make a similar taper. In the Ukrain district of Poland, it is believed that the hand of the corpse of a five-year-old child opens all locks (361. 42). This belief in the _hand-of-glory_ and the _magic candle_ may be due to the fact that such children, being unbaptized and unborn, were presumed to be under the influence of the Evil One himself. Of the wider belief in the _chandelle magique_ and _main-de-gloire_ (as obtained from criminal adults) in Germany, France, Spain, etc., nothing need be said here.

At Konow, in the Kammin district of Pomerania, "if a thief takes an unborn child, dries it, puts it in a little wooden box, and carries it on his person, he is rendered invisible to everybody, and can steal at will" (361. 41).

The history of the robbers of the Rhine and the Main, of Westphalia, the Mark, and Silesia, with whom the child appears so often as a fetich, evince a b.e.s.t.i.a.lity and inhumanity almost beyond the power of belief.

_Magic._

But it is not to the criminal cla.s.ses alone that superst.i.tions of this nature belong. Of the alchemy, magic, black art, sorcery, and "philosophy" of the Dark Ages of Europe, the practice of which lingered in some places well on into the seventeenth century, horrible stories are told, in which children, their bodies, their souls even, appear as fetishes. The baptism of blood is said still to be practised in parts of Russia by parents "to preserve their child from the temptations of the prince of darkness," and in 1874, "a country-school teacher of the Stra.s.sburg district, and his wife, upon the advice of a somnambulist, struck their own aunt with the fire-tongs until the blood flowed, with which they sprinkled their child supposed to have been bewitched by her"

(361. 73). Here it is the blood of adults that is used, but the practice demands the child's also. According to C. F. A. Hoffmann (1817), there lived in Naples "an old doctor who had children by several women, which he inhumanly killed, with peculiar ceremonies and rites, cutting the breast open, tearing out the heart, and from its blood preparing precious drops which were preservative against all sickness." Well known is the story of Elizabeth Bathori, a Hungarian woman of the early part of the seventeenth century, who, it is said, receiving on her face a drop of blood which spurted from a waiting-girl whose ears she had severely boxed, and noticing afterward, when she wiped it away, that her skin at that spot appeared to be more beautiful, whiter, and finer than before, resolved to bathe her face and her whole body in human blood, in order to increase her charms and her beauty. Before her monstrous actions were discovered, she is thought to have caused the death of some 650 girls with the aid of accomplices (361. 46).

_Fetiches of Religion._

The use of human blood in ritual has been treated of in detail by Strack, and in his pages many references to children will be found. He also discusses in detail the charge of the Anti-Semitics that the Jews kill little children of their Christian neighbours for the purpose of using their blood and certain parts of their bodies in religious rites and ceremonies, showing alike the antiquity of this libel as well as its baselessness. Against the early Christians like charges appear to have been made by the heathen, and later on by the Saracens; and indeed, this charge is one which is generally levelled at new-comers or innovators in the early history of Christian religion and civilization. Strack points out also that, during the contest of the Dominicans and Franciscans in Bern, in 1507 A.D., it was charged that the former used the blood of Jewish children, the eyebrows and hair of children, etc., in their secret rites (361. 68, 69).

Brewer, who gives little credit to the stories, cites the account of numerous crucifixions of children alleged to have been carried out by Jews in various parts of Europe, for the purpose of using their flesh and blood in their rituals, or merely out of hatred to the Christian religion. The princ.i.p.al cases are: Andrew of Innspruck; Albert of Swirnazen in Podolia, aged four (1598); St. Hugh of Lincoln, aged eleven (1255); St. Janot of Cologne (1475); St. Michael of Sappendelf in Bavaria, aged four and one-half (1340); St. Richard of Pontoise, aged twelve (1182); St. Simon of Trent, aged twenty-nine months and three days (1475); St. William of Norwich, aged twelve (1137); St. Wernier (Garnier), aged thirteen (1227). The _Acta Sanctorum_ of the Bollandists give a long list of nameless children, who are claimed to have suffered a like fate in Spain, France, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Italy, etc. The later charges, such as those made in the celebrated case of the girl Esther Solymasi, whose death was alleged to have been brought about by the Jews of Tisza-Eszlar in Hungary, in 1882, are investigated by Strack, and shown to be utterly without foundation of fact, merely the product of frenzied Anti-Semitism (191. 171-175).

The use of blood and the sacrifice of little children, as well as other fetichistic practices, have been charged against some of the secret religious sects of modern Russia.

_Dead Children._

In Annam the natives "surround the beds of their children suffering from small-pox with nets, and never leave them alone, fearing lest a demon, in the form of a strange child, should sneak in and take possession of them" (397. 169, 242). This belief is akin with the widespread superst.i.tions with respect to changelings and other metamorphoses of childhood, to the discussion of which Ploss and Hartland have devoted much s.p.a.ce and attention, the latter, indeed, setting apart some forty pages of his book on fairy-tales to the subject.

In Devonshire, England, it was formerly believed lucky to put a stillborn child into an open grave, "as it was considered a sure pa.s.sport to heaven for the next person buried there." In the Border country, on the other hand, it is unlucky to tread on the graves of unbaptized children, and "he who steps on the grave of a stillborn or unbaptized child, or of one who has been overlaid by its nurse, subjects himself to the fatal disease of the grave-merels, or grave-scab." In connection with this belief, Henderson cites the following popular verses, of considerable antiquity:--

"Woe to the babie that ne'er saw the sun, All alane and alane, oh!

His bodie shall lie in the kirk 'neath the rain, All alane and alane, oh!

"His grave must be dug at the foot o' the wall, All alane and alane, oh!

And the foot that treadeth his body upon Shall have scab that will eat to the bane, oh!

"And it ne'er will be cured by doctor on earth, Tho' every one should tent him, oh!

He shall tremble and die like the elf-shot eye, And return from whence he came, oh!" (469. 13).

Among the natives of the Andaman Islands, after a dead child has been buried and the parents have mourned for about three months, the remains are exhumed, cleansed at the seash.o.r.e by the father, and brought back to the hut, where the bones are broken up to make necklaces, which are distributed to friends and relatives as mementos. Moreover, "the mother, after painting the skull with _ki-ob_--[a mixture of yellow ochre, oil, etc.] and decorating it with small sh.e.l.ls attached to pieces of string, hangs it round her neck with a netted chain, called _rab--._ After the first few days her husband often relieves her by wearing it himself" (498. 74,75).

According to Lumholtz, "a kind of mummy, dried by the aid of fire and smoke, is also found in Australia. Male children are most frequently prepared in this manner. The corpse is then packed into a bundle, which is carried for some time by the mother. She has it with her constantly, and at night sleeps with it at her side. After about six months, when nothing but the bones remain, she buries it in the earth. Full-grown men are sometimes treated in this manner, particularly the bodies of great heroes" (495. 278).

Among the western Eskimo, "the mother who loses her nursling places the poor 'papoose' in a beautifully ornamented box, which she fastens on her back and carries about her for a long while. Often she takes the miserable mummy in her arms and makes it a kind of toilette, disinfecting it, and removing the mouldiness" (523. 102).

According to the traveller Lander, a woman of Yoruba, in Africa, "carries for some time a wooden figure of her lost child, and, when she eats, puts part of her food to its lips"; and Catlin writes of the Mandan Indians: "They place the skulls of their dead in a circle. Each wife knows the skull of her former husband or child, and there seldom pa.s.ses a day that she does not visit it with a dish of the best cooked food ... There is scarcely an hour in a pleasant day, but more or less of these women may be seen sitting or lying by the skull of their dead child or husband, talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing language they can use (as they were wont to do in former days), and seemingly getting an answer back" (Spencer, _Princ. of Soc.,_ 1882, I. 332, 326).

Of the Nishinam Indians of California, Mr. Powers tells us: "When a Nishinam wife is childless, her sympathizing female friends sometimes make out of gra.s.s a rude image of a baby, and tie it in a miniature baby-basket, according to the Indian custom. Some day, when the woman and her husband are not at home, they carry this gra.s.s baby and lay it in their wigwam. When she returns and finds it, she takes it up, holds it to her breast, pretends to nurse it, and sings it lullaby songs. All this is done as a kind of conjuration, which they hope will have the effect of causing the barren woman to become fertile" (519. 318).

Of certain Indians of the northern United States we read, in the early years of the present century: "The traders on the river St. Peter's, Mississippi, report that some of them have seen in the possession of the Indians a petrified child, which they have often wished to purchase; but the savages regard it as a deity, and no inducement could bribe them to part with it" (_Philos. Mag._ XXIX., p. 5).

_Child-Worship._

As Count D'Alviella has pointed out, we have in the apocryphal book of the _Wisdom of Solomon_ the following interesting pa.s.sage: "For a father afflicted with untimely mourning, when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now honoured him as a G.o.d, which was then a dead man; and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices."

Mrs. Stevenson, in a Zuni tale of motherly affection, relates how, in crossing a river in the olden time, the children clinging to their mothers were transformed into such ugly and mischievous shapes that the latter let many of them fall into the river. Some held their children close, and on the other side these were restored to their natural forms.

Those who had lost their children grieved and would not be comforted; so two twin-brothers--sons of the sun, they are called--went beneath the waters of a lake to the dwelling of the children, who asked them to tell how it fared with their mothers. Their visitors told them of the grief and sorrow of the parents, whereupon the children said: "Tell our mothers we are not dead, but live and sing in this beautiful place, which is the home for them when they sleep. They will wake here and be always happy. And we are here to intercede with the sun, our father, that he may give to our people rain and the fruits of the earth, and all that is good for them." Since that time these children have been "worshipped as ancestral G.o.ds, bearing the name of kok-ko" (358. 541).

This reminds us strikingly of the great Redeemer, of whom it was said that he is "an Advocate for us with the Father," and who himself declared: "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you."