The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 44

In not a few mythologies we meet with the infant G.o.d in the arms of its mother or of some other woman. Of the G.o.ddess of pity in the Celestial Empire we read: "The Chinese Lady of Mercy in her statues is invariably depicted as young, symmetrical, and beautiful. Sometimes she stands or sits alone. Sometimes she holds an infant G.o.d in her lap. Sometimes she holds one, while a second plays about her knee. Another favourite picture and statue represents her standing on the head of a great serpent, with a halo about her face and brows, and spirits encircling her. In the sixth, she stands upon a crescent, awaiting a bird approaching her from the skies. In a seventh, she stands smiling at a beautiful child on the back of a water-buffalo. In an eighth, she is weeping for the sins of either humanity or the female portion of it. She is the patron saint of all her s.e.x, and intercedes for them at the great throne of Heaven. She is a very old divinity. The Chinese themselves claim that she was worshipped six thousand years ago, and that she was the first deity made known to mankind. The brave Jesuit missionaries found her there, and it matters not her age; she is a credit to herself and her s.e.x, and aids in cheering the sorrowful and sombre lives of millions in the far East." We also find "the saintly infant Zen-zai, so often met with in the arms of female representations of the androgynous Kwanon."

Mr. C. N. Scott, in his essay on the "Child-G.o.d in Art" (344), is hesitant to give to many mythologies any real child-worship or artistic concept of the child as G.o.d. Not even Rama and Krishna, or the Greek Eros, who had a sanctuary at Thespiae in Boeotia, are beautiful, sweet, naive child-pictures; much less even is Hercules, the infant, strangling the serpents, or Mercury running off with the oxen of Admetus, or bacchic Dionysus. In Egypt, in the eleventh, or twelfth dynasty, we do find a family of G.o.ds, the triad, father (Amun), mother (Maut), child (Khuns). Mr. Scott follows Ruskin in declaring that cla.s.sic Greek art gives no real child-concept; nor does Gothic art up to the thirteenth century, when the influence of Christianity made itself felt, that influence which made art lavish its genius upon the Madonna and the Santo Bambino--the Virgin and the Christ-Child.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE CHRIST-CHILD.

The holy thing that is to be born shall be called the Son of G.o.d.--_Luke_ i. 35. There is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is anointed Lord.--_Luke_ ii. 11.

Great little One! whose all-embracing birth Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.--_Richard Crashaw._

Our Babe, to show his G.o.dhead true, Can in his swaddling hands control the d.a.m.ned crew.--_Milton._

The heart of Nature feels the touch of Love; And Angels sing: "The Child is King!

See in his heart the life we live above."--_E. P. Gould._

During the nineteen centuries that have elapsed since Jesus of Nazareth was born, art and music, eloquence and song, have expended their best talents in preserving forever to us some memories of the life and deeds of Him whose religion of love is winning the world. The treasures of intellectual genius have been lavished in the interpretation and promulgation of the faith that bears his name. At his shrine have worshipped the great and good of every land, and his name has penetrated to the uttermost ends of the earth.

But in the brief record of his history that has come down to us, we read: "The common people heard him gladly"; and to these, his simple life, with its n.o.ble consecration and unselfish aims, appealed immeasurably more even than to the greatest and wisest of men. This is evident from a glance into the lore that has grown up among the folk regarding the birth, life, and death of the Christ. Those legends and beliefs alone concern us here which cl.u.s.ter round his childhood,--the tribute of the lowly and the unlearned to the great world-child, who was to usher in the Age of Gold, to him whom they deemed Son of G.o.d and Son of Man, divinely human, humanly divine.

_Nature and the Christ-Birth._

The old heathen mythologies and the lore of the ruder races of our own day abound in tales of the strange and wonderful events that happened during the birth, pa.s.sion, and death of their heroes and divinities.

Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and the Isles of the Sea, bring us a vast store of folk-thought telling of the sympathy of Mother Nature with her children; how she mourned when they were sad or afflicted, rejoiced when they were fortunate and happy. And so has it been, in later ages and among more civilized peoples, with the great good who have made their influence felt in the world,--the poets, musicians, artists, seers, geniuses of every kind, who learned to read some of the secrets of the universe and declared them unto men. They were a part of Nature herself, and she heralded their coming graciously and wept over them when they died. This deep feeling of kinship with all Nature pervades the writings of many of our greatest poets, who "live not in themselves," but are become "a portion of that around them." In the beautiful words of Scott:--

"Call it not vain; they do not err Who say, that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies; Who say, tall cliff, and cavern lone, For the departed bard make moan; That mountains weep in crystal rill; That flowers in tears of balm distil; Through his loved groves the breezes sigh, And oaks, in deeper groan, reply; And rivers teach their rushing wave To murmur dirges round his grave."

And with a holier fervour, even, are all things animate and inanimate said to feel the birth of a great poet, a hero, a genius, a prophet; all Nature thrills with joy at his advent and makes known her satisfaction with the good that has fallen to the lot of earth. With such men, as Goethe said, Nature is in eternal league, watching, waiting for their coming.

How Nature must have rejoiced on that auspicious day, nineteen centuries ago, when the Messiah, long looked for, long expected, came! The sacred historians tell us that the carol of angels heralded his birth and the bright star in the East led the wise men to the modest manger where he lay. Never had there been such gladness abroad in the world since

"The morning stars sang together, And all the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy."

Shakespeare, in _Hamlet,_--a play in which so many items of folk-lore are to be found,--makes Marcellus say:--

"It faded on the crowing of the c.o.c.k.

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time,"

to which Horatio replies:--

"So have I heard, and do in part believe it."

This belief in the holy and gracious season of the birth of Christ,--a return to the old ideas of the Golden Age and the kinship of all Nature,--finds briefest expression in the Montenegrin saying of Christmas Eve: "To-night, Earth is blended with Paradise." According to Bosnian legend, at the birth of Christ: "The sun in the East bowed down, the stars stood still, the mountains and the forests shook and touched the earth with their summits, and the green pine tree bent; heaven and earth were bowed." And when Simeon took the Holy Child from the mother's arms:--

"The sun leaped in the heavens and the stars around it danced. A peace came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and healthy on the green mountain-side. The gra.s.s was beflowered with opening blossoms, and incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, and birds sang on the mountain-top, and all gave thanks to the great G.o.d" (_Macmil-lan's Mag.,_ Vol. XLIII, p. 362).

Relics of the same thoughts crop out from a thousand Christmas songs and carols in every country of Europe, and in myriads of folk-songs and sayings in every language of the Continent.

And in those southern lands, where, even more than with us, religion and love are inseparable, the environment of the Christ-birth is transferred to the beloved of the human heart, and, as the Tuscans sing in their _stornelli_ (415. 104):--

"Quando nascesti tu, nacque un bel flore; La luna si ferm di camminare, Le stelle si cambiaron di colore,"

in Mrs. Busk's translation:--

"Thy birth, Love, was the birth of a fair flower; The moon her course arrested at that hour, The stars were then arrayed in a new colour,"

so, in other lands, has the similitude of the Golden Age of Love and the Golden Time of Christmas been elaborated and adorned by all the genius of the nameless folk-poets of centuries past.

_Folk-Lore of Christmas Tide._

Scottish folk-lore has it that Christ was born "at the hour of midnight on Christmas Eve," and that the miracle of turning water into wine was performed by Him at the same hour (246. 160). There is a belief current in some parts of Germany that "between eleven and twelve the night before Christmas water turns to wine"; in other districts, as at Bielefeld, it is on Christmas night that this change is thought to take place (462. IV. 1779).

This hour is also auspicious for many actions, and in some sections of Germany it was thought that if one would go to the cross-roads between eleven and twelve on Christmas Day, and listen, he "would hear what most concerns him in the coming year." Another belief is that "if one walks into the winter-corn on Holy Christmas Eve, he will hear all that will happen in the village that year."

Christmas Eve or Christmas is the time when the oracles of the folk are in the best working-order, especially the many processes by which maidens are wont to discover the colour of their lover's hair, the beauty of his face and form, his trade and occupation,--whether they shall marry or not, and the like. The same season is most auspicious for certain ceremonies and practices (transferred to it from the heathen antiquity) of the peasantry of Europe in relation to agriculture and allied industries. Among those noted by Grimm are the following:--

On Christmas Eve thrash the garden with a flail, with only your shirt on, and the gra.s.s will grow well next year.

Tie wet strawbands around the orchard trees on Christmas Eve and it will make them fruitful.

On Christmas Eve put a stone on every tree, and they will bear the more (462. IV. 1790-1825).

Beat the trees on Christmas night, and they will bear more fruit (448.

337).

In Herefordshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, in England, the farmers and peasantry "salute the apple-trees on Christmas Eve," and in Suss.e.x they used to "worsle," _i.e._ "wa.s.sail," the apple-trees and chant verses to them in somewhat of the primitive fashion (448. 219).

Some other curious items of Christmas folk-lore are the following, current chiefly in Germany (462. IV. 1779-1824):--