The Mayas of Yucatan have a legend of a town of hares under the earth (411. 179).

In Germany we meet with the "Easter-Hare" (Oster-Hase). In many parts of that country the custom prevails at or about Easter-tide of hiding in the garden, or in the house, eggs, which, the children are told, have been laid by the "Easter-hare." Another curious term met with in northeastern Germany is "hare-bread" (Hasenbrod). In Quedlinburg this name is given to bread (previously placed there intentionally by the parents) picked up by children when out walking with their parents or elders. In Luneburg it is applied to dry bread given a hungry child with an exhortation to patience. In the first case, the little one is told that the hare has lost it, and in the second, that it has been taken away from him. The name "hare-bread" is also given to bread brought home by the parents or elders, when returning from a journey, the children being told that it has been taken away from the hare.

In the shadow-pictures made on the wall for the amusement of children the rabbit again appears, and the hare figures also in children's games.

Squirrel.

According to the belief of certain Indians of Vancouver Island, there once lived "a monstrous old woman with wolfish teeth, and finger-nails like claws." She used to entice away little children whom she afterwards ate up. One day a mother, who was about to lose her child thus, cried out to the spirits to save her child in any way or form. Her prayer was answered, and "The Great Good Father, looking down upon the Red Mother, pities her; lo! the child's soft brown skin turns to fur, and there slides from the ogress's grip, no child, but the happiest, liveliest, merriest little squirrel of all the West,—but bearing, as its descendants still bear, those four dark lines along the back that show where the cruel claws ploughed into it escaping" (396. III. 52-54).

Elsewhere, also, the squirrel is associated with childhood. Familiar is the passage in Longfellow's Hiawatha, where the hero speaks to the squirrel, who has helped him out of a great difficulty:—

"Take the thanks of Hiawatha, And the name which now he gives you; For hereafter, and forever, Boys shall call you adjidaumo, Tail in air the boys shall call you."

Seals.

Those noble and indefatigable missionaries, the Moravians, have more than once been harshly criticised in certain quarters, because, in their versions of the Bible, in the Eskimo language, they saw fit to substitute for some of the figurative expressions employed in our rendering, others more intelligible to the aborigines. In the New Testament Christ is termed the "Lamb of God," but since, in the Arctic home of the Innuit, shepherds and sheep are alike unknown, the translators, by a most felicitous turn of language, rendered the phrase by "little seal of God," a figure that appealed at once to every Eskimo, young and old, men and women; for what sheep were to the dwellers on the Palestinian hillsides, seals are to this northernmost of human races. Rink tells us that the Eskimo mother "reserves the finest furs for her new-born infant," while the father keeps for it "the daintiest morsels from the chase," and, "to make its eyes beautiful, limpid, and bright, he gives it seal's eyes to eat" (523. 37).

Fish.

Mrs. Bramhall tells us how in Japan the little children, playing about the temples, feed the pet fishes of the priests in the temple-lake. At the temple of the Mikado, at Kioto, she saw "six or eight little boys and girls ... lying at full length on the bank of the pretty lake." The fishes were called up by whistling, and the children fed them by holding over the water their open hands full of crumbs (189. 65). Other inhabitants of the sea and the waters of the earth are brought into early relation with children.

Crabs and Crawfishes.

Among the Yeddavanad, of the Congo, a mother tells her children concerning three kinds of crabs: "Eat kallali, and you will become a clever man; eat hullali, and you will become as brave as a tiger; eat mandalli, and you will become master of the house" (449. 297).

In the Chippeway tale of the "Raccoon and the Crawfish," after the former, by pretending to be dead, has first attracted to him and then eaten all the crawfish, we are told:—

"While he was engaged with the broken limbs, a little female crawfish, carrying her infant sister on her back, came up seeking her relations. Finding they had all been devoured by the raccoon, she resolved not to survive the destruction of her kindred, but went boldly up to the enemy, and said: 'Here, Aissibun (Raccoon), you behold me and my little sister. We are all alone. You have eaten up our parents and all our friends. Eat us, too!' And she continued to say: 'Eat us, too! Aissibun amoon, Aissibun amoon!' The raccoon was ashamed. 'No!' said he,' I have banqueted on the largest and fattest; I will not dishonour myself with such little prey.' At this moment, Manabozbo [the culture-hero or demi-god of these Indians] happened to pass by. 'Tyau,' said he to the raccoon, 'thou art a thief and an unmerciful dog. Get thee up into trees, lest I change thee into one of these same worm-fish; for thou wast thyself a shell-fish originally, and I transformed thee.' Manabozho then took up the little supplicant crawfish and her infant sister, and cast them into the stream. 'There,' said he, 'you may dwell. Hide yourselves under the stones; and hereafter you shall be playthings for little children'" (440. 411, 412).

Games.

The imitation of animals, their movements, habits, and peculiarities in games and dances, also makes the child acquainted at an early age with these creatures.

In the section on "Bird and Beast," appropriately headed by the words of the good St. Francis of Assisi—"My brother, the hare, ... my sisters, the doves,"—Mr. Newell notices some of the children's games in which the actions, cries, etc., of animals are imitated. Such are "My Household," "Frog-Pond," "Bloody Tom," "Blue-birds and Yellow-birds," "Ducks fly" (313. 115).

Doves.

Not at Dodona and in Arcadia alone has the dove been associated with religion, its oracles, its mysteries, and its symbolism. In the childhood of the world, according to the great Hebrew cosmologist, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," and a later bard and seer of our own race reanimated the ancient figure of his predecessor in all its pristine strength, when in, the story of Paradise lost and found again, he told how, at the beginning, the creative spirit

"Dove-like sat brooding o'er the vast abyss."

In the childhood of the race, it was a dove that bore to the few survivors of the great flood the branch of olive, token that the anger of Jahveh was abated, and that the waters no longer covered the whole earth. In the childhood of Christianity, when its founder was baptized of John in the river Jordan, "Lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and the Spirit of God descended like a dove, and lighted on Him,"—and the "Heavenly Dove" Still beautifies the imagery of oratory and song, the art and symbolism of the great churches, its inheritors. In the childhood of man the individual, the dove has also found warm welcome. At the moment of the birth of St. Austrebertha (630-704 A.D.), as the quaint legend tells, "the chamber was filled with a heavenly odour, and a white dove, which hovered awhile above the house, flew into the chamber and settled on the head of the infant," and when Catherine of Racconigi (1486-1547 A.D.) was only five years old "a dove, white as snow, flew into her chamber and lighted on her shoulder"; strange to relate, however, the infant first took the bird for a tool of Satan, not a messenger of God. When St. Briocus of Cardigan, a Welsh saint of the sixth century, "was receiving the communion for the first time, a dove, white as snow, settled on his head, and the abbot knew that the young boy was a chosen vessel of honour" (191. 107, 108).

In a Swedish mother's hymn occurs the following beautiful thought:—

"There sitteth a dove so white and fair, All on the lily spray, And she listeneth how to Jesus Christ The little children pray.

"Lightly she spreads her friendly wings, And to Heaven's gate hath sped, And unto the Father in Heaven she bears The prayers which the children have said.

"And back she comes from Heaven's gate, And brings, that dove so mild, From the Father in Heaven, who hears her speak, A blessing on every child.

"Then, children, lift up a pious prayer! It hears whatever you say; That heavenly dove so white and fair, All on the lily spray" (379. 255).

The bird-messenger of childhood finds its analogue in the beliefs of some primitive tribes that certain birds have access to the spirit-land, and are the bearers of tidings from the departed. Into the same category fall the ancient practice of releasing a dove (or some other winged creature) at the moment of death of a human being, as a means of transport of his soul to the Elysian fields, and the belief that the soul itself took its flight in the form and semblance of a dove (509. 257).

The Haida Indians, of British Columbia, think that, "in the land of light, children often transform themselves into bears, seals, and birds," and wonderful tales are told of their adventures.

Hartley Coleridge found for the guardian angel of infancy, no apter figure than that of the dove:—

"Sweet infant, whom thy brooding parents love For what thou art, and what they hope to see thee, Unhallow'd sprites, and earth-born phantoms flee thee; Thy soft simplicity, a hovering dove, That still keeps watch from blight and bane to free thee, With its weak wings, in peaceful care outspread, Fanning invisibly thy pillow'd head, Strikes evil powers with reverential dread, Beyond the sulphurous bolts of fabled Jove, Or whatsoe'er of amulet or charm Fond ignorance devised to save poor souls from harm."

Perhaps the sweetest touch of childhood in all Latin literature is that charming passage in Horace (Carm. Lib. III. 4):—

"Me fabulosa Vulture in Apulo, Nutrices extra limen Apulia, Ludo fatigatoque somno Fronde nova puerum palumbes Texere,"

which Milman thus translates:—

"The vagrant infant on Mount Vultur's side, Beyond my childhood's nurse, Apulia's bounds, By play fatigued and sleep, Did the poetic doves With young leaves cover."

The amativeness of the dove has lent much to the figurative language of that second golden age, that other Eden where love is over all. Shenstone, in his beautiful pastoral, says:—

"I have found out a gift for my fair; I have found where the wood-pigeons breed,"

and the "love of the turtle," "billing and cooing," are now transferred to human affection. Venus, the goddess of love, and the boy-god Cupid ride in a chariot drawn by doves, which birds were sacred to the sea-born child of Uranus. In the springtime, when "the voice of the turtle is heard in the land," then "a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." If, from the sacred oaks of Dodona, to the first Greeks, the doves disclosed the oracles of Jove, so has "the moan of doves in immemorial elms" divulged to generation after generation of lovers the mission of his son of the bow and quiver.

Robin.

What the wood-pigeon was to Horace, the robin-redbreast has been to the children of old England. In the celebrated ballad of the "Children in the Wood", we are told that, after their murder by the cruel uncle,—

"No burial these pretty babes Of any man receives, Till Robin Redbreast piously Did cover them with leaves."

The poet Thomson speaks of "the redbreast sacred to the household gods," and Gray, in a stanza which, since the edition of 1753, has been omitted from the Elegy, wrote:—

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are frequent violets found; The robin loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

Dr. Robert Fletcher (447) has shown to what extent the redbreast figures in early English poetry, and the belief in his pious care for the dead and for children is found in Germany, Brittany, and other parts of the continent of Europe. In England the robin is the children's favourite bird, and rhymes and stories in his honour abound,—most famous is the nursery song, "Who killed Cock Robin?"

A sweet legend of the Greek Church tells us that "Our Lord used to feed the robins round his mother's door, when a boy; moreover, that the robin never left the sepulchre till the Resurrection, and, at the Ascension, joined in the angels' song." The popular imagination, before which the robin appears as "the pious bird with the scarlet breast," found no difficulty in assigning a cause for the colour of its plumage. One legend, current amongst Catholic peoples, has it that "the robin was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to the souls of unbaptized infants in hell, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames." In his poem The Robin, Whittier has versified the story from a Welsh source. An old Welsh lady thus reproves her grandson, who had tossed a stone at the robin hopping about in the apple-tree:—

"'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 mass 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 superstitions 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 gods and with God. 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 Coxcox,—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 classical 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 pass 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 peacock: "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 cock 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 associated; 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 associated 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.

Fools and bairns should na see things half done. —Scotch Proverb.

No one is born master.—Italian Proverb.

Mother as Teacher.

Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu is a favourite dictum of philosophy; primitive peoples might, perhaps, be credited with a somewhat different crystallization of thought: nihil est in puero quod non prius in parenti, "nothing is in the child which was not before in the parent," for belief in prenatal influence of parent upon child is widely prevalent. The following remarks, which were written of the semi-civilized peoples of Annam and Tonquin, may stand, with suitable change of terms, for very many barbarous and savage races:—

"The education of the children begins even before they come into the world. The prospective mother is at once submitted to a kind of material and moral regime sanctioned by custom. Gross viands are removed from her table, and her slightest movements are regarded that they may be regular and majestic. She is expected to listen to the reading of good authors, to music and moral chants, and to attend learned societies, in order that she may fortify her mind by amusements of an elevated character. And she endeavours, by such discipline, to assure to the child whom she is about to bring into the world, intelligence, docility, and fitness for the duties imposed by social life" (518. XXXI. 629).

Among primitive peoples these ceremonies, dietings, doctorings, tabooings, number legion, as may be read in Ploss and Zmigrodzki.

The influence of the mother upon her child, beginning long before birth, continued in some parts of the world until long after puberty. The Spartan mothers even preserved "a power over their sons when arrived at manhood," and at the puberty-dance, by which the Australian leaves childhood behind to enter upon man's estate, his significant cry is: "My mother sees me no more!" (398. 153). Among the Chinese, "at the ceremony of going out of childhood, the passage from boyhood into manhood, the goddess of children 'Mother,' ceases to have the superintendence of the boy or girl, and the individual comes under the government of the gods in general."

That women are teachers born, even the most uncultured of human races have not failed to recognize, and the folk-faith in their ministrations is world-wide and world-old; for, as Mrs. Browning tells us:—

"Women know The way to rear up children (to be just); They know a simple, merry, tender knack Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, And stringing pretty words that make no sense, And kissing full sense into empty words; Which things are corals to cut life upon, Although such trifles."

Intellectually, as well as physically,—as the etymology of the name seems to indicate,—the mother is the "former" of her child. As Henry Ward Beecher has well said, "the mother's heart is the child's school-room." Well might the Egyptian mother-goddess say (167. 261): "I am the mother who shaped thy beauties, who suckled thee with milk; I give thee with my milk festal things, that penetrate thy limbs with life, strength, and youth; I make thee to become the—great ruler of Egypt, lord of the space which the sun circles round." In the land of the Pharaohs they knew in some dim fashion that "the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."

The extensive role of the mother, as a teacher of the practical arts of life, may be seen from the book of Professor Mason (113). Language, religion, the social arts, house-building, skin-dressing, weaving, spinning, animal-domestication, agriculture, are, with divers primitive peoples, since they have in great part originated with her, or been promoted chiefly by her efforts, left to woman as teacher and instructor, and well has the mother done her work all over the globe.

The function of the mother as priestess—for woman has been the preserver, as, to so large an extent, she has been the creator, of religion—has been exercised age after age, and among people after people. Henry Ward Beecher has said: "Every mother is a priestess ordained by God Himself," and Professor Mason enlarges the same thought: "Scarcely has the infant mind begun to think, ere this perpetual priestess lights the fires of reverence and keeps them ever burning, like a faithful vestal" (112. 12).

Though women and mothers have often been excluded from the public or the secret ceremonials and observations of religion, the household in primitive and in modern times has been the temple, of whose penetralia they alone have been the ministers.

Imitation.

Tarde, in his monograph on the "Laws of Imitation," has shown the great influence exerted among peoples of all races, of all grades and forms of culture, by imitation, conscious or unconscious,—a factor of the highest importance even at the present day and among those communities of men most advanced and progressive. Speaking a little too broadly, perhaps, he says (541. 15):—

"All the resemblances, of social origin, noticed in the social world are the direct or indirect result of imitation in all its forms,—custom, fashion, sympathy, obedience, instruction, education, naive or deliberate imitation. Hence the excellence of that modern method which explains doctrines or institutions by their history. This tendency can only be generalized. Great inventors and great geniuses do sometimes stumble upon the same thing together, but these coincidences are very rare. And when they do really occur, they always have their origin in a fund of common instruction upon which, independent of one another, the two authors of the same invention have drawn; and this fund consists of a mass of traditions of the past, of experiments, rude or more or less arranged, and transmitted imitatively by language, the great vehicle of all imitations."

In her interesting article on "Imitation in Children," Miss Haskell observes: "That the imitative faculty is what makes the human being educable, that it is what has made progressive civilization possible, has always been known by philosophical educators. The energy of the child must pass from potentiality to actuality, and it does so by the path of imitation because this path offers the least resistance or the greatest attraction, or perhaps because there is no other road. Whatever new and striking things he sees in the movements or condition of objects about him, provided he already has the experience necessary to apperceive this particular thing, he imitates" (260. 31).

In the pedagogy of primitive peoples imitation has an extensive role to play. Of the Twana Indians, of the State of Washington, Rev. Mr. Eells observes: "Children are taught continually, from youth until grown, to mimic the occupations of their elders." They have games of ball, jumping and running races, and formerly "the boys played at shooting with bows and arrows at a mark, and with spears, throwing at a mark, with an equal number of children on each side, and sometimes the older ones joined in." Now, however, "the'boys mimic their seniors in the noise and singing and gambling, but without the gambling." The girls play with dolls, and sometimes "the girls and boys both play in canoes, and stand on half of a small log, six feet long and a foot wide, and paddle around in the water with a small stick an inch in thickness; and, in fact, play at most things which they see their seniors do, both whites and Indians" (437. 90, 91). Concerning the Seminoles of Florida, we are told: "The baby, well into the world, learns very quickly that he is to make his own way through it as best he may. His mother is prompt to nourish him, and solicitous in her care for him if he falls ill; but, as far as possible, she goes her own way and leaves the little fellow to go his." Very early in life the child learns to help and to imitate its elders. "No small amount," Mr. MacCauley tells us, "of the labour in a Seminole household is done by children, even as young as four years of age. They can stir the soup while it is boiling; they can aid in kneading the dough for bread; they can wash the 'koonti' root, and even pound it; they can watch and replenish the fire; they contribute in this and many other small ways to the necessary work of the home" (496. 497, 498).

Of the Indians of British Guiana, Mr. im Thurn reports: "As soon as the children can run about, they are left almost to themselves; or, rather, they begin to mimic their parents. As with the adults, so with the children. Just as the grown-up woman works incessantly, while the men alternately idle and hunt, so the boys run wild, playing not such concerted games as in other parts of the world more usually form child's play, but only with mimic bows and arrows; but the girls, as soon as they can walk, begin to help the older women. Even the youngest girl can peel a few cassava roots, watch a pot on the fire, or collect and carry home a few sticks of firewood. The games of the boy are all such as train him to fish and hunt when he grows up; the girl's occupations teach her woman's work" (477. 219). The children imitate their elders in other ways also, for in nearly every Indian house are to be seen toy vessels of clay; for "while the Indian women of Guiana are shaping the clay, their children, imitating them, make small pots and goglets" (477. 298). And in like manner have been born, no doubt, among other peoples, some of the strange freaks of art which puzzle the connoisseurs in the museums of Europe and America.

Mr. Powers, speaking of the domestic economy of the Achomawi Indians of California, says: "An Achomawi mother seldom teaches her daughters any of the arts of barbaric housekeeping before their marriage. They learn them by imitation and experiment after they grow old enough to perceive the necessity thereof" (519. 271). This peculiar neglect, however, is not entirely absent from our modern civilization, for until very recently no subject has been so utterly overlooked as the proper training of young girls for their future duties as mothers and housekeepers. The Achomawi, curiously enough, have the following custom, which helps, no doubt, the wife whose education has been so imperfect: "The parents are expected to establish a young couple in their lodge, provide them with the needful basketry, and furnish them with cooked food for some months, which indulgent parents sometimes continue for a year or even longer; so that the young people have a more real honeymoon than is vouchsafed to most civilized people."

Among the Battas of Sumatra, "It is one of the morning duties of women and girls, even down to children of four and five years old, to bring drinking-water in the gargitis, a water-vessel made of a thick stalk of bamboo. The size and strength of growing girls are generally measured by the number of gargitis they can carry" (518. XXII. 110).

Of the Kaffir children Theal informs us: "At a very early age they commence trials of skill against each other in throwing knobbed sticks and imitation assegais. They may often be seen enjoying this exercise in little groups, those of the same age keeping together, for there is no greater tyrant in the world than a big Kaffir boy over his younger fellows; when above nine or ten years old they practise sham-fighting with sticks; an imitation hunt is another of their boyish diversions" (543. 220).

Among the Apaches, as we learn from Reclus: "The child remains with its mother until it can pluck certain fruits for itself, and has caught a rat by its own unaided efforts. After this exploit, it goes and comes as it lists, is free and independent, master of its civil and political rights, and soon lost in the main body of the horde" (523. 131).

On the Andaman Islands, "little boys hunt out swarms of bees in the woods and drive them away by fire. They are also expected regularly to collect wood." From their tenth year they are "accustomed to use little bows and arrows, and often attain great skill in shooting." The girls "seek among the coral-reefs and in the swamps to catch little fish in hand-nets." The Solomon Islands boy, as soon as he can walk a little, goes along with his elders to hunt and fish (326. I. 6). Among the Somali, of northeastern Africa, the boys are given small spears when ten or twelve years old and are out guarding the milk-camels (481 (1891). 163).

Of the Eskimo of Baffin Land, Dr. Boas tells us that the children, "when about twelve years old, begin to help their parents; the girls sewing and preparing skins, the boys accompanying their fathers in hunting expeditions" (402. 566). Mr. Powers records that he has seen a Wailakki Indian boy of fourteen "run a rabbit to cover in ten minutes, split a stick fine at one end, thrust it down the hole, twist it into its scut, and pull it out alive" (519. 118).

Among the games and amusements of the Andamanese children, of whom he says "though not borrowed from aliens, their pastimes, in many instances, bear close resemblance to those in vogue among children in this and other lands; notably is this the case with regard to those known to us as blind-man's buff, leap-frog, and hide-and-seek,"—Mr. Man enumerates the following: mock pig-hunting (played after dark); mock turtle-catching (played in the sea); going after the Evil Spirit of the Woods; swinging by means of long stout creepers; swimming-races (sometimes canoe-races); pushing their way with rapidity through the jungle; throwing objects upwards, or skimming through the air; playing at "duck-and-drakes"; shooting at moving objects; wrestling on the sand; hunting small crabs and fish and indulging in sham banquets, comparable to the "doll's feast" with us; making miniature canoes and floating them about in the water (498. 165).

Education of Boys and Girls.

With the Dakota Indians, according to Mr. Riggs, the grandfather and grandmother are often the principal teachers of the child. Under the care of the father and grandfather the boy learns to shoot, hunt, and fish, is told tales of war and daring exploits, and "when he is fifteen or sixteen joins the first war-party and comes back with an eagle feather in his head, if he is not killed and scalped by the enemy." Among the amusements he indulges in are foot-races, horse-racing, ball-playing, etc. Another branch of his education is thus described: "In the long winter evenings, while the fire burns brightly in the centre of the lodge, and the men are gathered in to smoke, he hears the folk-lore and legends of his people from the lips of the older men. He learns to sing the love-songs and the war-songs of the generations gone by. There is no new path for him to tread, but he follows in the old ways. He becomes a Dakota of the Dakota. His armour is consecrated by sacrifices and offerings and vows. He sacrifices and prays to the stone god, and learns to hold up the pipe to the so-called Great Spirit. He is killed and made alive again, and thus is initiated into the mysteries and promises of the Mystery Dance. He becomes a successful hunter and warrior, and what he does not know is not worth knowing for a Dakota. His education is finished. If he has not already done it, he can now demand the hand of one of the beautiful maidens of the village" (524. 209, 210).

Under the care and oversight of the mother and grandmother the girl is taught the elements of household economy, industrial art, and agriculture. Mr. Biggs thus outlines the early education of woman among these Indians: "She plays with her 'made child,' or doll, just as children in other lands do. Very soon she learns to take care of the baby; to watch over it in the lodge, or carry it on her back while the mother is away for wood or dressing buffalo-robes. Little girl as she is, she is sent to the brook or lake for water. She has her little work-bag with awl and sinew, and learns to make small moccasins as her mother makes large ones. Sometimes she goes with her mother to the wood and brings home her little bundle of sticks. When the camp moves, she has her small pack as her mother carries the large one, and this pack is sure to grow larger as her years increase. When the corn is planting, the little girl has her part to perform. If she cannot use the hoe yet, she can at least gather off the old corn-stalks. Then the garden is to be watched while the god-given maize is growing. And when the harvesting comes, the little girl is glad for the corn-roasting." And so her young life runs on. She learns bead-work and ornamenting with porcupine quills, embroidering with ribbons, painting, and all the arts of personal adornment, which serve as attractions to the other sex. When she marries, her lot and her life (Mr. Riggs says) are hard, for woman is much less than man with these Dakotas (524. 210).

More details of girl-life among savage and primitive peoples are to be found in the pages of Professor Mason (113. 207-211). In America, the education varied from what the little girl could pick up at her mother's side between her third and thirteenth years, to the more elaborate system of instruction in ancient Mexico, where, "annexed to the temples were large buildings used as seminaries for girls, a sort of aboriginal Wellesley or Vassar" (113 208).

Games and Plays.

In the multifarious games of children, echoes, imitations, re-renderings of the sober life of their elders and of their ancestors of the long ago, recur again and again. The numerous love games, which Mr. Newell (313. 39-62) and Miss Gomme (243) enumerate, such as "Knights of Spain," "Three kings," "Here comes a Duke a-roving," "Tread, tread the Green Grass," "I'll give to you a Paper of Pins," "There she stands a lovely Creature," "Green Grow the Rushes, O!" "The Widow with Daughters to marry," "Philander's March," "Marriage," etc., corresponding to many others all over the globe, evidence the social instincts of child-hood as well as the imitative tendencies of youth.

Under "Playing at Work" (313. 80-92), Mr. Newell has classed a large number of children's games and songs, some of which now find their representatives in the kindergarten, this education of the child by itself having been so modified as to form part of the infantile curriculum of study. Among such games are: "Threading the Needle," "Draw a Bucket of Water," "Here I Brew and here I Bake," "Here we come gathering Nuts of May," "When I was a Shoemaker," "Do, do, pity my Case," "As we go round the Mulberry Bush," "Who'll be the Binder?" "Oats, Pease, Beans, and Barley grows." Mr. Newell includes in this category, also, that well-known dance, the "Virginia Reel," which he interprets as an imitation of weaving, something akin to the "Hemp-dressers' Dance," of the time of George III., in England.

In a recent interesting and valuable essay, "Education by Plays and Games," by Mr. G. E. Johnson, of Clark University,—an effort "to present somewhat more correctly than has been done before, the educational value of play, and to suggest some practical applications to the work of education in the grades above the kindergarten,"—we have presented to us a list of some five hundred games, classified according to their value for advancing mental or physical education, for cultivating and strengthening the various faculties of mind and body. These games have also been arranged by Mr. Johnson, into such classes and divisions as might be held to correspond to the needs and necessities of the pupils in each of the eight grades above the kindergarten. Of the educational value of play and of "playing at work," there can be no doubt in the mind of any one at all acquainted with the history of the individual and the history of the race. As Mr. Johnson justly observes (269.100): "The field of the study of play is very wide; the plays are well-nigh infinite, and as varied as life itself. No one can estimate the value of them. Given right toys and surroundings, the young child has an almost perfect school. It is marvellous how well he learns, Preyer does not overestimate the facts when he says the child in the first three or four years of his life learns as much as the student in his entire university course. In the making of mud pies and doll dresses, sand-pile farms and miniature roads, tiny dams and water-wheels, whittled-out boats, sleds, dog-harnesses, and a thousand and one other things, the child receives an accumulation of facts, a skill of hand, a trueness of eye, a power of attention and quickness of perception; and in flying kites, catching trout, in pressing leaves and gathering stones, in collecting stamps, and eggs, and butterflies, a culture also, seldom appreciated by the parent or teacher."

Upon the banner of the youthful hosts might well be inscribed in hoc ludo vincemus. Yet there is danger that the play-theory may be carried to excess. Mr. James L. Hughes, discussing "The Educational Value of Play and the Recent Play-Movement in Germany," remarks: "The Germans had the philosophy of play, the English had an intuitive love of play, and love is a greater impelling force than philosophy. English young men never played in order to expand their lungs, to increase their circulation, to develop their muscles in power and agility, to improve their figures, to add grace to their bearing, to awaken and refine their intellectual powers, or to make them manly, courageous, and chivalrous. They played enthusiastically for the mere love of play, and all these, and other advantages resulted from their play" (265. 328).

Swimming is an art soon learned by the children of some primitive races. Mr. Man says of the Andaman Islanders: "With the exception of some of the e.rem-tag.a-(inlanders), a knowledge of the art of swimming is common to members of both sexes; the children even, learning almost as soon as they can run, speedily acquire great proficiency" (498. 47).

Language.

With some primitive peoples the ideas as to language-study are pretty much on a par with those prevalent in Europe at a date not so very remote from the present. Of the Kato Pomo Indians of California, Mr. Powers remarks: "Like the Kai Pomo, their northern neighbours, they forbid their squaws from studying languages—which is about the only accomplishment possible to them save dancing—principally, it is believed, in order to prevent them from gadding about and forming acquaintances in neighbouring valleys, for there is small virtue among the unmarried of either sex. But the men pay considerable attention to linguistic studies, and there is seldom one who cannot speak most of the Pomo dialects within a day's journey of his ancestral valley. The chiefs, especially, devote no little care to the training of their sons as polyglot diplomatists; and Robert White affirms that they frequently send them to reside several months with the chiefs of contiguous valleys to acquire the dialects there in vogue" (519. 150).

Nevertheless, as Professor Mason observes, among primitive races, woman's share in the "invention, dissemination, conservation, and metamorphosis of language" has been very great, and she has been par excellence the teacher of language, as indeed she is to-day in our schools when expression and savoir faire in speech, rather than deep philological learning and dry grammatical analysis, have been the object of instruction.

Geography.

Much has been said and written about the wonderful knowledge of geography and topography possessed by the Indian of America, and by other primitive peoples as well. The following passage from Mr. Powers' account of the natives of California serves to explain some of this (519. 109):—

"Besides the coyote-stories with which gifted squaws amuse their children, and which are common throughout this region, there prevails among the Mattoal a custom which might almost be dignified with the name of geographical study. In the first place, it is necessary to premise that the boundaries of all the tribes on Humboldt Bay, Eel River, Van Dusen's Fork, and in fact everywhere, are marked with the greatest precision, being defined by certain creeks, canons, bowlders, conspicuous trees, springs, etc., each one of which objects has its own individual name. It is perilous for an Indian to be found outside of his tribal boundaries, wherefore it stands him well in hand to make himself acquainted with the same early in life. Accordingly, the squaws teach these things to their children in a kind of sing-song not greatly unlike that which was the national furore some time ago in rural singing-schools, wherein they melodiously chanted such pleasing items of information as this: 'California. Sacramento, on the Sacramento River.' Over and over, time and again, they rehearse all these bowlders, etc., describing each minutely and by name, with its surroundings. Then when the children are old enough, they take them around to beat the bounds like Bumble the Beadle; and so wonderful is the Indian memory naturally, and so faithful has been their instruction, that the little shavers generally recognize the objects from the descriptions of them previously given by their mothers. If an Indian knows but little of this great world more than pertains to boundary bush and bowlder, he knows his own small fighting-ground infinitely better than any topographical engineer can learn it."

Mr. Powers' reference to "beating the bounds like Bumble the Beadle" is an apt one. Mr. Frederick Sessions has selected as one of his Folk-Lore Topics the subject of "Beating the Bounds" (352), and in his little pamphlet gives us much interesting information concerning the part played by children in these performances. The author tells us: "One of the earliest of my childish pleasures was seeing the Mayor and Corporation, preceded by Sword-bearer, Beadles, and Blue Coat School boys, going in procession from one city boundary-stone to another, across the meadows and the river, or over hedges and gardens, or anything else to which the perambulated border-line took them. They were followed along the route by throngs of holiday makers. Many of the crowd, and all the Blue boys, were provided with willow-wands, peeled, if I remember rightly, with which each boundary mark was well flogged. The youngest boys were bumped against the 'city stones.'" In the little town of Charlbury in Oxfordshire, "the perambulations seem to have been performed mostly by boys, accompanied by one or more of their seniors." At Houghton, a village near St. Ives in Huntingdonshire: "The bounds are still beaten triennially. They are here marked by holes in some places, and by stones or trees in others. The procession starts at one of the holes. Each new villager present is instructed in the position of this corner of the boundary by having his head forcibly thrust into the hole, while he has to repeat a sort of mumbo-jumbo prayer, and receives three whacks with a shovel. He pays a shilling for his 'footing' (boys only pay sixpence), and then the forty or fifty villagers march off to the opposite corner and repeat the process, except the monetary part, and regale themselves with bread and cheese and beer, paid for by the farmers who now occupy any portion of the old common lands."

In Russia, before the modern system of land-registration came into vogue, "all the boys of adjoining Cossack village communes were 'collected and driven like flocks of sheep to the frontier, whipped at each boundary-stone, and if, in after years two whipped lads, grown into men, disputed as to the precise spot at which they had been castigated, then the oldest inhabitant carrying a sacred picture from the church, led the perambulations, and acted as arbitrator."

Here also ought to be mentioned perhaps, as somewhat akin and reminiscent of like practices among primitive peoples, "the blason populaire (as it is neatly called in French), in which the inhabitants of each district or city are nicely ticketed off and distinguished by means of certain abnormalities of feature or form, or certain mental peculiarities attributed to them" (204.19). In parts of Hungary and Transylvania a somewhat similar practice is in vogue (392 (1892). 128).

Story-Telling.

Some Indian children have almost the advantages of the modern home in the way of story-telling. Clark informs us (420.109):—

"Some tribes have regular story-tellers, men who have devoted a great deal of time to learning the myths and stories of their people, and who possess, in addition to a good memory, a vivid imagination. The mother sends for one of these, and, having prepared a feast for him, she and her little 'brood,' who are curled up near her, await the fairy stories of the dreamer, who, after his feast and smoke, entertains them for hours. Many of these fanciful sketches or visions are interesting and beautiful in their rich imagery, and have been at times given erroneous positions in ethnological data."

Knortz refers in glowing terms to the adisoke-winini, or "storyteller" of the Chippeway Indians, those gifted men, who entertain their fellows with the tales and legends of the race, and who are not mere reciters, but often poets and transformers as well (Skizzen, 294).

So, too, among the Andaman Islanders, "certain mythic legends are related to the young by okopai-ads [shamans], parents, and others, which refer to the supposed adventures or history of remote ancestors, and though the recital not unfrequently evokes much mirth, they are none the less accepted as veracious" (498. 95).

Morals.

Among some of the native tribes of California we meet with i-wa-musp, or "men-women" (519. 132). Among the Yuki, for example, there were men who dressed and acted like women, and "devoted themselves to the instruction of the young by the narration of legends and moral tales." Some of these, Mr. Powers informs us, "have been known to shut themselves up in the assembly-hall for the space of a month, with brief intermissions, living the life of a hermit, and spending the whole time in rehearsing the tribal-history in a sing-song monotone to all who chose to listen."

Somewhat similar, without the hermit-life, appear to be the functions of the orators and "prophets" of the Miwok and the peace-chiefs, or "shell-men," of the Pomo (519. 157, 352). Of the Indians of the Pueblo of Tehua, Mr. Lummis, in his entertaining volume of fairy-tales, says: "There is no duty to which a Pueblo child is trained in which he has to be content with the bare command, 'Do thus'; for each he learns a fairy- tale designed to explain how people first came to know that it was right to do thus, and detailing the sad results which befell those who did otherwise." The old men appear to be the storytellers, and their tales are told in a sort of blank verse (302. 5).

Mr. Grinnell, in his excellent book about the Blackfeet,—one of the best books ever written about the Indians,—gives some interesting details of child-life. Children are never whipped, and "are instructed in manners as well as in other more general and more important matters." Among other methods of instruction we find that "men would make long speeches to groups of boys playing in the camps, telling them what they ought to do to be successful in life," etc. (464. 188-191).

Of the Delaware Indians we are told that "when a mere boy the Indian lad would be permitted to sit in the village councilhouse, and hear the assembled wisdom of the village or his tribe discuss the affairs of state and expound the meaning of the keekg' (beads composing the wampum belts).... In this way he early acquired maturity of thought, and was taught the traditions of his people, and the course of conduct calculated to win him the praise of his fellows" (516. 43). This reminds us of the Roman senator who had his child set upon his knee during the session of that great legislative and deliberative body.

Playthings and Dolls.

As Professor Mason has pointed out, the cradle is often the "play-house" of the child, and is decked out to that end in a hundred ways (306. 162). Of the Sioux cradle, Catlin says:—"A broad hoop of elastic wood passes around in front of the child's face to protect it in case of a fall, from the front of which is suspended a little toy of exquisite embroidery for the child to handle and amuse itself with. To this and other little trinkets hanging in front of it, there are attached many little tinselled and tinkling things of the brightest colours to amuse both the eyes and the ears of the child. While travelling on horseback, the arms of the child are fastened under the bandages, so as not to be endangered if the cradle falls, and when at rest they are generally taken out, allowing the infant to reach and amuse itself with the little toys and trinkets that are placed before it and within its reach" (306. 202). In like manner are "playthings of various kinds" hung to the awning of the birch-bark cradles found in the Yukon region of Alaska. Of the Nez Perce, we read: "To the hood are attached medicine-bags, bits of shell, haliotis perhaps, and the whole artistic genius of the mother is in play to adorn her offspring." The old chronicler Lafiteau observed of the Indians of New France: "They put over that half-circle [at the top of the cradle] little bracelets of porcelain and other little trifles that the Latins call crepundia, which serve as an ornament and as playthings to divert the child" (306. 167, 187, 207).

And so is it elsewhere in the world. Some of the beginnings of art in the race are due to the mother's instinctive attempts to please the eyes and busy the hands of her tender offspring. The children of primitive peoples have their dolls and playthings as do those of higher races. In an article descriptive of the games and amusements of the Ute Indians, we read: "The boy remains under maternal care until he is old enough to learn to shoot and engage in manly sports and enjoyments. Indian children play, laugh, cry, and act like white children, and make their own play-things from which they derive as much enjoyment as white children" (480. IV. 238).

Of the Seminole Indians of Florida, Mr. MacCauley says that among the children's games are skipping and dancing, leap-frog, teetotums, building a merry-go-round, carrying a small make-believe rifle of stick, etc. They also "sit around a small piece of land, and, sticking blades of grass into the ground, name it a 'corn-field,'" and "the boys kill small birds in the bush with their bows and arrows, and call it 'turkey-hunting.'" Moreover, they "have also dolls (bundles of rags, sticks with bits of cloth wrapped around them, etc.), and build houses for them which they call 'camps'" (496. 506).

Of the Indians of the western plains, Colonel Dodge says: "The little girls are very fond of dolls, which their mothers make and dress with considerable skill and taste. Their baby houses are miniature teepees, and they spend as much time and take as much pleasure in such play as white girls" (432. 190). Dr. Boas tells us concerning the Eskimo of Baffin Land: "Young children are always carried in their mothers' hoods, but when about a year and a half old they are allowed to play on the bed, and are only carried by their mothers when they get too mischievous." The same authority also says: "Young children play with, toys, sledges, kayaks, boats, bow and arrows, and dolls. The last are made in the same way by all the tribes, a wooden body being clothed with scraps of deerskin cut in the same way as the clothing of the men" (402. 568, 571). Mr. Murdoch has described at some length the dolls and toys of the Point Barrow Eskimo. He remarks that "though several dolls and various suits of miniature clothing were made and brought over for sale, they do not appear to be popular with the little girls." He did not see a single girl playing with a doll, and thinks the articles collected may have been made rather for sale than otherwise. Of the boys, Mr. Murdoch says: "As soon as a boy is able to walk, his father makes him a little bow suited to his strength, with blunt arrows, with which he plays with the other boys, shooting at marks—for instance the fetal reindeer brought home from the spring hunt—till he is old enough to shoot small birds and lemmings" (514. 380, 383).

In a recent extensive and elaborately illustrated article, Dr. J. W. Fewkes has described the dolls of the Tusayan Indians (one of the Pueblo tribes). Of the tihus, or carved wooden dolls, the author says (226. 45): "These images are commonly mentioned by American visitors to the Tusayan Pueblos as idols, but there is abundant evidence to show that they are at present used simply as children's playthings, which are made for that purpose and given to the girls with that thought in mind." Attention is called to the difficulty of drawing the line between a doll and an idol among primitive peoples, the connection of dolls with religion, psychological evidence of which lingers with us to-day in the persistent folk-etymology which connects doll with idol. The following remarks of Dr. Fewkes are significant: "These figurines [generally images of deities or mythological personages carved in true archaic fashion] are generally made by participants in the Ni-man-Ka-tci-na, and are presented to the children in July or August at the time of the celebration of the farewell of the Ka-tci'-nas [supernatural intercessors between men and gods]. It is not rare to see the little girls after the presentation carrying the dolls about on their backs wrapped in their blankets in the same manner in which babies are carried by their mothers or sisters. Those dolls which are more elaborately made are generally hung up as ornaments in the rooms, but never, so far as I have investigated the subject, are they worshipped. The readiness with which they are sold for a proper remuneration shows that they are not regarded as objects of reverence." But, as Dr. Fewkes himself adds, "It by no means follows that they may not be copies of images which have been worshipped, although they now have come to have a strictly secular use." Among some peoples, perhaps, the dolls, images of deities of the past, or even of the present, may have been used to impart the fundamentals of theology and miracle-story, and the play-house of the children may have been at times a sort of religious kindergarten of a primitive type. Worthy of note in this connection is the statement of Castren that "the Finns manufacture a kind of dolls, or paras, out of a child's cap filled with tow and stuck at the end of a rod. The fetich thus made is carried nine times round the church, with the cry 'synny para' (Para be born) repeated every time to induce a hal'tia—that is to say, a spirit—to enter into it" (388. 108).

A glance into St. Nicholas, or at the returns to the syllabus on dolls sent out by President Hall, is sufficient to indicate the farreaching associations of the subject, while the doll-congress of St. Petersburg has had its imitators both in Europe and America. A bibliography of doll-poems, doll-descriptions, doll-parties, doll-funerals, and the like would be a welcome addition to the literature of dolls, while a doll-museum of extended scope would be at once entertaining and of great scientific value.

The familiar phrase "to cry for the moon" corresponds to the French "prendre la lune avec ses dents." In illustration of this proverbial expression, which Rabelais used in the form Je ne suis point clerc pour prendre la lune avec les dents, Loubens tells the amusing story of a servant who, when upbraided by the parents for not giving to a child what it wanted and for which it had been long crying, answered: "You must give it him yourself. A quarter-of-an-hour ago, he saw the moon at the bottom of a bucket of water, and wants me to give it him. That's all." (Prov. et locut. franc., p. 225.)

To-day children cry for the moon in vain, but 'twas not ever thus. In payment for the church, which King Olaf wanted to have built,—a task impossible, the saint thought,—the giant demanded "the sun and moon, or St. Olaf himself." Soon the building was almost completed, and St. Olaf was in great perplexity at the unexpected progress of the work. As he was wandering about "he heard a child cry inside a mountain, and a giant-woman hush it with these words: 'Hush! hush! to-morrow comes thy father Wind-and-Weather home, bringing both sun and moon, or saintly Olaf's self.'" Had not the king overheard this, and, by learning the giant's name, been enabled to crush him, the child could have had his playthings the next day.

In the course of an incarnation-myth of the raven among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, Mr. Mackenzie tells us (497. 53):—

"In time the woman bore a son, a remarkably small child. This child incessantly cried for the moon to play with, thus—Koong-ah-ah, Koong-ah-ah ('the moon, the moon'). The spirit-chief, in order to quiet the child, after carefully closing all apertures of the house, produced the moon, and gave it to the child to play with." The result was that the raven (the child) ran off with the moon, and the people in consequence were put to no little inconvenience. But by and by the raven broke the original moon in two, threw half up into the sky, which became the sun, while of the other half he made the moon, and of the little bits, which were left in the breaking, all the stars.

In the golden age of the gods, the far-off juventus mundi, the parts of the universe were the playthings, the Spielzeug of the divine infants, just as peasants and human infants figure in the folk-tales as the toys of giants and Brobdingnagians. Indeed, some of the phenomena of nature and their peculiarities are explained by barbarous or semi-barbarous peoples as the result of the games and sports of celestial and spiritual children.

With barbarous or semi-civilized peoples possessing flocks and herds of domesticated animals the child is early made acquainted with their habits and uses. Regarding the Kaffirs of South Africa Theal says that it is the duty of the young boys to attend to the calves in the kraal, and "a good deal of time is passed in training them to run and to obey signals made by whistling. The boys mount them when they are eighteen months or two years old, and race about upon their backs" (543. 220). In many parts of the world the child has played an important role as shepherd and watcher of flocks and herds, and the shepherd-boy has often been called to high places in the state, and has even ascended the thrones of great cities and empires, ecclesiastical as well as political.

Dress.

In his little book on the philosophy of clothing Dr. Schurtz has given us an interesting account of the development and variation of external ornamentation and dress among the various races, especially the negro peoples of Africa. The author points out that with not a few primitive tribes only married persons wear clothes, girls and boys, young women and men even, going about in puris naturalibus (530. 13). Everywhere the woman is better clothed than the girl, and in some parts of Africa, as the ring is with us, so are clothes a symbol of marriage. Among the Balanta, for example, in Portuguese Senegambia, when a man marries he gives his wife a dress, and so long as this remains whole, the marriage-union continues in force. On the coast of Sierra Leone, the expression "he gave her a dress," intimates that the groom has married a young girl (530. 14, 43-49).

Often, with many races the access of puberty leads to the adoption of clothing and to a refinement of dress and personal adornment. A relic of this remains, as Dr. Schurtz points out, in the leaving off of knickerbockers and the adoption of "long dresses," by the young people in our civilized communities of to-day (530. 13).

With others the clothing of the young is of the most primitive type, and children in very many cases go about absolutely naked.

That the development of the sex-feeling, and entrance upon marriage, have with very many peoples been the chief incitements to dress and personal ornamentation, has been pointed out by Schurtz and others (530. 14).

Not alone this, but, sometimes, as among the Bura Negroes of the upper Blue Nile region, the advent of her child brings with it a modification in the dress of the mother. With these people, young girls wear an apron in front, married women one in front and one behind, but women who have already had a child wear two in front, one over the other. A similar remark applies to tattooing and kindred ornamentations of the body and its members. Among the women of the Bajansi on the middle Congo, for example, a certain form of tattoo indicated that the woman had borne a child (530. 78).

Schurtz points out that the kangaroo-skin breast-covering of the Tasmanian women, the shoulder and arm strips worn by the women of the Monbuttu in Africa, the skin mantles of the Marutse, the thick hip-girdle of the Tupende, and other articles of clothing of a like nature, seem to be really survivals of devices for carrying children, and not to have been originally intended as dress per se (530. 110, 111). Thus early does childhood become a social factor.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE CHILD AS MEMBER AND BUILDER OF SOCIETY.

In great states, children are always trying to remain children, and the parents wanting to make men and women of them. In vile states, the children are always wanting to be men and women, and the parents to keep them children.—Ruskin.

Children generally hate to be idle; all the care is then that their busy humour should be constantly employed in something of use to them.—Locke.

Look into our childish faces; See you not our willing hearts? Only love us—only lead us; Only let us know you need us, And we all will do our parts.—Mary Howitt.

[Greek: Anthropos Phusei zoon politikon] [Man is by nature a political (social) animal].—Aristotle.

Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.—Carlyle.

Predestination and Caste.

"Who can tell for what high cause This darling of the Gods was born?"

asks the poet Marvell. But with some peoples the task of answering the question is an easy one; for fate, or its human side, caste, has settled the matter long before the infant comes into the world. The Chinese philosopher, Han Wan-Kung, is cited by Legge as saying: "When Shuh-yu was born, his mother knew, as soon as she looked at him, that he would fall a victim to his love of bribes. When Yang sze-go was born, the mother of Shuh-he-ang knew, as soon as she heard him cry, that he would cause the destruction of all his kindred. When Yueh-tseaou was born, Tzewan considered it was a great calamity, knowing that through him all the ghosts of the Johgaou family would be famished" (487. 89).

In India, we meet with the Bidhata-Purusha, a "deity that predestines all the events of the life of man or woman, and writes on the forehead of the child, on the sixth day of its birth, a brief precis of them" (426. 9). India is par excellence the land of caste, but other lands know the system that makes the man follow in his father's footsteps, and often ignores the woman altogether, not even counting her in the census of the people, as was formerly the case even in Japan and China, where a girl was not worthy to be counted beside the son. Of ancient Peru, Letourneau says: "Every male inherited his father's profession; he was not allowed to choose another employment. By right of birth a man was either labourer, miner, artisan, or soldier" (100. 486). Predestination of state and condition in another world is a common theological tenet, predestination of state and condition in this world is a common social theory.

Vast indeed is the lore of birth-days, months and years, seasons and skies—the fictions, myths, and beliefs of the astrologist, the spiritualist, the fortune-teller, and the almanac-maker—which we have inherited from those ancestors of ours, who believed in the kinship of all things, who thought that in some way "beasts and birds, trees and plants, the sea, the mountains, the wind, the sun, the moon, the clouds, and the stars, day and night, the heaven and the earth, were alive and possessed of the passions and the will they felt within themselves" (258. 25). Here belongs a large amount of folk-lore and folk-speech relating to the defective, delinquent, and dependent members of human society, whose misfortunes or misdeeds are assigned to atavistic causes, to demoniacal influences.

Parenthood.

Among primitive peoples, the advent of a child, besides entailing upon one or both of the parents ceremonies and superstitious performances whose name and fashion are legion, often makes a great change in the constitution of society. Motherhood and fatherhood are, in more than one part of the globe, primitive titles of nobility and badges of aristocracy. With the birth of a child, the Chinese woman becomes something more than a mere slave and plaything, and in the councils of uncivilized peoples (as with us to-day) the voice of the father of a family carries more weight than that of the childless. With the civilized races to-day, more marriages mean fewer prison-houses, and more empty jails, than in the earlier days, and with the primitive peoples of the present, this social bond was the salvation of the tribe to the same extent and in the same way.

As Westermarck points out, there are "several instances of husband and wife not living together before the birth of a child." Here belong the temporary marriages of the Creek Indians, the East Greenlanders, the Fuegians, the Essenes, and some other Old World sects and peoples—the birth of a child completes the marriage—"marriage is therefore rooted in family, rather than family in marriage," in such cases. With the Ainos of the island of Tezo, the Khyens of Farther India, and with one of the aboriginal tribes of China, so Westermarck informs us, "the husband goes to live with his wife at her father's house, and never takes her away till after the birth of a child," and with more than one other people the wife remains with her own parents until she becomes a mother (166. 22, 23).

In some parts of the United States we find similar practices among the population of European ancestry. The "boarding-out" of young couples until a child is born to them is by no means uncommon.

Adoption.

Adoption is, among some primitive peoples, remarkably extensive. Among the natives of the Andaman Islands "it is said to be of rare occurrence to find any child above six or seven years of age residing with its parents, and this, because it is considered a compliment and also a mark of friendship for a married man, after paying a visit, to ask his hosts to allow him to adopt one of their children" (498. 57).

Of the Hawaiian Islanders, Letourneau remarks (100. 389, 390): "Adoption was rendered extremely easy; a man would give himself a father or sons almost ad infinitum." In the Marquesas Islands "it was not uncommon to see elderly persons being adopted by children." Moreover, "animals even were adopted. A chief adopted a dog, to whom, he offered ten pigs and some precious ornaments. The dog was carried about by a kikino, and at every meal he had his stated place beside his adopted father." Connected with adoption are many curious rites and ceremonies which may be found described in Ploss and other authorities. Dr. Friedrich S. Krauss (280) has recently treated at some length of a special form of adoption symbolized by the cutting of the hair, and particularly known among the southern Slavonians. The cutting off the hair here represents, the author thinks, the unconditional surrendering of one's body or life to another. The origin of the sacrifice of the hair is to be sought in the fact that primitive peoples have believed that the seat of the soul was in the hair and the blood, which were offered to the spirits or demons in lieu of the whole body. The relation between nurse and child has been treated of by Ploss and Wiedniann (167), the latter with special reference to ancient Egypt and the Mohammedan countries. In ancient Egypt the nurse was reckoned as one of the family, and in the death-steles and reliefs of the Middle Kingdom her name and figure are often found following those of the children and parents of the deceased. The wet-nurse was held in especial honour. The milk-relationship sometimes completely takes the place of blood-relationship. The Koran forbids the marriage of a nurse and a man whom, as a child, she has suckled; the laws of the Hanafi forbid a man to marry a woman from whose breast he has imbibed even a single drop of milk. Among the southern Slavonians: "If of two children who have fed at the breast of the same woman, one is a boy and the woman's own child, and the other (adopted) a girl, these two must never marry." If they are both girls, they are like real sisters in love and affection; if both boys, like real brothers. In Dardistan and Armenia also, milk-relationship prevents marriage (167. 263).

In Mingrelia as soon as a child is given to a woman to nurse, she, her husband, children, and grandchildren are bound to it by ties more dear even than those of blood-relationship; she would yield up her life for the child, and the latter, when grown up, is reciprocally dutiful. It is a curious fact that even grown-up people can contract this sort of relationship. "Thus peasant-women are very anxious to have grown-up princesses become then foster-children—the latter simply bite gently the breasts of their foster-mothers, and forthwith a close relationship subsists between them." It is said also that girls obtain protectors in like manner by having youths bite at their breasts, which (lately) they cover with a veil (167. 263). Adoption by the letting or transfusion of blood is also found in various parts of the world and has far-reaching ramifications; as Trumbull, Robertson Smith, and Daniels have pointed out. The last calls attention to the Biblical declaration (Proverbs, xxviii. 24): "There is a friend which sticketh closer than a brother," underlying which seems to be this mystic tie of blood (214. 16).

The mourning for the death of children is discussed in another part of this work. It may be mentioned here, however, that the death of a child often entails other, sometimes more serious, consequences. Among the Dyaks of Borneo, "when a father has lost his child, he kills the first man he meets as he goes out of his house; this is to him an act of duty" (100. 238).

Hereditary Bights.

The hereditary rights of children to share in the property of their parents have been made the subject of an interesting study by Clement Deneus (215), a lawyer of Ghent, who has treated in detail of the limitation of the patria potestas in respect to disposition of the patrimony, and the reservation to the children of a portion of the property of their parents—an almost inviolable right, of which they can be deprived only in consequence of the gravest offences. This reservation the author considers "a principle universally recognized among civilized nations," and an institution which marks a progress in the history of law and of civilization (215. 49), while testamentary freedom is unjust and inexpedient. The author discusses the subject from the points of view of history, statute and natural law, social economy, etc., devoting special attention to pointing out the defects of the system of the school of Le Play,—primogeniture, which still obtains in England, in several parts of Germany, in certain localities of the Pyrenees, and in the Basque provinces.

In the countries of modern Europe, the testamentary power of the father is limited as follows: Austria (Code of 1812): One-half of parents' property reserved for children. The law of 1889 makes exception in the case of rural patrimonies of moderate size with dwelling attached, where the father has the right to designate his heir. Denmark (Code of 1845): Father can dispose of but one-fourth of the property; nobles, however, are allowed to bestow upon one of their children the half of their fortune. Germany: No uniform civil legislation exists as yet for the whole empire. In the majority of the smaller states, in a part of Bavaria, Rugen, eastern Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein, the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian is in force, while the Napoleonic code obtains in Rhenish Prussia, Hesse, and Bavaria, in Baden, Berg, Alsace-Lorraine. In Prussia, the reserve is one-third, if there are less than three children; one-half, if there are three or four. In Saxony, if there are five or more children, the reserve is one-half; if there are four or less, one-third. Greece: The Justinian novels are followed. Holland: The Napoleonic code is in force. Italy (Code of 1866): The reserve is one-half. Norway (Code of 1637, modified in 1800, 1811, 1825): The father is allowed free disposal of one-half of the patrimony, but for religious charities (fondationspieuses) only. Portugal: The legitimate is two-thirds. Roumania (Code of 1865): The same provision as in the Napoleonic code. Russia (Code of 1835): The father can dispose at pleasure of the personal property and property acquired, but the property itself must be divided equally. In Esthonia, this provision also applies to personal property acquired by inheritance. Spain (Code of 1889): The father can dispose of one-third of the patrimony to a stranger; to a child he can will two-thirds. He can also, in the case of farming, industry, or commerce, leave his entire property to one of his children, except that the legatee has to pecuniarily indemnify his brothers and sisters. Sweden (Code of 1734): In the towns, the father can dispose of but one-sixth of the patrimony; in the country, the patrimonial property must go to the children. The rest is at the will of the father, except that he must provide for the sustenance of his children. Switzerland: At Geneva, the Napoleonic code is in force; in the Canton of Uri, the younger son is sometimes specially favoured; in Zurich, the father can dispose of one-sixth in favour of strangers, or one-fifth in favour of a child; in Bale, he is allowed no disposal; in the cantons of Neuchatel and Vaud, the reserve is one-half, in Bern and Schaffhausen, two-thirds, and in Eriburg and Soleure, three-fourths. Turkey: The father can dispose of two-thirds by will, or of the whole by gift (215. 39-41).

In Prance, article 913 of the civil code forbids the father to dispose, by gift while living, or by will, of more than one-half of the property, if he leaves at his death but one legitimate child; more than one-third, if he leaves two children; more than one-fourth, if he leave three or more children. In the United States great testamentary freedom prevails, and the laws of inheritance belong to the province of the various States.

Among the nations of antiquity,—Egyptians, Persians, Assyrians, Chinese,—according to Deneus (215. 2), the patria potestas probably prevented any considerable diffusion of the family estates. By the time of Moses, the Hebrews had come to favour the first-born, and to him was given a double share of the inheritance. With the ancient Hindus but a slight favouring—of the eldest son seems to have been in vogue, the principle of co-proprietorship of parent and children being recognized in the laws of Manu. In Sparta, the constitution was inimical to a reserve for all the children; in Athens, the code of Solon forbade a man to benefit a stranger at the expense of his legitimate male children; he had, however, the right to make particular legacies, probably up to one-half of the property. Deneus considers that the penchant of the Athenians for equality was not favourable to a cast-iron system of primogeniture, although the father may have been able to favour his oldest child to the extent of one-half of his possessions. In ancient Rome (215. 4-16), at first, a will was an exception, made valid only by the vote of a lex curiata; but afterwards the absolute freedom of testamentary disposition, which was approved in 450 B.C. by the Law of the Twelve Tables,—Uti legassit super pecunia tutelage suce rei, ita jus esto,—appears, and the father could even pass by his children in silence and call upon an utter stranger to enjoy his estate and possessions. By 153 B.C., however, the father was called upon to nominally disinherit his children, and not merely pass them over in silence, if he wished to leave his property to a stranger. For some time this provision had little effect, but a breach in the patria potestas has really been made, and by the time of Pliny the Younger (61-115 A.D.), who describes the procedure in detail, the disinherited children were given the right of the querula inoffidosi testamenti, by which the father was presumed to have died intestate, and his property fell in equal shares to all his children. Thus it was that the right of children in the property of the father was first really recognized at Rome, and the pars legitima, the reserve of which made it impossible for the children to attack the will of the father, came into practice. In the last years of the Republic, this share was at least one-fourth of what the legitimate heir would have received in the absence of a will; under Justinian, it was one-third of the part ab intestate, if this was at least one-fourth of the estate; otherwise, one-half. The father always retained the right to disinherit, for certain reasons, in law. With this diminution of his rights over property went also a lessening of his powers over the bodies of his children. Diocletian forbade the selling of children, Constantine decreed that the father who exposed his new-born child should lose the patria potestas, and Valentinian punished such action with death. Among the ancient Gauls, in spite of the father's power of life and death over his offspring, he could not disinherit them, for the theory of co-proprietorship obtained with these western tribes (215. 16). With the ancient Germans, the father appears to have been rather the protector of his children than their owner or keeper; the child is recognized, somewhat rudely, as a being with some rights of his own. Michelet has aptly observed, as Deneus remarks, that "the Hindus saw in the son the reproduction of the father's soul; the Romans, a servant of the father; the Germans, a child" (215. 17). At first wills were unknown among them, for the system of co-proprietorship,—hoeredes successoresgue sui cuique liberi et nullum testamentum,—and the solidarity of the family and all its members, did not feel the need of any. The inroad of Roman ideas, and especially, Deneus thinks, the fervour of converts to Christianity, introduced testamentary legacies.

The Goths and Burgundians, in their Roman laws, allowed the parent to dispose of three-fourths, the Visigoths one-third or one-fifth, according as the testator disposed of his property in favour of a child or a stranger. The national law of the Burgundians allowed to the father the absolute disposal of his acquisitions, but prescribed the equal sharing of the property among all the children. The ripuarian law of the Franks left the children a reserve of twelve sons, practically admitting absolute freedom of disposition by will (215. 18). The course of law in respect to the inheritance of children during the Middle Ages can be read in the pages of Deneus and the wider comparative aspect of the subject studied in the volumes of Post, Dargun, Engels, etc., where the various effects of mother-right and father-right are discussed and interpreted.

Subdivisions of Land.

In some cases, as in Wurtemburg, Switzerland, Hanover, Thuringia, Hesse, certain parts of Sweden, France, and Russia, the subdivision of property has been carried out to an extent which has produced truly Lilliputian holdings. In Switzerland there is a certain commune where the custom obtains of transmitting by will to each child its proportional share of each parcel; so that a single walnut-tree has no fewer than sixty proprietors. This reminds us of the Maoris of New Zealand, with whom "a portion of the ground is allotted to the use of each family, and this portion is again subdivided into individual parts on the birth of each child." It is of these same people that the story is told that, after selling certain of their lands to the English authorities, they came back in less than a year and demanded payment also for the shares of the children born since the sale, whose rights they declared had not been disposed of. On the islands of the Loire there are holdings "so small that it is impossible to reduce them any less, so their owners have them each in turn a year"; in the commune of Murs, in Anjou, there is "a strip of nine hectares, subdivided into no fewer than thirty-one separate parcels." The limit, however, seems to be reached in Laon, where "it is not rare to find fields scarce a metre (3 ft. 3.37 in.) wide; here an apple-tree or a walnut-tree covers with its branches four or five lots, and the proprietor can only take in his crop in the presence of his neighbours, to whom he has also to leave one-half of the fruit fallen on their lots." No wonder many disputes and lawsuits arise from such a state of affairs. It puts us in mind at once of the story of the sand-pile and the McDonogh farm. The exchange or purchase of contiguous parcels sometimes brings temporary or permanent relief (215. 112, 113).

The following figures show the extent to which this Lilliputian system obtained in France in 1884, according to the returns of the Minister of Finance:—

NATURE OF PROPERTY. ABSOLUTE PER TOTAL PER NUMBER OF CENT. HECTARES. CENT. HOLDINGS. Less than 20 ares (100 ares = one hectare) 4,115,463 29.00 Less than 50 ares 6,597,843 47.00 1,147,804 2.31 Less than 1 hectare ( =2-1/2 acres) 8,585,523 61.00 2,574,589 5.19 Less than 2 hectares 10,426,368 74.09 5,211,456 10.53 From 2 to 6 hectares 2,174,188 15.47 7,543,347 15.26 From 6 to 50 hectares 1,351,499 9.58 19,217,902 38.94 From 50 to 200 hectares 105,070 0.74 9,398,057 19.04 More than 200 hectares 17,676 0.12 8,017,542 16.23

Totals..................... 14,074,801 100.00 49,388,304 100.00

Deneus gives other interesting figures from Belgium and elsewhere, showing the extent of the system. Other statistics given indicate that this parcelling-out has reached its lowest point, and that the reaction has set in. It is a curious fact, noted by M. Deneus, that of the 1,173,724 tenant-farmers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the year 1884, no fewer than 852,438 cultivated an acre or less.

Younger Son.

Mr. Sessions, in his interesting little pamphlet (351) calls attention to the important role assigned in legend and story to the "younger son," "younger brother," as well as the social customs and laws which have come into vogue on his account. Sir Henry Maine argued that "primogeniture cannot be the natural outgrowth of the family, but is a political institution, coming not from clansmen but from a chief." Hence the youngest son, "who continues longest with the father, is naturally the heir of his house, the rest being already provided for." Mr. Sessions observes (351. 2): "Among some primitive tribes, as those of Cape York [Australia] and the adjacent islands, the youngest son inherited a double portion of his deceased father's goods. Among the Maoris of New Zealand he takes the whole. Among some hill tribes of India, such as the Todas of the Neilgherries, he takes the house and maintains the women of the family, whilst the cattle, which represent the chief personalities, are equally divided. The Mrus and Kolhs and Cotas have similar customs." Somewhat similar to the code of the Todas was that of the Hindu Aryans, as embodied in the laws of Manu, for "the youngest son has, from time immemorial, as well as the eldest, a place in Hindu legislation." The succession of the youngest prevails among the Mongolian Tartars, and "when in Russia the joint family may be broken up, the youngest takes the house." The right of the youngest was known among the Welsh, Irish, and some other Celtic tribes; the old Welsh law gave the youngest son the house and eight acres, the rest of the land being divided equally between all the sons. Mr. Sessions calls attention to the fact that, while in Old Testament Palestine primogeniture was the rule, the line of ancestry of Christ exhibits some remarkable exceptions. And among primitive peoples the hero or demi-god is very often the younger son.

Under the name of "Borough English," the law by which the father's real property descends to the youngest son alone, survives in Gloucester and some few other places in England,—Lambeth, Hackney, part of Islington, Heston, Edmonton, etc.

Another interesting tenure is that of gavelkind, by which the land and property of the father was inherited in equal portions by all his sons, the youngest taking the house, the eldest the horse and arms, and so on. This mode of tenure, before the Conquest, was quite common in parts of England, especially Wales and Northumberland, still surviving especially in the county of Kent. Many things, indeed, testify of the care which was taken even in primitive times to secure that the youngest born, the child of old age, so frequently the best-loved, should not fare ill in the struggle for life.

Child-Nurses.

One important function of the child (still to be seen commonly among the lower classes of the civilized races of to-day) with primitive peoples is that of nurse and baby-carrier. Even of Japan, Mrs. Bramhall gives this picture (189. 33):—

"We shall see hundreds of small children, not more than five or six years of age, carrying, fast asleep on their shoulders, the baby of the household, its tiny smooth brown head swinging hither and thither with every movement of its small nurse, who walks, runs, sits, or jumps, flies kites, plays hop-scotch, and fishes for frogs in the gutter, totally oblivious of that infantile charge, whether sleeping or waking. If no young sister or brother be available, the husband, the uncle, the father, or grandfather hitches on his back the baby, preternaturally good and contented."