Games and songs of American children
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Title: Games and songs of American children
Compiler: William Wells Newell
Release date: May 26, 2014 [eBook #45762]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GAMES AND SONGS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN ***
[Illustration: CHILDREN'S GAMES.
[_From an old engraving by Van der Venne._]]
GAMES AND SONGS
OF
AMERICAN CHILDREN
COLLECTED AND COMPARED
BY
WILLIAM WELLS NEWELL
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
1884
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
_All rights reserved._
EDITOR'S NOTE.
The existence of any children's tradition in America, maintained
independently of print, has hitherto been scarcely noticed. Yet it
appears that, in this minor but curious branch of folk-lore, the vein
in the United States is both richer and purer than that so far worked
in Great Britain. These games supply material for the elucidation of
a subject hitherto obscure: they exhibit the true relation of ancient
English lore of this kind to that of the continent of Europe; while
the amusements of youth in other languages are often illustrated by
American custom, which compares favorably, in respect of compass and
antiquity, with that of European countries.
Of the two branches into which the lore of the nursery may be
divided--the tradition of children and the tradition of nurses--the
present collection includes only the former. It is devoted to formulas
of play which children have preserved from generation to generation,
without the intervention, often without the knowledge, of older minds.
Were these--trifling as they often are--merely local and individual,
they might be passed over with a smile; but being English and European,
they form not the least curious chapter of the history of manners
and customs. It has therefore been an essential part of the editor's
object to exhibit their correspondences and history; but, unwilling to
overcloud with cumbrous research that healthy and bright atmosphere
which invests all that really belongs to childhood, he has thought it
best to remand to an appendix the necessary references, retaining in
the text only so much as may be reasonably supposed of interest to the
readers in whom one or another page may awaken early memories.
He has to express sincere thanks to the friends, in different parts of
the country, whose kind assistance has rendered possible this volume,
in which almost every one of the older states is represented; and he
will be grateful for such further information as may tend to render the
collection more accurate and complete.
The melodies which accompany many of the games have been written from
the recitation of children by S. Austen Pearce, Mus. Doc. Oxon.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
EDITOR'S NOTE. v
INTRODUCTORY.
I. THE DIFFUSION AND ORIGIN OF AMERICAN GAME-RHYMES. 1
II. THE BALLAD, THE DANCE, AND THE GAME. 8
III. MAY-GAMES. 13
IV. THE INVENTIVENESS OF CHILDREN. 22
V. THE CONSERVATISM OF CHILDREN. 28
I. LOVE-GAMES.
No.
1. KNIGHTS OF SPAIN. 39
2. THREE KINGS. 46
3. HERE COMES A DUKE. 47
4. TREAD, TREAD THE GREEN GRASS. 50
5. I WILL GIVE YOU A PAPER OF PINS. 51
6. THERE SHE STANDS, A LOVELY CREATURE. 55
7. GREEN GROW THE RUSHES, O! 56
8. THE WIDOW WITH DAUGHTERS TO MARRY. 56
9. PHILANDER'S MARCH. 58
10. MARRIAGE. 59
II. HISTORIES.
11. MISS JENNIA JONES. 63
12. DOWN SHE COMES, AS WHITE AS MILK. 67
13. LITTLE SALLY WATERS. 70
14. HERE SITS THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 70
15. GREEN GRAVEL. 71
16. UNCLE JOHN. 72
17. KING ARTHUR WAS KING WILLIAM'S SON. 73
18. LITTLE HARRY HUGHES AND THE DUKE'S DAUGHTER. 75
19. BARBARA ALLEN. 78
III. PLAYING AT WORK.
20. VIRGINIA REEL. 80
21. OATS, PEASE, BEANS, AND BARLEY GROWS. 80
22. WHO'LL BE THE BINDER? 84
23. AS WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH. 86
24. DO, DO, PITY MY CASE. 87
25. WHEN I WAS A SHOEMAKER. 88
26. HERE WE COME GATHERING NUTS OF MAY. 89
27. HERE I BREW AND HERE I BAKE. 90
28. DRAW A BUCKET OF WATER. 90
29. THREADING THE NEEDLE. 91
IV. HUMOR AND SATIRE.
30. SOLDIER, SOLDIER, WILL YOU MARRY ME? 93
31. QUAKER COURTSHIP. 94
32. LAZY MARY. 96
33. WHISTLE, DAUGHTER, WHISTLE. 96
34. THERE WERE THREE JOLLY WELSHMEN. 97
35. A HALLOWE'EN RHYME. 98
36. THE DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION. 99
37. OLD GRIMES. 100
38. THE BAPTIST GAME. 101
39. TRIALS, TROUBLES, AND TRIBULATIONS. 102
40. HAPPY IS THE MILLER. 102
41. THE MILLER OF GOSPORT. 103
V. FLOWER ORACLES, ETC
42. FLOWER ORACLES. 105
43. USE OF FLOWERS IN GAMES. 107
44. COUNTING APPLE-SEEDS. 109
45. ROSE IN THE GARDEN. 110
46. THERE WAS A TREE STOOD IN THE GROUND. 111
47. GREEN! 113
VI. BIRD AND BEAST.
48. MY HOUSEHOLD. 115
49. FROG-POND. 116
50. BLOODY TOM. 117
51. BLUE-BIRDS AND YELLOW-BIRDS. 118
52. DUCKS FLY. 119
VII. HUMAN LIFE.
53. KING AND QUEEN. 120
54. FOLLOW YOUR LEADER. 122
55. TRUTH. 122
56. INITIATION. 122
57. JUDGE AND JURY. 123
58. THREE JOLLY SAILORS. 124
59. MARCHING TO QUEBEC. 125
60. SUDDEN DEPARTURE. 126
61. SCORN. 126
VIII. THE PLEASURES OF MOTION.
62. RING AROUND THE ROSIE. 127
63. GO ROUND AND ROUND THE VALLEY. 128
64. THE FARMER IN THE DELL. 129
65. THE GAME OF RIVERS. 130
66. QUAKER, HOW IS THEE? 130
67. DARBY JIG. 131
68. RIGHT ELBOW IN. 131
69. MY MASTER SENT ME. 131
70. HUMPTY DUMPTY. 132
71. PEASE PORRIDGE HOT. 132
72. RHYMES FOR A RACE. 132
73. TWINE THE GARLAND. 133
74. HOPPING-DANCE. 133
IX. MIRTH AND JEST.
75. CLUB FIST. 134
76. ROBIN'S ALIVE. 135
77. LAUGHTER GAMES. 136
78. BACHELOR'S KITCHEN. 137
79. THE CHURCH AND THE STEEPLE. 138
80. WHAT COLOR? 138
81. BEETLE AND WEDGE. 138
82. PRESENT AND ADVISE. 139
83. GENTEEL LADY. 139
84. BEAST, BIRD, OR FISH. 140
85. WHEEL OF FORTUNE. 140
86. CATCHES. 141
87. INTERY MINTERY. 142
88. REDEEMING FORFEITS. 143
89. OLD MOTHER TIPSY-TOE. 143
90. WHO STOLE THE CARDINAL'S HAT? 145
X. GUESSING-GAMES.
91. ODD OR EVEN. 147
92. HUL GUL. 147
93. HOW MANY FINGERS? 148
94. RIGHT OR LEFT. 149
95. UNDER WHICH FINGER? 149
96. COMES, IT COMES. 150
97. HOLD FAST MY GOLD RING. 150
98. MY LADY QUEEN ANNE. 151
99. THE WANDERING DOLLAR. 151
100. THIMBLE IN SIGHT. 152
XI. GAMES OF CHASE.
101. HOW MANY MILES TO BABYLON? 153
102. HAWK AND CHICKENS. 155
103. TAG. 158
104. DEN. 159
105. I SPY. 160
106. SHEEP AND WOLF. 161
107. BLANK AND LADDER. 161
108. BLIND-MAN'S BUFF. 162
109. WITCH IN THE JAR. 163
110. PRISONER'S BASE. 164
111. DEFENCE OF THE CASTLE. 164
112. LIL LIL. 165
113. CHARLEY BARLEY. 165
114. MILKING-PAILS. 166
115. STEALING GRAPES. 167
116. STEALING STICKS. 168
117. HUNT THE SQUIRREL. 168
XII. CERTAIN GAMES OF VERY LITTLE GIRLS.
118. SAIL THE SHIP. 170
119. THREE AROUND. 170
120. IRON GATES. 170
121. CHARLEY OVER THE WATER. 171
122. FROG IN THE SEA. 171
123. DEFIANCE. 172
124. MY LADY'S WARDROBE. 173
125. HOUSEKEEPING. 173
126. A MARCH. 174
127. RHYMES FOR TICKLING. 174
XIII. BALL, AND SIMILAR SPORTS.
128. THE "TIMES" OF SPORTS. 175
129. CAMPING THE BALL. 177
130. HAND-BALL. 178
131. STOOL-BALL. 179
132. CALL-BALL. 181
133. HALEY-OVER. 181
134. SCHOOL-BALL. 182
135. WICKET. 182
136. HOCKEY. 182
137. ROLL-BALL. 183
138. HAT-BALL. 183
139. CORNER-BALL. 183
140. BASE-BALL. 184
141. MARBLES. 185
142. CAT. 186
143. CHERRY-PITS. 187
144. BUTTONS. 187
145. HOP-SCOTCH. 188
146. DUCK ON A ROCK. 189
147. MUMBLETY-PEG. 189
148. FIVE-STONES. 190
XIV. RHYMES FOR COUNTING OUT.
149. COUNTING RHYMES. 194
XV. MYTHOLOGY.
150. LONDON BRIDGE. 204
151. OPEN THE GATES. 212
152. WEIGHING. 212
153. COLORS. 213
154. OLD WITCH. 215
155. THE OGREE'S COOP. 221
156. TOM TIDLER'S GROUND. 221
157. DIXIE'S LAND. 222
158. GHOST IN THE CELLAR. 223
159. THE ENCHANTED PRINCESS. 223
160. THE SLEEPING BEAUTY. 224
APPENDIX.
COLLECTIONS OF CHILDREN'S GAMES. 229
COMPARISONS AND REFERENCES. 232
GAMES AND SONGS
OF
AMERICAN CHILDREN.
INTRODUCTORY.
I.
_THE DIFFUSION AND ORIGIN OF AMERICAN GAME-RHYMES._
"The hideous Thickets in this place[1] were such that Wolfes
and Beares nurst up their young from the eyes of all beholders
in those very places where the streets are full of Girles and
Boys sporting up and downe, with a continued concourse of
people."--"Wonder-working Providence in New England," 1654.
"The first settlers came from England, and were of the middle rank,
and chiefly Friends. * * * In early times weddings were held as
festivals, probably in imitation of such a practice in England.
Relations, friends, and neighbors were generally invited, sometimes
to the amount of one or two hundred. * * * They frequently met
again next day; and being mostly young people, and from under
restraint, practised social plays and sports."--Watson's "Account
of Buckingham and Solebury" (Pennsylvania; settled about 1682).
A majority of the games of children are played with rhymed formulas,
which have been handed down from generation to generation. These we
have collected in part from the children themselves, in greater part
from persons of mature age who remember the usages of their youth;
for this collection represents an expiring custom. The vine of oral
tradition, of popular poetry, which for a thousand years has twined
and bloomed on English soil, in other days enriching with color
and fragrance equally the castle and the cottage, is perishing at
the roots; its prouder branches have long since been blasted, and
children's song, its humble but longest-flowering offshoot, will soon
have shared their fate.
It proves upon examination that these childish usages of play are
almost entirely of old English origin. A few games, it is true, appear
to have been lately imported from England or Ireland, or borrowed from
the French or the German; but these make up only a small proportion of
the whole. Many of the rounds still common in our cities, judging from
their incoherence and rudeness, might be supposed inventions of "Arabs
of the streets;" but these invariably prove to be mere corruptions
of songs long familiar on American soil. The influence of print is
here practically nothing; and a rhyme used in the sports of American
children almost always varies from the form of the same game in Great
Britain, when such now exists.
There are quarters of the great city of New York in which one hears the
dialect, and meets the faces, of Cork or Tipperary. But the children
of these immigrants attend the public school, that mighty engine of
equalization; their language has seldom more than a trace of accent,
and they adopt from schoolmates local formulas for games, differing
more or less from those which their parents used on the other side
of the sea. In other parts of the town, a German may live for years,
needing and using in business and social intercourse no tongue but
his own, and may return to Europe innocent of any knowledge of the
English speech. Children of such residents speak German in their
homes, and play with each other the games they have brought with them
from the Fatherland. But they all speak English also, are familiar
with the songs which American children sing, and employ these too in
their sports. There is no transference from one tongue to another,
unless in a few cases, when the barrier of rhyme does not exist. The
English-speaking population, which imposes on all new-comers its
language, imposes also its traditions, even the traditions of children.
A curious inquirer who should set about forming a collection of
these rhymes, would naturally look for differences in the tradition
of different parts of the Union, would desire to contrast the
characteristic amusements of children in the North and in the
South, descendants of Puritan and Quaker. In this he would find
his expectations disappointed, and for the reason assigned. This
lore belongs, in the main, to the day before such distinctions came
into existence; it has been maintained with equal pertinacity, and
with small variations, from Canada to the Gulf. Even in districts
distinguished by severity of moral doctrines, it does not appear that
any attempt was made to interfere with the liberty of youth. Nowhere
have the old sports (often, it is true, in crude rustic forms) been
more generally maintained than in localities famous for Puritanism.
Thus, by a natural law of reversion, something of the music, grace,
and gayety of an earlier period of unconscious and natural living has
been preserved to sweeten the formality, angularity, and tedium of an
otherwise beneficial religious movement.
It is only within the century that America has become the land of
motion and novelty. During the long colonial period, the quiet
towns, less in communication with distant settlements than with the
mother-country itself, removed from the currents of thought circulating
in Europe, were under those conditions in which tradition is most
prized and longest maintained. The old English lore in its higher
branches, the ballad and the tale, already belonging to the past at
the time of the settlement, was only sparingly existent among the
intelligent class from which America was peopled; but such as they
did bring with them was retained. Besides, the greater simplicity and
freedom of American life caused, as it would seem, these childish
amusements to be kept up by intelligent and cultivated families after
the corresponding class in England had frowned them down as too
promiscuous and informal. But it is among families with the greatest
claims to social respectability that our rhymes have, in general, been
best preserved.
During the time of which we are writing, independent local usages
sprang up, so that each town had oftentimes its own formulas and names
for children's sports; but these were, after all, only selections from
a common stock, one place retaining one part, another, of the old
tradition. But in the course of the last two generations (and this is a
secondary reason for the uniformity of our games in different parts of
the country) the extension of intercourse between the States has tended
to diffuse them, so that petty rhymes, lately invented, have sometimes
gained currency from Maine to Georgia.
We proceed to speak of our games as they exist on the other side of the
sea. A comparison with English and Scotch collections shows us very few
games mentioned as surviving in Great Britain which we cannot parallel
in independent forms. On the other hand, there are numerous instances
in which rhymes of this sort, still current in America, do not appear
to be now known in the mother-country, though they oftentimes have
equivalents on the continent of Europe. In nearly all such cases it
is plain that the New World has preserved what the Old World has
forgotten; and the amusements of children to-day picture to us the
dances which delighted the court as well as the people of the Old
England before the settlement of the New.[2]
To develop the interest of our subject, however, we must go beyond
the limits of the English tongue. The practice of American children
enables us to picture to ourselves the sports which pleased the infancy
of Froissart and Rabelais.[3] A dramatic action of the Virginia hills
preserves the usage of Färöe and Iceland, of Sweden and Venice.[4] We
discover that it is an unusual thing to find any remarkable childish
sport on the European continent which failed to domesticate itself
(though now perhaps forgotten) in England. It is thus vividly and
irresistibly forced upon our notice, that the traditions of the
principal nations of Europe have differed little more than the dialects
of one language, the common tongue, so to speak, of religion, chivalry,
and civilization.
A different explanation has been given to this coincidence. When
only the agreement, in a few cases, of English and German rhymes
was noticed, it was assumed that the correspondence was owing to
race-migration; to the settlement in England of German tribes, who
brought with them national traditions. The present volume would
be sufficient to show the untenability of such an hypothesis. The
resemblance of children's songs in different countries, like the
similarity of popular traditions in general, is owing to their
perpetual diffusion from land to land; a diffusion which has been going
on in all ages, in all directions, and with all degrees of rapidity.
But the interest of their resemblance is hardly diminished by this
consideration. The character of some of these parallelisms proves that
for the diffusion in Europe of certain games of our collection we must
go back to the early Middle Age;[5] while the extent of the identity of
our American (that is, of old English) child's lore with the European
is a continual surprise.[6]
Internal evidence alone would be sufficient to refer many of the sports
to a mediæval origin, for we can still trace in them the expression of
the life of that period.
We comprehend how deeply mediæval religious conceptions affected the
life of the time, when we see that allusions to those beliefs are still
concealed in the playing of children. We find that the tests which the
soul, escaped from the body, had, as it was supposed, to undergo--the
scales of St. Michael, the keys of St. Peter, and the perpetual warfare
of angels and devils over departed souls--were familiarly represented
and dramatized in the sports of infants.[7] Such allusions have, it is
true, been excluded from English games; but that these once abounded
with them can be made abundantly evident. We see that chivalric
warfare, the building and siege of castles, the march and the charge of
armies, equally supplied material for childish mimicry. We learn how,
in this manner, the social state and habits of half a thousand years
ago unconsciously furnish the amusement of youth, when the faith and
fashion of the ancient day is no longer intelligible to their elders.
It will be obvious that many of the game-rhymes in this collection
were not composed by children. They were formerly played, as in many
countries they are still played, by young persons of marriageable age,
or even by mature men and women. The truth is, that in past centuries
all the world, judged by our present standard, seems to have been a
little childish. The maids of honor of Queen Elizabeth's day, if we may
credit the poets, were devoted to the game of tag,[8] and conceived it
a waste of time to pass in idleness hours which might be employed in
that pleasure, with which Diana and her nymphs were supposed to amuse
themselves. Froissart describes the court of France as amusing itself
with sports familiar to his own childhood; and the _Spectator_ speaks
of the fashionable ladies of London as occupied with a game which is
represented in this series.[9]
We need not, however, go to remote times or lands for illustration
which is supplied by New England country towns of a generation
since. In these, dancing, under that name, was little practised; it
was confined to one or two balls in the course of the year on such
occasions as the Fourth of July, lasting into the morning hours. At
other times, the amusement of young people at their gatherings was
"playing games." These games generally resulted in forfeits, to be
redeemed by kissing, in every possible variety of position and method.
Many of these games were _rounds_; but as they were not called dances,
and as mankind pays more attention to words than things, the religious
conscience of the community, which objected to dancing, took no
alarm. Such were the pleasures of young men and women from sixteen
to twenty-five years of age. Nor were the participants mere rustics;
many of them could boast as good blood, as careful breeding, and as
much intelligence, as any in the land. Neither was the morality or
sensitiveness of the young women of that day in any respect inferior to
what it is at present.
Now that our country towns are become mere outlying suburbs of
cities, these remarks may be read with a smile at the rude simplicity
of old-fashioned American life. But the laugh should be directed,
not at our own country, but at the by-gone age.[10] In respectable
and cultivated French society, at the time of which we speak, the
amusements, not merely of young people, but of their elders as well,
were every whit as crude. The suggestion is so contrary to our
preconceived ideas, that we hasten to shelter ourselves behind the
respectable name of Madame Celnart, who, as a recognized authority
on etiquette, must pass for an unimpeachable witness.[11] This
writer compiled a very curious "Complete Manual of Games of Society,
containing all the games proper for young people of both sexes," which
seems to have gained public approbation, since it reached a second
edition in 1830. In her preface she recommends the games of which we
have been speaking as recreations for _business men_:
"Another consideration in favor of games of society: it must be
admitted that for persons leading a sedentary life, and occupied
all day in writing and reckoning (the case with most men), a game
which demands the same attitude, the same tension of mind, is a poor
recreation. * * * On the contrary, the varying movement of games of
society, their diversity, the gracious and gay ideas which these games
inspire, the decorous caresses which they permit--all this combines
to give real amusement. These caresses can alarm neither modesty
nor prudence, since a kiss in honor given and taken before numerous
witnesses is often an act of propriety."
She prefers "rounds" to other amusements: "All hands united; all
feet in cadence; all mouths repeating the same refrain; the numerous
turns, the merry airs, the facile and rapid pantomime, the kisses which
usually accompany them--everything combines, in my opinion, to make
rounds the exercise of free and lively gayety."
We find among the ring-games given by our author, and recommended to
men of affairs, several of which English forms exist in our collection,
and are familiar to all children.[12]
We are thus led to remark an important truth. It is altogether a
mistake to suppose that these games (or, indeed, popular lore of
any description) originated with peasants, or describe the life of
peasants. The tradition, on the contrary, invariably came from above,
from the intelligent class. If these usages seem rustic, it is only
because the country retained what the city forgot, in consequence of
the change of manners to which it was sooner exposed. Such customs
were, at no remote date, the pleasures of courts and palaces. Many
games of our collection, on the other hand, have, it is true, always
belonged to children; but no division-line can be drawn, since out of
sports now purely infantine have arisen dances and songs which have for
centuries been favorites with young men and women.[13]
II.
_THE DANCE, THE BALLAD, AND THE GAME._
Entre Paris et Saint-Denis
Il s'élève une danse;
Toutes les dames de la ville
Sont alentour qui dansent.
Toutes les dames de la ville
Sont alentour qui dansent;
Il n'y a que la fille du roi
D'un côté qui regarde.
_Canadian Round._
Games accompanied by song may be divided into ballads, songs, and games
proper.
By the term ballad is properly signified a dance-song, or dramatic poem
sung and acted in the dance. The very word, derived through the late
Latin[14] from the Greek, attests that golden chain of oral tradition
which links our modern time, across centuries of invasion and conflict,
with the bright life of classic antiquity.
Still more pleasantly is a like history contained in another name for
the same custom. The usual old English name for the round dance, or
its accompanying song, was _carol_, which we now use in the restricted
sense of a festival hymn. Chaucer's "Romaunt of the Rose" describes
for us the movement of the "karole," danced on the "grene gras" in the
spring days. He shows us knights and ladies holding each other by the
hand, in a flowery garden where the May music of mavis and nightingale
blends with the "clere and ful swete karoling" of the lady who sings
for the dancers. This sense of the word continued in classic use till
the sixteenth century, and has survived in dialect to the present
day. Many of the games of our series are such rounds or carols,
"love-dances" in which youths and maidens formerly stood in the ring
by couples, holding each other's hands, though our children no longer
observe that arrangement. Now the word _carol_ is only a modernized
form of _chorus_. Thus childish habit has preserved to the present day
the idea and movement of the village ring-dance, the chorus, such as it
existed centuries or millenniums before another and religious form of
the dance accompanied by song had received that technical name in the
Greek drama.
Very little was needed to turn the ballad into a dramatic performance,
by assigning different parts to different actors. It is natural also
for children to act out the stories they hear. We find, accordingly,
that ancient ballads have sometimes passed into children's games.
But, in the present collection, the majority of the pieces which can
be referred to the ballad are of a different character. In these the
remainder of the history is reduced to a few lines, or to a single
couplet. These _historiettes_ have retained the situation, omitting
the narration, of the ancient song. We can understand how youthful or
rustic minds, when the popular song had nearly passed out of mind,
should have vaguely maintained the upshot of the story:
Here sits the Queen of England in her chair;
She has lost the true love that she had last year.
It is the tragedy told in a line; and what more is needed, since an
excuse is already provided for the kiss or the romp?[15]
Of lyric song we have scarce anything to offer. The fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries gave birth, all over Europe, to popular lyric
poesy, modelled on literary antecedents, and replacing in general
estimation the ancient dramatic ballad. Shakespeare, who merely refers
to the ballad proper, makes frequent use of the popular song of his
day. In many countries this taste has penetrated to the people; the
power of lyric composition has become general, so that a collection of
popular songs will contain many sweet and pleasing pieces. The ballad
has thus passed into the _round_. An inconsequent but musical babble,
like that of a brook or a child, has replaced the severe accents of
the ancient narration. But in English--why, we will not pause to
inquire--it is not so. Whatever of this kind once existed has passed
away, leaving but little trace. All that is poetical or pretty is the
relic of past centuries; and when the ancient treasure is spent,
absolute prose succeeds. The modern soil is incapable of giving birth
to a single flower.
Our rhymes, therefore, belong almost entirely to the third class--the
game proper. But though less interesting poetically, and only recorded
at a late period, it does not follow that they have not as ancient a
history as the oldest ballads; on the contrary, it will abundantly
appear that the formulas used in games have an especially persistent
life. As the ballad is a dramatic narrative, so the game is a dramatic
action, or series of actions; and the latter is as primitive as the
former, while both were employed to regulate the dance.
Most modern dances, silently performed in couples, are merely lively
movements; but in all ancient performances of the sort the idea is as
essential as the form. Precisely as the meaningless refrains of many
ballads arise from a forgetfulness of intelligible words, dances which
are only motion grew out of dances which expressed something. The dance
was originally the dramatized expression of any feature of nature or
life which excited interest. Every department of human labor--the work
of the farmer, weaver, or tradesman; the church, the court, and the
army; the habits and movements of the animals which seem so near to man
in his simplicity, and in whose life he takes so active an interest;
the ways and works of the potent supernatural beings, good or evil,
or, rather, beneficent or dangerous, by whom he believes himself
surrounded; angel and devil, witch and ogre--representations of all
these served, each in turn, for the amusement of an idle hour, when the
labor which is the bitterness of the enforced workman is a jest to the
free youth, and the introduction of spiritual fears which constitute
the terror of darkness only adds an agreeable excitement to the sports
of the play-ground. All this was expressed in song shared by the whole
company, which was once the invariable attendant of the dance, so that
the two made up but one idea, and to "sing a dance" and "dance a song"
were identical expressions.
The children's rounds of to-day, in which each form of words has its
accompanying arrangement of the ring, its significant motion and
gesture, thus possess historic interest. For these preserve for us some
picture of the conduct of the ballads, dances, and games which were
once the amusement of the palace as of the hamlet.
The form of the verses used in the games also deserves note. These
usually consist either of a rhyming couplet, or of four lines in
which the second and fourth rhyme; they are often accompanied by a
refrain, which may be a single added line, or may be made up of two
lines inserted into the stanza; and in place of exact consonance, any
assonance, or similarity of sound, will answer for the rhyme. Above
all, they possess the freedom and quaintness, the tendency to vary in
detail while preserving the general idea, which distinguish a living
oral tradition from the monotonous printed page; in these respects,
our rhymes, humble though they be, are marked as the last echo of the
ancient popular poetry.
There is especial reason why an Englishman, or the descendants of
Englishmen, should take pride in the national popular song.[16]
European mediæval tradition was, it is true, in a measure a common
stock; but, though the themes may often have been thus supplied,
the poetic form which was given to that material in each land was
determined by the genius of the language and of the people. Now, among
all its neighbors, the English popular poesy was the most courtly, the
most lyric, the most sweet. So much we can still discern by what time
has spared.
The English ballad was already born when Canute the Dane coasted the
shore of Britain; its golden age was already over when Dante summed
up mediæval thought in the "Divina Commedia;" its reproductive period
was at an end when Columbus enlarged the horizon of Europe to admit a
New World; it was a memory of the past when the American colonies were
founded; but even in its last echoes there lingers we know not what
mysterious charm of freshness, poetic atmosphere, and eternal youth.
Even in these nursery rhymes some grace of the ancient song survives.
A girl is a "red rose," a "pretty fair maid," the "finest flower," the
"flower of May." The verse itself, simple as it is, often corrupted, is
a cry of delight in existence, of satisfaction with nature; its season
is the season of bloom and of love; its refrain is "For we are all so
gay." It comes to us, in its innocence and freshness, like the breath
of a distant and inaccessible garden, tainted now and then by the odors
of intervening city streets. But the vulgarity is modern, accidental;
the pleasure and poetry are of the original essence.
We cannot but look with regret on the threatened disappearance of
these childish traditions, which have given so much happiness to so
many generations, and which a single age has nearly forgotten. These
songs have fulfilled the conditions of healthy amusement, as nothing
else can do. The proper performance of the round, or conduct of the
sport, was to youthful minds a matter of the most serious concern--a
little drama which could be represented over and over for hours, in
which self-consciousness was absorbed in the ambition of the actors
to set forth properly their parts. The recital had that feature which
distinguishes popular tradition in general, and wherein it is so
poorly replaced by literature. Here was no repetition by rote; but the
mind and heart were active, the spirit of the language appropriated,
and a vein of deep though childish poetry nourished sentiment and
imagination. It seems a thousand pities that the ancient tree should
not continue to blossom; that whatever may have been acrid or tasteless
in the fruit cannot be corrected by the ingrafting of a later time.
There is something so agreeable in the idea of an inheritance of
thought kept up by childhood itself, created for and adapted to its
own needs, that it is hard to consent to part with it. The loss cannot
be made good by the deliberate invention of older minds. Children's
amusement, directed and controlled by grown people, would be neither
childish nor amusing. True child's play is a sacred mystery, at which
their elders can only obtain glances by stealth through the crevice of
the curtain. Children will never adopt as their own tradition the games
which may be composed or remodelled, professedly for their amusement,
but with the secret purpose of moral direction.
We do not mean, however, to sigh over natural changes. These amusements
came into existence because they were adapted to the conditions of
early life; they pass away because those conditions are altered. The
taste of other days sustained them; the taste of our day abandons them.
This surrender is only one symptom of a mighty change which has come
over the human mind, and which bids fair to cause the recent time, a
thousand years hence, to be looked back upon as a dividing-mark in
the history of intelligence. If it should turn out that the childhood
of the human intellect is passing gradually into the "light of common
day"--if the past is to be looked back upon with that affectionate
though unreasoning interest with which a grown man remembers his
imaginative youth--then every fragment which illustrates that past will
possess an attraction independent of its intrinsic value.
III.
_MAY GAMES._
All lovers' hearts that are in care
To their ladies they do repair,
In fresh mornings before the day,
Before the day;
And are in mirth aye more and more,
Through gladness of this lovely May,
Through gladness of this lovely May.
_Old Song._
Children's rhymes and songs have been handed down in two principal
ways. First, they have been used for winter amusements, particularly
at the Christmas season,[17] as has from time immemorial been the case
in northern countries; and, secondly, they have been sung as rounds
and dances, especially during summer evenings, upon the village green
or city sidewalk. The latter custom is fast becoming extinct, though
the circling ring of little girls "on the green grass turning" may
now and then be still observed; but a generation since the practice
was common with all classes. The proper time for such sports is the
early summer; and many of our rounds declare themselves in words, as
well as by sentiment, to be the remainder of the ancient May dances.
To render this clear, it will be necessary to give some account of the
May festival; but we shall confine ourselves to customs of which we
can point out relics in our own land. These we can illustrate, without
repeating the descriptions of English writers, from Continental usage,
which was in most respects identical with old English practice.
It was an ancient habit for the young men of a village, on the eve
of the holiday, to go into the forests and select the tallest and
straightest tree which could be found. This was adorned with ribbons
and flowers, brought home with great ceremony, and planted in front
of the church, or at the door of some noted person, where it remained
permanently to form the centre of sports and dances. The May-pole
itself, the songs sung about it, and the maiden who was queen of the
feast, were alike called _May_. In the absence of any classic mention,
the universality of the practice in mediæval Europe, and the common
Latin name, may be taken as proof that similar usages made part of the
festival held about the calends of May--the _Floralia_ or _Majuma_.
Notwithstanding all that has been said about the license of this
festival in the days of the Empire, it is altogether probable that
the essential character of the feast of Flora or Maia was not very
different from its mediæval or modern survival. The abundance of
flowers, the excursions to the mountains, the decoration of houses, and
the very name of Flora, prove that, whatever abuses may have introduced
themselves, and whatever primitive superstitions may have been
intermingled--superstitions to an early time harmless and pure, and
only in the decline of faith the source of offence and corruption--the
population of ancient Italy shared that natural and innocent delight
in the season of blossom which afterwards affected to more conscious
expression Chaucer and Milton.
This "bringing home of summer and May" was symbolic; the tree, dressed
out in garlands, typifying the fertility of the year. As in all such
rites, the songs and dances, of a more or less religious character,
were supposed to have the power of causing the productiveness which
they extolled or represented.[18] These practices, however, were not
merely superstitious; mirth and music expressed the delight of the
human heart, in its simplicity, at the reappearance of verdure and
blossom, and thanksgiving to the generous Bestower, which, so long as
man shall exist on earth, will be instinctively awakened by the bright
opening of the annual drama. Superstition has been the support about
which poetry has twined: it is a common mistake of investigators to
be content with pointing out the former, and overlooking the coeval
existence of the latter. Thus the natural mirth and merriment of
the season blended with the supposed efficacy of the rite; and the
primitive character of the ring-dance appears to be the circle about
the sacred tree in honor of the period of bloom.
A relic, though a trifling one, of the ancient custom, may be seen
in some of our cities on the early days of the month. In New York,
at least, groups of children may then be observed carrying through
the streets a pole painted with gay stripes, ribbons depending from
its top, which are held at the end by members of the little company.
These proceed, perhaps, to the Central Park, where they conduct their
festivities, forming the ring, and playing games which are included
in our collection. Within a few years, however, these afternoon
expeditions have become rare.
The May-pole, as we have described it, belonged to the village; but
a like usage was kept up by individuals. It was the duty of every
lover to go into the woods on the eve or early morn of May-day, and
bring thence boughs and garlands, which he either planted before the
door of his mistress, or affixed thereto, according to local custom.
The particular tree, or _bush_ (this expression meaning no more than
bough), preferred for the purpose was the hawthorn, which is properly
the tree of May, as blooming in the month the name of which it has in
many countries received. A belief in the protective influence of the
_white-thorn_, when attached to the house-door, dates back to Roman
times. The May-tree, whatever its species, was often adorned with
ribbons and silk, with fruit or birds, sometimes with written poems.
The lover brought his offering at early dawn, and it was the duty of
his mistress to be present at her window and receive it; thus we have
in a song of the fifteenth or sixteenth century from the Netherlands--
Fair maiden, lie you still asleep,
And let the morning go?
Arise, arise, accept the May,
That stands here all a-blow.
An English carol alludes to the same practice--
A branch of May I bring to you,
Before your door it stands.[19]
The custom was so universal as to give rise to proverbial expressions.
Thus, in Italy, "to plant a May at every door" meant to be very
susceptible; and in France, to "esmayer" a girl was to court her.
Some of our readers may be surprised to learn that an offshoot of
this usage still exists in the United States; the custom, namely, of
hanging "May baskets." A half-century since, in Western Massachusetts,
a lad would rise early on May-morning, perhaps at three o'clock,
and go into the fields. He gathered the trailing arbutus (the only
flower there available at the season), and with his best skill made a
"basket," by the aid of "winter-green" and similar verdure. This he
cautiously affixed to the door of any girl whom he wished to honor.
She was left to guess the giver. The practice is still common in many
parts of the country, but in a different form. Both boys and girls
make "May baskets," and on May-eve attach them to each other's doors,
ringing at the same time the house-bell. A pursuit follows, and whoever
can capture the responsible person is entitled to a kiss. We do not
venture to assert that the latter usage is entirely a corruption of the
former.[20]
The term "May-baskets" is no doubt a modernized form of the old English
word "May-buskets," employed by Spenser.[21] _Buskets_ are no more
than _bushes_--that is, as we have already explained, the flowering
branches of hawthorn or other tree, picked early on the May-morn, and
used to decorate the house. It seems likely that a misunderstanding of
the word changed the fashion of the usage; the American lad, instead of
attaching a bough, hung a basket to his sweetheart's door.
A French writer pleasantly describes the customs of which we are
speaking, as they exist in his own province of Champagne: "The hours
have passed; it is midnight; the doors of the young lads open. Each
issues noiselessly. He holds in his hand branches and bouquets,
garlands and crowns of flowers. Above the gate of his mistress his
hand, trembling with love, places his mysterious homage; then, quietly
as he came, he retires, saying, 'Perhaps she has seen me.' ... The day
dawns. Up! boys and girls! up! it is the first of May! up, and sing!
The young men, decked out with ribbons and wild-flowers, go from door
to door to sing the month of May and their love."
Of the morning song and dance about the "bush," or branches of trees
planted as we have described, we have evidence in the words of American
rhymes. Thus--
As we go round the _mulberry-bush_,
_All on a frosty morning_.
In one or two instances, a similar refrain figures in the childish
sports of little girls, who have probably got it by imitation; in
others, it is the sign of an old May game.[22] An English writer of the
sixteenth century alludes to the morning dance in a way which proves
that these songs really represent the practice of his time.[23]
The playing of May games was by no means confined to the exact date of
the festival. The sign of a country tavern in England was a thorn-bush
fixed on a pole, and about this "bush" took place the dance of wedding
companies who came to the tavern to feast, whence this post was called
the _bride's stake_. Whether the thorn-bush was introduced into the
"New English" settlements we cannot say; but the dancing at weddings
was common, at least among that portion of those communities which was
not bound by the religious restraint that controlled the ruling class.
There were, as a French refugee wrote home in 1688, "all kinds of life
and manners" in the colonies. In the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 7th
May, 1651, the General Court resolved, "Whereas it is observed that
there are many abuses and disorders by dauncinge in ordinaryes, whether
mixt or unmixt, upon marriage of some persons, this court doth order,
that henceforward there shall be no dauncinge upon such occasion, or at
other times, in ordinaryes, upon the paine of five shillings, for every
person that shall so daunce in ordinaryes." While youth in the cities
might be as gay as elsewhere, in many districts the Puritan spirit
prevailed, and the very name of dancing was looked on with aversion.
But the young people met this emergency with great discretion; they
simply called their amusements _playing games_, and under this name
kept up many of the rounds which were the time-honored dances of the
old country.
The French writer whom we have already had occasion to quote goes
on to speak of the customs of the younger girls of his province--the
_bachelettes_, as they are called. "On the first of May, dressed in
white, they put at their head the sweetest and prettiest of their
number. They robe her for the occasion: a white veil, a crown of white
flowers adorn her head; she carries a candle in her hand; she is their
queen, she is the _Trimouzette_. Then, all together, they go from door
to door singing the song of the _Trimouzettes_; they ask contributions
for adorning the altar of the Virgin, for celebrating, in a joyous
repast, the festival of the Queen of Heaven."
This May procession, which has been the custom of girls for centuries,
from Spain to Denmark, existed, perhaps still exists, in New England.
Until very recently, children in all parts of the United States
maintained the ancient habit of rising at dawn of May-day, and sallying
forth in search of flowers. The writer well remembers his own youthful
excursions, sometimes rewarded, even in chilly Massachusetts, by
the early blue star of the hepatica, or the pink drooping bell of
the anemone. The maids, too, had rites of their own. In those days,
troops of young girls might still be seen, bareheaded and dressed in
white, their May-queen crowned with a garland of colored paper. But
common-sense has prevailed at last over poetic tradition; and as an act
of homage to east winds, a hostile force more powerful at that period
than the breath of Flora, it has been agreed that summer in New England
does not begin until June.
These May-day performances, however, were originally no children's
custom; in this, as in so many other respects, the children have only
proved more conservative of old habit than their elders. There can be
no doubt that these are the survivals of the ancient processions of
Ceres, Maia, Flora, or by whatever other name the "good goddess," the
patroness of the fertile earth, was named, in which she was solemnly
borne forth to view and bless the fields. The queen of May herself
represents the mistress of Spring; she seems properly only to have
overlooked the games in which she took no active part.[24]
A writer of the fifteenth century thus describes the European custom of
his day: "A girl adorned with precious garments, seated on a chariot
filled with leaves and flowers, was called the queen of May; and the
girls who accompanied her as her handmaidens, addressing the youths
who passed by, demanded money for their queen. This festivity is still
preserved in many countries, especially Spain." The usage survives in
the dolls which in parts of England children carry round in baskets of
flowers on May-day, requesting contributions.
Of this custom a very poetical example, not noticed by English
collectors, has fallen under our own observation. We will suppose
ourselves in Cornwall on May-day; the grassy banks of the sunken lanes
are gay with the domestic blooms dear to old poetry; the grass is
starry with pink and white daisies; the spreading limbs of the beech
are clad in verdure, and among the budding elms of the hedge-rows
"birds of every sort" "send forth their notes and make great mirth."
A file of children, rosy-faced boys of five or six years, is seen
approaching; their leader is discoursing imitative music on a wooden
fife, to whose imaginary notes the rest keep time with dancing steps.
The second and third of the party carry a miniature ship; its cargo,
its rigging, are blooms of the season, bluebells and wall-flowers;
the ship is borne from door to door, where stand the smiling farmers
and their wives; none is too poor to add a penny to the store. As the
company vanishes at the turn of the lane, we feel that the merriment of
the children has more poetically rendered the charm of the season than
even the song of the birds.
There is in America no especial song of the festival, though children
at the May parties of which we have spoken still keep up the "springing
and leaping" which mediæval writers speak of as practised by them at
this occasion. Popular songs are, however, still remembered in Europe,
where their burden is, May has come! or, Welcome to May! Pleasing and
lyric is the song of the "Trimazos," the lay of the processions of
girls to which we have alluded, though its simplicity becomes more
formal in our version of the provincial French:
It is the merry month of May, Winter has taken flight;
I could not keep my heart at home that bounded for delight:
And as I went, and as I came, I sang to the season gay,
It is the May, the merry May, the merry month of May!
E'en as I came the meadows by, the wheat-fields have I seen,
The hawthorn branches all a-flower, the oat-fields growing green;
O Trimazos!
It is the May, the merry May, the merry month of May!
Madam, I thank you for your coin, and for your courtesy;
It is for Mary and her Babe, and it is not for me:
But I will pray the Child for you to whom your gift is given,
That he return it you again more royally in heaven.
So, in the Vosges, young girls fasten a bough of laurel to the hat of a
young man whom they may meet on the way, wishing
That God may give him health and joy,
And the love that he loves best:
Take the May, the lovely May.
They ask a gift, but not for themselves:
It shall be for the Virgin Mary,
So good and so dear:
Take the May, the lovely May.
Corresponding to the French song from which we have quoted is the
English May carol, similarly sung from dwelling to dwelling:
Rise up the mistress of this house, with gold along your breast,
For the summer springs so fresh, green, and gay;
And if your body be asleep, we hope your soul's at rest,
Drawing near to the merry month of May.
God bless this house and harbor, your riches and your store,
For the summer springs so fresh, green, and gay;
We hope the Lord will prosper you, both now and evermore,
Drawing near to the merry month of May.
The frequent allusions of the earlier English poets to "doing May
observance," or the "rite of May," show us how all ranks of society, in
their time, were still animated by the spirit of those primitive faiths
to which we owe much of our sensibility to natural impressions. Milton
himself, though a Puritan, appears to approve the usages of the season,
and even employs the ancient feminine impersonation of the maternal
tenderness and bounty of nature, invoking the month:
The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.
Time, and the changes of taste, have at last proved too strong for the
persistency of custom; the practices by which blooming youth expressed
its sympathy with the bloom of the year have perished, taking with
them much of the poetry of the season, and that inherited sentiment
which was formerly the possession of the ignorant as well as of the
cultivated class.
IV.
_THE INVENTIVENESS OF CHILDREN._
In the days of childhood new,
When Time had years and ours were few,
Here on grassy fields at play,
Ran we this, the other way;
On this very meadow-ground
First violets found,
Where the cattle graze to-day.
_Minnesinger, 13th Century._
The student of popular traditions is accustomed to recognize the
most trifling incidents of a tale, or the phrases of a song, as an
adaptation of some ancient or foreign counterpart, perhaps removed
by an interval of centuries. It is the same with rhymes of the sort
included in this collection, in which formulas of sport, current in
our own day and in the New World, will be continually found to be the
legacy of other generations and languages. Should we then infer that
childhood, devoid of inventive capacity, has no resource but mechanical
repetition?
We may, on the contrary, affirm that children have an especially lively
imagination. Observe a little girl who has attended her mother for
an airing in some city park. The older person, quietly seated beside
the footpath, is half absorbed in revery; takes little notice of
passers-by, or of neighboring sights or sounds, further than to cast
an occasional glance which may inform her of the child's security. The
other, left to her own devices, wanders contented within the limited
scope, incessantly prattling to herself; now climbing an adjoining
rock, now flitting like a bird from one side of the pathway to the
other. Listen to her monologue, flowing as incessantly and musically
as the bubbling of a spring; if you can catch enough to follow her
thought, you will find a perpetual romance unfolding itself in her
mind. Imaginary personages accompany her footsteps; the properties
of a childish theatre exist in her fancy; she sustains a conversation
in three or four characters. The roughnesses of the ground, the hasty
passage of a squirrel, the chirping of a sparrow, are occasions
sufficient to suggest an exchange of impressions between the unreal
figures with which her world is peopled. If she ascends, not without a
stumble, the artificial rockwork, it is with the expressed solicitude
of a mother who guides an infant by the edge of a precipice; if she
raises her glance to the waving green overhead, it is with the cry
of pleasure exchanged by playmates who trip from home on a sunshiny
day. The older person is confined within the barriers of memory and
experience; the younger breathes the free air of creative fancy.
A little older grown, such a child becomes the inventor of legend.
Every house, every hill in the neighborhood, is the locality of an
adventure. Every drive includes spots already famous in supposed
history, and passes by the abodes of fancied acquaintances. Into a land
with few traditions the imagination of six years has introduced a whole
cycle of romance.
If the family or vicinity contains a group of such minds, fancy takes
outward form in dramatic performance. The school history is vitalized
into reality; wars are waged and battles performed in a more extended
version, while pins and beans signify squadrons and regiments. Romances
are acted, tales of adventure represented with distribution of rôles.
Thus, in a family of our acquaintance, the children treasured up
wood-engravings, especially such as were cut from the illustrated
journals: runaway horses, Indian chiefs, and trappers of the wilderness
were at an especial premium. These they stored in boxes, encamped
in different corners of the room, and performed a whole library of
sensational tales. A popular piece set forth the destruction of the
villain of the story by a shark, while navigating a _catamaran_. The
separated beds of the sleeping-room represented the open planks of
the raft; the gentlest and most compliant character personified the
malefactor; and the shark swam between the bedsteads.
Where sports require or allow such freedom, the ingenuity of children
puts to shame the dulness of later years, and many a young lady of
twenty would find it impossible to construct the dialogue which eight
summers will devise without an effort. It was a favorite amusement
of two girls just entering their teens to conduct a boarding-school.
The scholars and the teachers of the imaginary school were all named,
and these characters were taken in dialogue by the little actors,
each sustaining several perfectly well-defined parts. The pupils
pursued their pleasures and their studies according to their several
tastes; while their progress, their individual accomplishments and
offences, were subsequently gravely discussed by the instructors, and
the condition, prospects, and management of the institution talked
over. Thus, hour after hour, without hesitation or weariness, the
conversation proceeded, with the duo of friends for actors and audience!
Oftentimes, with young children, an outward support is required for
fancy, an object to be mentally transformed. One set of little girls
collected in the fall birch-leaves, changed to yellow, out of which
alone they created their little nursery. Another party employed pins,
which they inserted in a board, and called pin-fairies. By the aid
of these, long dramatizations were performed, costumes devised, and
palaces decorated, under regulations rigidly observed.
Such exercises of imagination are usually conducted in strict privacy,
and unremarked, or not understood, by parents; but when the attention
of the latter is directed to these performances, they are often
astonished by the readiness they disclose, and are apt to mistake for
remarkable talent what is only the ease of the winged fancy of youth,
which flies lightly to heights where later age must laboriously mount
step by step.
As infancy begins to speak by the free though unconscious combination
of linguistic elements, so childhood retains in language a measure
of freedom. A little attention to the jargons invented by children
might have been serviceable to certain philologists. Their love of
originality finds the tongue of their elders too commonplace; besides,
their fondness for mystery requires secret ways of communication. They
therefore often create (so to speak) new languages, which are formed by
changes in the mother-speech, but sometimes have quite complicated laws
of structure, and a considerable arbitrary element.
The most common of these, which are classified by young friends under
the general name of _gibberish_, goes in New England by the name of
"Hog Latin." It consists simply in the addition of the syllable _ery_,
preceded by the sound of hard _g_, to every word. Even this is puzzling
to older persons, who do not at first perceive that "Wiggery youggery
goggery wiggery miggery" means only "Will you go with me!" Children
sometimes use this device so perpetually that parents fear lest they
may never recover the command of their native English. When it ceases
to give pleasure, new dialects are devised. Certain young friends of
ours at first changed the termination thus--"Withus yoovus govus
withus meevus?" which must be answered, "Ivus withus govus withus
yoovus;" the language, seemingly, not admitting a direct affirmative.
The next step was to make a more complicated system by prefixing a
_u_ (or _oo_) sound with a vowel suffix. Thus, "Will you go with me
to lunch?" would be "Uwilla uoa ugoa uwitha umea utoa uluncha?" But
this contrivance, adopted by all the children of a neighborhood,[25]
was attended with variations incapable of reduction to rule, but
dependent on practice and instinct. The speech could be learned, like
any other, only by experience; and a little girl assured us that she
could not comprehend a single word until, in the course of a month, she
had learned it by ear. She added, in regard to a particular dialect,
that it was much harder than French, and that her brother had to think
a great deal when he used it. The application of euphonic rules was
more or less arbitrary. Thus, _understand_ would be _uery-uinste_.
The following will answer for a specimen of a conversation between a
child and a nurse who has learned the tongue: "Uery uisy uemy uity?"
"Up-stairs, on the screen in your room." The child had asked, "Where is
my hat?"
A group of children living near Boston invented the _cat language_,
so called because its object was to admit of free intercourse with
cats, to whom it was mostly talked, and by whom it was presumed to be
comprehended. In this tongue the cat was naturally the chief subject
of nomenclature; all feline positions were observed and named, and the
language was rich in such epithets, as Arabic contains a vast number
of expressions for _lion_. Euphonic changes were very arbitrary and
various, differing for the same termination; but the adverbial ending
_ly_ was always _osh_; _terribly_, _tirriblosh_. A certain percentage
of words were absolutely independent, or at least of obscure origin.
The grammar tended to Chinese or infantine simplicity; _ta_ represented
any case of any personal pronoun. A proper name might vary in sound
according to the euphonic requirement of the different Christian-names
by which it was preceded. There were two dialects, one, however,
stigmatized as _provincial_.
This invention of language must be very common, since other cases have
fallen under our notice in which children have composed dictionaries of
such.
It would be strange if children who exhibit so much inventive talent
did not contrive new games; and we find accordingly that in many
families a great part of the amusements of the children are of their
own devising. The earliest age of which the writer has authentic record
of such ingenuity is two and a half years.
Considering the space which our Indian tribes occupy in the imagination
of young Americans, it is remarkable that the red man has no place
whatever in the familiar and authorized sports. On the other hand,
savage life has often furnished material for individual and local
amusements.
Near the country place of a family within our knowledge was a patch of
brushwood containing about forty acres, and furnishing an admirable
ground for savage warfare. Accordingly, a regular game was devised.
The players were divided into Indians and hunters, the former uttering
their war-cry in such dialect as youthful imagination regarded as
aboriginal. The players laid ambushes for each other in the forest, and
the game ended with the extermination of one party or the other. This
warfare was regulated by strict rules, the presentation of a musket at
a fixed distance being regarded as equivalent to death.
In a town of Massachusetts, some thirty years since, it was customary
for the school-girls, during recess, to divide themselves into separate
tribes. Shawls spread over tent-poles represented Indian lodges, and
a girl always resorted to her allotted habitation. This was kept up
for the whole summer, and carried out with such earnestness that girls
belonging to hostile tribes, though otherwise perfectly good friends,
would often not speak to each other for weeks, in or out of school.
In the same town was a community of "Friends," or "Quakers." It was the
custom for children of these to play at meeting. Sitting about the room
on a "First-day" gathering, one of them would be moved by the spirit,
rise, and exhort in the sing-song tone common to the meeting-house.
There was a regular formula for this amusement--a speech which the
children had somewhere heard and found laughable: "My de-ar friends,
I've been a thinking and a thinking and a thinking; I see the blinking
and the winking; pennyroyal tea is very good for a cold."
A young lady of our acquaintance, as a child, invented a game of
pursuit, which she called Spider and Fly. The Flies, sitting on the
house-stairs, buzzed in and out of the door, where they were exposed
to the surprise of the Spider. The children of the neighborhood still
maintain the sport, which is almost the exact equivalent of a world-old
game whose formula is given in our collection.
We need not go on to illustrate our thesis. But it remains true that
the great mass of the sports here presented are not merely old, but
have existed in many countries, with formulas which have passed from
generation to generation. How are we to reconcile this fact with the
quick invention we ascribe to children?
The simple reason why the amusements of children are inherited is the
same as the reason why language is inherited. It is the necessity of
general currency, and the difficulty of obtaining it, which restricts
the variation of one and of the other. If a sport is familiar only to
one locality or one set of children, it passes away as soon as the
youthful fancy of that region grows weary of it. Besides, the old
games, which have prevailed and become familiar by a process of natural
selection, are usually better adapted to children's taste than any new
inventions can be; they are recommended by the quaintness of formulas
which come from the remote past, and strike the young imagination as a
sort of sacred law. From these causes, the same customs have survived
for centuries through all changes of society, until the present age has
involved all popular traditions, those of childhood as of maturity, in
a general ruin.
V.
_THE CONSERVATISM OF CHILDREN._
Here, as girl's duty is, Timarete lays down her cymbals,
Places the ball that she loved, carries the net of her hair;
Maiden, and bride to be, her maids[26] to maid Artemis renders,
And with her favorites too offers their various wardrobe.
_Greek Anthology._
As the light-footed and devious fancy of childhood, within its assigned
limits, easily outstrips the grave progress of mature years, so the
obedience of children is far more scrupulous not to overstep the
limits of the path. It is a provision of nature, in order to secure
the preservation of the race, that each generation should begin with
the unquestioning reception of the precepts of that which it follows.
No deputy is so literal, no nurse so Rhadamanthine, as one child left
in charge of another. The same precision appears in the conduct of
sports. The formulas of play are as Scripture, of which no jot or
tittle is to be repealed. Even the inconsequent rhymes of the nursery
must be recited in the form in which they first became familiar; as
many a mother has learned, who has found the versions familiar to her
own infancy condemned as inaccurate, and who is herself sufficiently
affected by superstition to feel a little shocked, as if a sacred canon
had been irreligiously violated.
The life of the past never seems so comprehensible, and the historic
interval never so insignificant, as when the conduct and demeanor of
children are in question. Of all human relations, the most simple and
permanent one is that of parent and child. The loyalty which makes a
clansman account his own interests as trifling in comparison with those
of his chieftain, or subjects consider their own prosperity as included
in their sovereign's, belongs to a disappearing society; the affection
of the sexes is dependent, for the form of its manifestation, on the
varying usages of nations; but the behavior of little children, and of
their parents in reference to them, has undergone small change since
the beginnings of history. Homer might have taken for his model the
nursery of our own day, when, in the words of Achilles' rebuke to the
grief of Patroclus, he places before us a Greek mother and her baby--
Patroclus, why dost thou weep, like a child too young to speak plainly,
A girl who runs after her mother, and cries in arms to be taken,
Catching hold of her garment, and keeping her back from her errand,
Looking up to her tearful, until she pauses and lifts her?
And the passage is almost too familiar to cite--
Hector the radiant spoke, and reached out his arms for the baby;
But the infant cried out, and hid his face in the bosom
Of his nurse gayly-girdled, fearing the look of his father,
Scared by the gleam of the bronze, and the helmet crested with
horse-hair,
Dreading to see it wave from the lofty height of the forehead.
In the same manner, too, as the feelings and tastes of children have
not been changed by time, they are little altered by civilization, so
that similar usages may be acceptable both to the cultivated nations of
Europe and to the simpler races on their borders.
It is natural, therefore, that the common toys of children should be
world-old. The tombs of Attica exhibit dolls of classic or ante-classic
time, of ivory or terra-cotta, the finer specimens with jointed arms
or legs. Even in Greece, as it seems, these favorites of the nursery
were often modelled in wax; they were called by a pet name, indicating
that their owners stood to them in the relation of mamma to baby; they
had their own wardrobes and housekeeping apparatus. The Temple of
Olympian Zeus at Elis contained, says Pausanias, the little bed with
which Hippodamia had played. But the usage goes much further back.
Whoever has seen the wooden slats which served for the cheaper class of
the dolls of ancient Egypt, in which a few marks pass for mouth, nose,
and eyes, will have no difficulty in imagining that their possessors
regarded them with maternal affection, since all the world knows that a
little girl will lavish more tenderness on a stuffed figure than on a
Paris doll, the return of affection being proportional to the outlay of
imagination.
When Greek and Roman girls had reached an age supposed to be superior
to such amusements, they were expected to offer their toys on the
altar of their patroness, to whatever goddess might belong that
function, Athene or Artemis, Diana or Venus Libitina. If such an act
of devotion was made at the age of seven years, as alleged, one can
easily understand that many a child must have wept bitterly over the
sacrifice. To this usage refers the charming quatrain, a version of
which we have set as the motto of our chapter.
Children's rattles have from the most ancient times been an important
article of nursery furniture. Hollow balls containing a loose pebble,
which served this purpose, belong to the most ancient classic times.
These "rattles," however, often had a more artistic form, lyre-shaped
with a moving plectrum; or the name was used for little separate
metallic figures--"charms," as we now say--strung together so as to
jingle, and worn in a necklace. Such were afterwards preserved with
great care; in the comic drama they replace the "strawberry mark" by
which the father recognizes his long-lost child. Thus, in the "Rudens"
of Plautus, Palæstra, who has lost in shipwreck her casket, finds a
fisherman in possession of it, and claims her property. Both agree to
accept Dæmones, the unknown father of the maiden, as arbiter. Dæmones
demands, "Stand off, girl, and tell me, what is in the wallet?"
"Playthings."[27] "Right, I see them; what do they look like?" "First,
a little golden sword with letters on it." "Tell me, what are the
letters?" "My father's name. Then there is a two-edged axe, also of
gold, and lettered; my mother's name is on the axe.... Then a silver
sickle, and two clasped hands, and a little pig, and a golden heart,
which my father gave me on my birthday." "It is she; I can no longer
keep myself from embracing her. Hail, my daughter!"
In the ancient North, too, children played with figures of animals.
The six-year-old Arngrim is described in a saga as generously making a
present of his little brass horse to his younger brother Steinolf; it
was more suitable to the latter's age, he thought.
The weapons of boys still preserve the memory of those used by
primitive man. The bow and arrow, the sling, the air-gun, the yet
more primeval club or stone, are skilfully handled by them. Their
use of the top and ball has varied but little from the Christian
era to the present day. It is, therefore, not surprising that many
games are nearly the same as when Pollux described them in the second
century.[28] Yet it interests us to discover that not only the sports
themselves, but also the words of the formulas by which they are
conducted, are in certain cases older than the days of Plato and
Xenophon.[29]
We have already set forth the history contained in certain appellations
of the song and dance. If the very name of the _chorus_ has survived
in Europe to the present day, so the character of the classic round
is perpetuated in the ring games of modern children. Only in a single
instance, but that a most curious one, have the words of a Greek
children's round been preserved. This is the "tortoise-game," given by
Pollux, and we will let his words speak for themselves:
"The _tortoise_ is a girl's game, like the _pot_; one sits, and is
called _tortoise_. The rest go about asking:
"O torti-tortoise, in the ring what doest thou?"
She answers:
"I twine the wool, and spin the fine Milesian thread."
The first again:
"Tell us, how was it that thy offspring died?"
To which she says:
"He plunged in ocean from the backs of horses white."
Our author does not tell us how the game ended; but from his comparison
to the "pot-game"[30] we conclude that the tortoise immediately dives
into the "ocean" (the ring) to catch whom she can.
This quaint description shows us that the game-formulas of ancient
times were to the full as incoherent and obscure as those of our
day frequently are. The alliterative name of the tortoise,[31] too,
reminding us of the repetitions of modern nursery tales, speaks volumes
for the character of Greek childish song.
Kissing games, also, were as familiar in the classic period as in later
time; for Pollux quotes the Athenian comic poet Crates as saying of a
coquette that she "plays kissing games in rings of boys, preferring the
handsome ones."
It must be confessed, however, that we can offer nothing so graceful
as the cry with which Greek girls challenged each other to the race,
an exclamation which we may render, "Now, fairies!"[32]--the maidens
assuming for the nonce the character of the light-footed nymphs of
forest or stream.
Coming down to mediæval time, we find that the poets constantly refer
to the life of children, with which they have the deepest sympathy, and
which they invest with a bright poetry, putting later writers to shame
by comparison. That early period, in its frank enjoyment of life, was
not far from the spirit of childhood. Wolfram of Eschenbach represents
a little girl as praising her favorite doll:
None is so fair
As my daughter there.
The German proverb still is "Happy as a doll."
It has been remarked how, in all times, the different sex and destiny
of boys and girls are unconsciously expressed in the choice and conduct
of their pleasures. "Women," says a writer of the seventeenth century,
"have an especial fondness for children. That is seen in little girls,
who, though they know not so much as that they are maids, yet in their
childish games carry about dolls made of rags, rock them, cradle them,
and care for them; while boys build houses, ride on a hobby-horse, busy
themselves with making swords and erecting altars."
Like causes have occasioned the simultaneous disappearance of like
usages in countries widely separated. In the last generation children
still sang in our own towns the ancient summons to the evening sports--
Boys and girls, come out to play,
The moon it shines as bright as day;
and similarly in Provence, the girls who conducted their ring-dances in
the public squares, at the stroke of ten sang:
Ten hours said,
Maids to bed.
But the usage has departed in the quiet cities of Southern France, as
in the busy marts of America.
It is much, however, to have the pleasant memory of the ancient rules
which youth established to direct its own amusement, and to know that
our own land, new as by comparison it is, has its legitimate share in
the lore of childhood, in considering which we overleap the barriers
of time, and are placed in communion with the happy infancy of all
ages. Let us illustrate our point, and end these prefatory remarks,
with a version of the description of his own youth given by a poet of
half a thousand years since--no mean singer, though famous in another
field of letters--the chronicler Jean Froissart. He regards all the
careless pleasures of infancy as part of the unconscious education
of the heart, and the thoughtless joy of childhood as the basis of
the happiness of maturity; a deep and true conception, which we have
nowhere seen so exquisitely developed, and which he illuminates with a
ray of that genuine genius which remains always modern in its universal
appropriateness, when, recounting the sports of his own early life,[33]
many of which we recognize as still familiar, he writes:
In that early childish day
I was never tired to play
Games that children every one
Love until twelve years are done;
To dam up a rivulet
With a tile, or else to let
A small saucer for a boat
Down the purling gutter float;
Over two bricks, at our will,
To erect a water-mill;
And in the end wash clean from dirt,
In the streamlet, cap and shirt.
We gave heart and eye together
To see scud a sailing feather;
After I was put to school,
Where ignorance is brought to rule,
_There were girls as young as I_;
_These I courted, by-and-by_,
_Little trinkets offering--
A pear, an apple, or glass ring_;
For their favor to obtain
Seemed great prowess to me then,
_And, sober earnest, so it is_.
And now and then it pleased us well
To sift dust through a piercèd shell
On our coats; or in time ripe,
To cut out a wheaten pipe.
In those days for dice and chess
Cared we busy children less
Than mud pies and buns to make,
And heedfully in oven bake
Of four bricks; and when came Lent,
Out was brought a complement
Of river-shells, from secret hold,
Estimated above gold,
To play away, as I thought meet,
With the children of our street;
And as they tossed a counter, I
Stood and shouted, "Pitch it high!"
When the moon was shining bright
We would play in summer night
_Pince-merine_; and time so passed,
I was more eager at the last
Than outset, and I thought it shame
When I was made to stop my game.
More to tell, we practised too
The sport entitled _Queue loo loo_,[34]
_Hook_, _Trottot Merlot_, _Pebbles_, _Ball_;
And when we had assembled all,
_Pears_, swiftly running; or were lief
To play at _Engerrant the Thief_.
Now and then, for a race-course,
Of a staff we made a horse,
And called him _Gray_; or, in knight's guise,
We put our caps on helmet-wise;
And many a time, beside a maid,
A mimic house of shells I made.
Upon occasions we would choose
_The one who hit me I accuse_,
_Take Colin off_; and by-and-by
Selected _King who does not lie_,
_Ring_, _Prison-bars_; or were content,
When in-doors, with _Astonishment_,
_Oats_, _Scorn_, or _Riddles_; nor forget
_Replies_, and _Grasses_, _Cligne-musette_,
_Retreat_, and _Mule_, and _Hunt the Hare_;
_Leaping_ and _Palm-ball_ had their share,
_Salt Cowshorn_, and _Charette Michaut_;
And oftentimes we chose to throw
Pebbles or pence against a stake;
Or small pits in the ground would make,
And play at nuts, which he who lost,
His pleasure bitterly was crossed.
To drive a top was my delight
From early morning until night;
Or to blow, single or double,
Through a tube a bright soap-bubble,
Or a batch of three or four,
To rejoice our eyes the more.
Games like these, and more beside,
Late and early have I plied.
Followed a season of concern;
Latin I was made to learn;
And if I missed, I was a dunce,
And must be beaten for the nonce.
So manners changed, as hands severe
Trained me to knowledge and to fear.
Yet lessons done, when I was free,
Quiet I could never be,
But fought with my own mates, and thus
Was vanquished or victorious;
And many a time it was my fate
To come home in a ragged state
And meet reproof and chastisement;
But, after all, 'twas pains misspent;
For, let a comrade come in sight,
That moment I had taken flight,
And none could hinder; in that hour
Pleasure unto me was power,
Though oft I found, as I find still,
The two inadequate to my will.
Thus I did the time employ--
So may Heaven give me joy--
That all things tended to my pleasure,
Both my labor and my leisure,
Being alert and being still;
Hours had I at my own will.
Then a wreath of violets,
To give maids for coronets,
Was to me of more account
Than the present of a count,
Twenty marks, would be to-day;
I had a heart content and gay,
And a soul more free and light
Than the verse may well recite.
So, to fashion form and feature,
Co-operated Love and Nature:
Nature made the body strong,
And forces that to Love belong,
Soft and generous the heart;
Truly, if in every part
Of the body soul did live,
I should have been sensitive!
Not a splendor upon earth
I esteemed so seeing-worth
As clustered violets, or a bed
Of peonies or roses red.
When approached the winter-time,
And out-of-doors was cold and rime,
No loss had I what to do,
But read romances old and new,
And did prefer, the rest above,
Those of which the theme was love,
Imagining, as on I went,
Everything to my content.
Thus, since infantine delight
Oft inclines the heart aright,
After his own living form
Love my spirit did inform,
And pleasure into profit turned;
For the fortitude I learned,
And the soul of high emprise,
Hath such merit in my eyes,
That its worth and preciousness
Words of mine cannot express.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Boston.
[2] See Nos. 40 and 58.
[3] See No. 21.
[4] See No. 2.
[5] See No. 1.
[6] More than three fourths of all children's games in the German
collections are paralleled (it may be in widely varying forms) in the
present volume. Allowing for the incompleteness of collections, the
resemblance of French games is probably nearly as close. The case is
not very different in Italy and Sweden, so far at least as concerns
games of any dramatic interest. Not till we come to Russia, do we find
anything like an independent usage. Taken altogether, our American
games are as ancient and characteristic as any, and throw much light on
the European system of childish tradition.
[7] See Nos. 150-153.
[8] Barley-break. See No. 101.
[9] No. 90.
[10] It must be remembered that in mediæval Europe, and in England till
the end of the seventeenth century, a kiss was the usual salutation of
a lady to a gentleman whom she wished to honor. The Portuguese ladies
who came to England with the Infanta in 1662 were not used to the
custom; but, as Pepys says, in ten days they had "learnt to kiss and
look freely up and down." Kissing in games was, therefore, a matter of
course, in all ranks.
[11] Mme. Élisabeth-Félicie Bayle-Mouillard, who wrote under this
pseudonym, had in her day a great reputation as a writer on etiquette.
Her "Manuel Complet de la Bonne Compagnie" reached six editions in the
course of a few years, and was published in America in two different
translations--at Boston in 1833, and Philadelphia in 1841.
[12] See Nos. 10 and 36.
[13] See No. 154, and note.
[14] _Ballad_, _ballet_, _ball_, from _ballare_, to dance.
[15] See Nos. 12-17.
[16] Yet there is no modern English treatise on the history of the
ballad possessing critical pretensions. It is to the unselfish labors
of an American--Professor Francis J. Child, of Harvard University--that
we are soon to owe a complete and comparative edition of English
ballads.
[17] In the country, in Massachusetts, _Thanksgiving_ evening was the
particular occasion for these games.
[18] The feast of _Flora_, says Pliny, in order that everything should
_flower_.
[19] So in Southern France--
"Catherine, ma mie--reveille-toi, s'il vous plaît;
Regarde à ta fenêtre le mai et le bouquet."
[20] "On May-day eve, young men and women still continue to play each
other tricks by placing branches of trees, shrubs, or flowers under
each other's windows, or before their doors."--Harland, "Lancashire
Folk-lore."
[21] The "Shepheards Calender" recites how, in the month of May,
Youngthes folke now flocken in every where,
To gather _May-buskets_ and smelling brere;
And home they hasten the postes to dight,
And all the kirk-pillours eare day-light,
With hawthorn buds, and sweete eglantine,
And girlonds of roses, and soppes in wine.
"Sops in wine" are said to be pinks.
[22] See Nos. 23, 26, and 160.
[23] "In summer season howe doe the moste part of our yong men
and maydes in earely rising and getting themselves into the
fieldes at dauncing! What foolishe toyes shall not a man see among
them!"--"Northbrooke's Treatise," 1577.
[24]
As I have seen the lady of the May
Set in an arbour (on a holy-day)
Built by the May-pole.
--Wm. Browne.
[25] In Cincinnati.
[26] The same Greek word, _kora_, signifies _maiden_ and _doll_.
[27] _Crepundia_; literally, _rattles_.
[28] See Nos. 105 and 108.
[29] See Nos. 91, 92, and 93.
[30] "The _pot-game_--the one in the middle sits, and is called a
_pot_; the rest tweak him, or pinch him, or slap him while running
round; and whoever is caught by him while so turning takes his place."
We might suppose the disconnected verse of the "tortoise-game" to be
imitated, perhaps in jest, from the high-sounding phrases of the drama.
[31] "Cheli-chelone," _torti-tortoise_.
[32] "Phitta Meliades."
[33] Froissart's account of the school he attended reminds us of the
American _district school_, and his narration has the same character of
charming simplicity as his allusion to playing _with the boys of our
street_.
[34] For the games here mentioned, compare note in Appendix.
GAMES AND SONGS OF AMERICAN CHILDREN
I.
_LOVE-GAMES._
--Many a faire tourning,
Upon the grene gras springyng.
_The Romaunt of the Rose._
No. 1.
_Knights of Spain._
This ancient and interesting, now nearly forgotten, game was in the
last generation a universal favorite in the United States, imported,
no doubt, by the early settlers of the country; and was equally
familiar, in numerous variations, through England and Scotland. It is
not, however, the exclusive property of English-speaking peoples, but
current under a score of forms throughout Europe--from Latin France,
Italy, and Spain, to Scandinavian Iceland, from the Finns of the Baltic
coast to the Slavs of Moravia. Its theme is courtship; but courtship
considered according to ancient ideas, as a mercantile negotiation.
To "buy" a bride was the old Norse expression for marriage, and in a
similar sense is to be understood the word "sold" in our rhyme. The
frankly mercenary character of the original transaction ceasing to
be considered natural, it was turned into a jest or satire in Sweden
and Scotland. The present song assumed all the grace and courtesy
characteristic of the mediæval English ballad, while a primitive form
survived in Iceland; and a later outgrowth (our No. 3) represented the
whole affair as one of coquetry instead of bargaining, substituting,
for the head of the house or the mother, the bride herself as the
negotiator.
Our first version shows the form of the game as played in New York in
the early part of the century.
* * * * *
On a sofa, or row of chairs, a mother, with her daughters on either
side, seated. Advance three suitors.
"Here come three lords out of Spain,
A-courting of your daughter Jane."
"My daughter Jane is yet too young,
To be ruled by your flattering tongue."
"Be she young, or be she old,
'Tis for the price she may be sold.
"So fare you well, my lady gay,
We must turn another way."
"Turn back, turn back, you Spanish knight,
And scour your boots and spurs so bright."
"My boots and spurs they cost you nought,
For in this land they were not bought.
"Nor in this land will they be sold,
Either for silver or for gold.
"So fare you well, my lady gay,
We must turn another way."
"Turn back, turn back, you Spanish knight,
And choose the fairest in your sight."
"I'll not take one nor two nor three,
But pray, Miss [Lucy], walk with me."
The Spanish knight takes the girl named by the hand, and marches off
with her. Walking round the room, he returns, saying,
"Here comes your daughter safe and sound,
In her pocket a thousand pound,
"On her finger a gay gold ring--
I bring your daughter home again."
In Philadelphia the game had a peculiar ending, which, however, as we
shall see, preserved, though in a corrupt form, an ancient trait:
"Here comes your daughter safe and sound,
In her pocket a thousand pound,
"On her finger a gay gold ring:
Will you take your daughter in?"
"No!"
The girl then runs away, the mother pursuing her. The Spanish knight
catches her, and brings her back, saying,
"Here comes your daughter safe and sound,
In her pocket _no_ thousand pound,
On her finger _no_ gay gold ring,
Will you take your daughter in?"
"Yes!"
The daughter then once more flies, and the Spanish knight has to catch
her.
The following is a New England version:
"We are three brethren from Spain,
Come to court your daughter Jane."
"My daughter Jane is yet too young
To be courted by your flattering tongue."
"Be she young, or be she old,
It is for gold she must be sold.
Then fare ye well, my lady gay,
I must return another day."
"Come back, come back, you Spanish knight,
Your boots and spurs shine very bright."
"My boots and spurs they count you nought,
For in this town they were not bought."
"Come back, come back, you Spanish knight,
And choose the fairest in your sight."
"This is too black, and that is too brown,
And this is the fairest in the town."
The only part of the country, so far as we know, in which the game now
survives is the neighborhood of Cincinnati, where it is still played in
a reduced but original form:
"Here comes a knight, a knight of Spain,
To court your daughter, lady Jane."
"My lady Jane, she is too young,
To be controlled by flattering tongue."
"Be she young or be she old,
Her beauty's fair, she must be sold."
"Go back, go back, you Spanish man,
And choose the fairest in the land."
"The fairest one that I can see,
Is [Annie Hobart] to walk with me."
The game now proceeds, "Here come two knights," then with three, four,
etc., till all the players are mated.[35]
It will be proper to add some account of the comparative history of
this curious game. The English and Scotch versions, though generally
less well preserved, correspond to our American. But we find a more
primitive type in Iceland, where it is, or a few years ago was, an
amusement of winter evenings, played not by children, but by men and
women, in a form which indicates a high antiquity. The women ask the
men, as these advance, what they desire? The latter reply, "a maid,"
that is, wife. The inquiry now is, what will they give? It is answered,
_stone_. This tender is scornfully refused, and the suitors retire in
dudgeon, but return to raise their offer, and at last proffer _gold_,
which is accepted, and the controversy ends in a dance.[36]
Curiously enough, modern Scotland retains this song in nearly all
the rude simplicity of the Icelandic just referred to; though the
negotiation, instead of being taken as a matter of course, is turned
into a satire, being treated as the endeavor of a rich old bachelor to
purchase a wife.
In the stewartry of Kirkendbright, says Chambers, _Janet jo_ is a
dramatic entertainment among young rustics on winter evenings. A youth,
disguised as an old bachelor, enters the room bonnet in hand, bowing,
and declaring that "he has come to court Janet jo." The goodwife
then demands, "What'll ye gie for Janet jo?" He responds, a "peck of
siller," but is told, "Gae awa', ye auld carle!" He retires, but soon
returns, and increases his offer, which is less scornfully rejected,
until he proffers "three pecks of gowd," which is accepted with the
words--
"Come ben beside Janet jo,
Janet jo, Janet jo,
Ye're welcome to Janet jo,
Janet, my jo."
The affair then ends in kissing. A comparison of details (such as the
diminishing scorn of the bargainer, and chagrin of the suitors at each
rejection) leaves no doubt that the Icelandic and Scotch forms of the
game were once (but many centuries since) identical.
The German versions are numerous, but corrupt, and less ancient and
characteristic. In one of the most spirited the mother assigns as a
reason for refusing the suitor, that
Her tresses are not braided,
Her wedding-gown not done.
Similarly, we find in an English fragment,
My mead's not made, my cake's not baked,
And you cannot have my daughter Jane.
There is a French form, not otherwise especially interesting, which
resembles our No. 3.[37]
More striking than the preceding, and abounding in singular
correspondences with the first three numbers of our own collection, is
the Italian version, as played in Venice. In this game, one of the
rows is composed of a boy, who represents the head of the house, and
five or six girls who stand at his right and left. The other row is
formed by the _ambassador_, whose suite consists of boys and girls.
These last advance towards the first row, singing, "The ambassador
is come," then, retreating, sing a chorus, "Olà, olà, olà." The
conversation then proceeds in a rhythmical way between the two rows as
follows:
"What do you wish?" "A maid."
"Which maid?" "The fairest."
"Who is the fairest?" "Nineta bella."
"What husband will you give her?" "A chimney-sweep."
"That will not do." "The king of France."
"That will do well." "What dowry will you give her?"
"A ducat." "It will not do."
"A zechin a day." "That will do well."
"Come and take her." "Here I come and take her."
The "ambassador" advances and takes the girl by the hand; then, as if
changing his mind, rejects her, saying as he returns--
"And now I don't want her!"
"Why do you not want her?" "She is too little (or ugly)."
"Is that the trouble?" "Yes, that is the trouble."
"Come, let us make peace." "Peace is made."
The ambassador then takes by the hand the girl, who is presented to
him by the head of the house; the two files unite to form a circle,
and the bride receives the general congratulations of the company, who
clap their hands, courtesy, and sing,[38] as in the pretty English
equivalent--
And the bells will ring, and the birds will sing,
And we'll all clap hands together.
In Spain, the game is known as the "Embassy of the Moorish King." The
"King of the Moors" is seated on the ground, with crossed legs, his
attendants about him. The "ambassador" makes three steps forward, and
demands one of his daughters. The king replies, "If I have them, I
have them not to give away; of the bread which I eat, they shall eat as
well."
The ambassador withdraws angry: "In discontent I go from the king's
palace." But the king, repenting, calls after him--
"Turn thee, knight, come, turn thee hither,
The most fair I'll give to thee--
The most lovely and the sweetest,
Sweetest rose upon the tree."
The ambassador crosses hands with one of his train to make a seat, on
which the bride is placed in triumph, singing--
"Thus I take her for her marriage,
Spouse and wedded wife to be."
The king addresses them on departure--
"Listen, knight, I do entreat thee,
Use to her all courtesy."
And the ambassadors reply--
"She, on throne of splendor seated,
Shall be shining to behold,
She shall lodge within a palace,
She shall dress in pearls and gold."
It will thus be seen that the three knights originally represent not
suitors, but envoys. If we remember that marriage, in some simple
countries, is still conducted through intermediaries, whose duty it is
to argue, chaffer, and dispute, before coming to the decision all along
intended, we shall see reason to believe that from a form representing
more or less literally the usages of primitive society have sprung in
the course of time a multitude of confused representations, colored by
later tastes and feelings.
The spirit and substance of the courteous and chivalric English rhyme
cannot be later than the fourteenth century; the identity and primitive
rudeness of the song in Iceland, Scotland (and, we shall presently add,
Virginia), supposes an earlier date; while even then we have to bridge
the gap between these forms and the Italian. We may, therefore, be
tolerably sure that the first diffusion of the game in Europe dates far
back into the Middle Age.
No. 2.
_Three Kings._
This antique rhyme, which comes to us from West Virginia, is a rude and
remarkable variety of the preceding game, but quite unlike any English
version hitherto printed.
We find a singular and apparently connected equivalent in the Färöe
isles. In the form of the dialogue there in use, as in the present
game, the suitor is presented in successively higher characters, as a
thrall, smith, and so on, until he is finally accepted as a prince. The
Italian song has shown us a similar usage. Thus the surf-beaten rocks
of the North Atlantic, with their scanty population of fishermen and
shepherds, whose tongue is a dialect of the ancient Norse speech, are
linked by the golden chain (or network) of tradition with the fertile
vales of the Alleghenies, and the historic lagoons of Venice.
The corrupt ending, too, compared with the Philadelphia version already
cited, and with the Venetian game, is seen to rest on an ancient basis.
The children, having forgotten the happy close, and not understanding
the haggling of the suitors, took the "three kings" for bandits.
* * * * *
On one side of the room a mother with her daughters. On the other three
wooers, who advance.
"Here come three soldiers three by three,
To court your daughter merrily;
Can we have a lodging, can we have a lodging,
Can we have a lodging here to-night?"
"Sleep, my daughter, do not wake--
Here come three soldiers, and they sha'n't take;
They sha'n't have a lodging, they sha'n't have a lodging,
They sha'n't have a lodging here to-night."
"Here come three sailors three by three,
To court your daughter merrily;
Can we have a lodging," etc.
"Sleep, my daughter, do not wake--
Here come three sailors and they sha'n't take;
They sha'n't have a lodging," etc.
"Here come three tinkers three by three,
To court your daughter merrily;
Can we have a lodging," etc.
"Sleep, my daughter, do not wake--
Here come three tinkers and they sha'n't take;
They sha'n't have a lodging," etc.
"Here come three kings, three by three,
To court your daughter merrily;
Can we have a lodging," etc.
"Wake, my daughter, do not sleep--
Here come three kings, and they _shall_ take;
They _shall_ have a lodging, they shall have a lodging,
They shall have a lodging here to-night."
(_To the kings_)--
"Here is my daughter safe and sound,
And in her pocket five hundred pound,
And on her finger a plain gold ring,
And she is fit to walk with the king."
(The daughter goes with the kings; but they are villains in disguise:
they rob her, push her back to her mother, and sing)--
"Here is your daughter _not_ safe and sound,
And in her pocket _not_ five hundred pound,
And on her finger no plain gold ring,
And she's not fit to walk with the king."
(The mother pursues the kings, and tries to catch and beat them).
_Charlestown, W. Va._
No. 3.
_Here Comes a Duke._
This rhyme is only a later development of the same game. The suitor is
now made to address himself directly to his mistress, and the mercenary
character of the previous transaction is replaced by coquetry. Our New
England song loses nothing by comparison with the pretty Scotch.
A company of little girls sit in a row. A little girl from the middle
of the room goes dancing up to the first one in the row, singing,
"Here comes a duke a-roving,
Roving, roving,
Here comes a duke a-roving,
With the ransy, tansy, tea!
With the ransy, tansy, tario!
With the ransy, tansy, tea!
Pretty fair maid, will you come out,
Will you come out, will you come out,
To join us in our dancing?"
Little girl answers,
"No."
Suitor steps backward, singing,
"Naughty girl,[39] she won't come out,
She won't come out, she won't come out,
To join us in our dancing."
Suitor advances as before. The answer now is,
"Yes."
These two now retire, singing together,
"Now we've got the flowers of May,
The flowers of May, the flowers of May,
To join us in our dancing."
They join hands and call out the next one in the row; thus the play
goes on until the last is selected, when they form a ring, dance, and
sing,
"Now we've got the flowers of May,
The flowers of May, the flowers of May,
To join us in our dancing."
_Concord, Mass._
Avulgarized form of the same game is common through the Middle States:
_Boys._ "We are three _ducks_ a-roving, (thrice)
_With a ransom dansom dee._"
_Girls._ "What is your good-will, sir?" etc.
_Boys._ "My good-will is to marry," etc.
_Girls._ "Which one of us will you have, sir?" etc.
_Boys._ "You're all too black and blowzy," etc.
_Girls._ "We are as good as you, sir," etc.
_Boys._ "Then I will take you, miss," etc.
The pretended quarrel between intermediaries has here become a dispute
of the principals.[40]
Finally, in the streets of New York the dialogue is made
unrecognizable--
_The Ring._ "Forty ducks are riding,
_My dilsey dulsey officer_;
Forty ducks are riding,
_My dilsey dulsey day_.
Which of the lot do you like best?"
_Child in Centre._ "You're all too black and ugly--ugly," etc.
_The Ring._ "We're not so black as you are," etc.
The child then selects a partner, when the rest sing,
"Open the gates and let the bride out," etc.;
and the couple pass under lifted hands, circle the ring, and similarly
reenter, to the words,
"Open the gates and let the bride in," etc.
We have thus a curious example of the way in which an apparently
meaningless game, which might be supposed the invention of the _gamins_
of the street, is, in fact, a degenerate form of the ancient poetry,
which was brimful of grace, courtesy, and the joy of existence.
For a purpose presently to be mentioned, we must cite the corresponding
Scotch rhyme, given by Chambers:
A dis, a dis, a green grass,
A dis, a dis, a dis;
Come all ye pretty fair maids,
And dance along with us.
For we are going a-roving,
A-roving in this land;
We'll take this pretty fair maid,
We'll take her by the hand.
Ye shall get a duke, my dear,
And ye shall get a drake;
And ye shall get a young prince,
A young prince for your sake.
And if this young prince chance to die,
Ye shall get another;
The bells will ring, and the birds will sing,
And we'll all clap hands together.
No. 4.
_Tread, Tread the Green Grass._
Tread, tread the green grass,
Dust, dust, dust;
Come all ye pretty fair maids
And walk along with us.
If you be a fair maid,
As I suppose you be,
I'll take you by the lily-white hand
And lead you across the sea.
_Philadelphia._
With this musical call to the dance, it was common, a generation since,
for girls in this town to begin the evening dances on the green,
singing as they marched in couples. The "dust" of the rhyme is a
corruption. Comparing it with the Scotch song previously quoted, we do
not doubt that it represents the Scotch (in other words, old English)
_adist_, the opposite of _ayont_, meaning _this way_, come hither. We
ought probably therefore to read,
Tread, tread the green grass,
Adist, adist, adist.
This song was no mere dance of rustics; the children at least kept up
the usage of the day when a pleasing popular poetry was the heritage of
all ranks. The spirit of the strain carries us back to that "carolling"
of ladies which was, in the time of Chaucer, no less than the gay green
of the meadow or the melody of the birds, an accompaniment of summer.
No. 5.
_I'll Give to You a Paper of Pins._
This pretty and interesting, hitherto imprinted, children's song is
more or less familiar throughout the Middle States. We have heard it
with many variations from persons of all classes and ages. It may often
be listened to in the upper part of the city of New York, as it is sung
(with a mere apology for a melody) by three or four girls, walking with
arms entwined, or crooned by mere infants seated on the casks which, in
the poorer quarters, often encumber the sidewalk.
There are also English and Scotch versions, generally inferior as
regards poetical merit and antiquity of language. The English form,
however, seems to contain the primitive idea, where the wooer appears
as a prince, who by splendid presents overcomes the objections of a
lady. This mercenary character being repugnant to modern taste, the
Scotch rhyme represents the suitor as the Evil One in person; while
in the United States the hero is, in his turn, made to cast off the
avaricious fair, or else the lady to demand only love for love.
The numerous couplets of the American rhyme are completely in the
ballad style. A "paper of pins" is substituted for a "pennorth of
pins." The "easy-chair" is modern, but the verse itself ancient,
combing golden hair being a world-old occupation of beauties. The gown
"trimmed with golden thread," or "set off with a golden crown," refers
to the attire of olden times. The mediæval bride wore a crown on the
head and flowing hair; a costume also mentioned in old ballads as the
usual dress of a demoiselle of rank arrayed for the dance.
"I'll give to you a paper of pins,
And that's the way my love begins;
If you will marry me, me, me,
If you will marry me."
"I don't accept your paper of pins,
If that's the way your love begins;
For I won't marry you, you, you,
For I won't marry you."
"I'll give to you an easy-chair,
To sit in and comb your golden hair.
"I'll give to you a silver spoon,
To feed your babe in the afternoon.
"I'll give to you a dress of green,
To make you look like any queen.[41]
"I'll give to you the key of my heart,
For you to lock and never to part.
"I'll give to you the key of my chest,
For you to have money at your request."
"I _do_ accept the key of your chest,
For me to have money at my request;
And I will marry you, you, you,
And I will marry you."
"Ha, ha, ha, money is all,
And I won't marry you at all;
For I won't marry you, you, you,
For I won't marry you."
This is from a New York child; our next version is from Connecticut:
[Illustration]
"Oh, miss, I'll give you a paper of pins,
If you will tell me how love begins:
If you will marry, marry, marry,
If you will marry me."
"I'll not accept your paper of pins,
And I won't tell you how love begins;
For I won't marry, marry, marry,
For I won't marry you."
"O miss, I'll give you a coach and six,
Every horse as black as pitch.
"O miss, I'll give you a red silk gown,
With gold and laces hanging round.
"O miss, I'll give you a little gold bell,
To ring for the waiter[42] when you are not well.
"O miss, I'll give you the key to my heart,
That we may lock and never part.
"O miss, I'll give you the key to my chest,
That you may have money at your request."
"I will accept the key of your chest,
That I may have money at my request."
"Ah, I see, money is all,
Woman's love is none at all;
And I won't marry, marry, marry,
And I won't marry you."
Finally, we have a variation with a more tender conclusion:
"Will you have a paper of pins?
For that's the way my love begins--
And will you marry me, me, me,
And will you marry me?"
"No, I'll not have a paper of pins,
If that's the way your love begins."
"Will you have a little lap-dog,
Who may follow you abroad?
"Will you have a coach and four,
Footman behind and footman before?
"Will you have a dress of red,
All trimmed round with golden thread?
"Will you have a satin gown,
All set off with a golden crown?
"Will you have the key to my chest,
To draw out gold at your request?
"Will you have the key to my heart,
That we may love and never part?"
"Yes, I will have the key to your heart,
That we may love and never part,
And I will marry you, you, you,
And I will marry you."
The same idea is contained in a song originally Scotch, but which comes
to us (through an Irish medium) from Pennsylvania:
"Will you come to the Highland braes,
_Bonny lassie, Highland lassie_?
Will you come to the Highland braes,
_My bonny Highland lassie_?"
The reply is, "Na, na, it will not dee, bonnie laddie," etc.: when the
wooer gradually increases his offers:
"I will give you a golden comb,
If you will be mine and never roam;"
and finally inquires,
"Will you go to the kirk with me,
There to be my wedded wife?"
which is eagerly accepted:
"_And them's the words away to town_,
And I will get my wedding-gown."
No. 6.
_There She Stands, a Lovely Creature._
This pretty song has been recited to us by informants of the most
cultivated class, and, on the other hand, we have seen it played as a
round by the very "Arabs of the street," in words identically the same.
It is an old English song, which has been fitted for a ring-game by the
composition of an additional verse, to allow the selection of a partner.
[Illustration]
"There she stands, a lovely creature,
Who she is, I do not know;
I have caught her for her beauty,--
Let her answer, yes or no.
"Madam, I have gold and silver,
Lady, I have houses and lands,
Lady, I have ships on the ocean,
All I have is at thy command."
"What care I for your gold and silver,
What care I for your houses and lands,
What care I for your ships on the ocean--
_All I want is a nice young man._"
_New York._
No. 7.
_Green Grow the Rushes, O!_
In former times, the amusements of young people at their winter-evening
gatherings consisted almost entirely of "playing games." On such
occasions the following rhyme was used (in eastern Massachusetts) about
the beginning of the century, to select partners for the ring. Chairs
were placed in a circle, and the players of one sex seated, so as to
leave alternate vacant places, for which they chose occupants, singing--
"Green grow the rushes, O!
Green grow the rushes, O!
He who will my true love be,
Come and sit by the side of me."
Those waiting to be selected sang,
"Pick and choose, but choose not me,
Choose the fairest you can see."
This dialogue was repeated for each player until all were taken in,
which, if the party was numerous, of necessity took a long time.
No. 8.
_The Widow with Daughters to Marry._
A child, representing a mother, is followed by a file of daughters,
each grasping the frock of the girl in front.
There comes a poor widow from Barbary-land,[43]
With all her children in her hand;
One can brew, and one can bake,
And one can make a wedding-cake;
Pray take one,
Pray take two,
Pray take one that pleases you.[44]
_Philadelphia._
The "poor widow" is also represented as having only one daughter left.
Sister, O Phoebe, how happy we be,
As we go under the juniper-tree!
We'll put on our night-caps to keep our heads warm,
And two or three kisses will do us no harm--
Will do us no harm, Io!
I am a poor widow, a-marching around,
And all of my daughters are married but one;
So rise up my daughter, and kiss whom you please,
And kiss whom you please, Io!
_Philadelphia._
Another old version of this round:
I am a rich widow, I live all alone,
I have but one daughter, and she is my own;
Go, daughter, go choose, go choose your one,
Go choose a good one, or else choose you none.
_New York._
Finally, we have the modern corruption of the street, which, however,
shows us the manner of playing:
A child stands in the ring, as the mother. The daughter reclines as if
asleep, her head resting on her hands, till the words, _rise up_.
Here _stands_ a poor widow a-walking around,
Io! Io! Io!
So put on the night-cap to keep her head warm,
To keep her head warm, Io!
So rise up my daughter, and kiss whom you please,
And kiss whom you please, Io!
_New York._
The widow with daughters to marry is a European celebrity. The titles
_rich_ and _poor_, moreover, in this and the last number, are not
meaningless, but show that two independent characters have been united
in one. In the original European game, which we have not encountered in
an English form, there is both a _rich_ and a _poor_ mother; the latter
begs away, one by one, the daughters of the former, until she has
secured all. The present round and the preceding are only reductions,
or adaptations to the dance, of this more ancient and dramatic game.
Once more, the game of the rich and poor mothers, though centuries old,
and existing in many European tongues, is itself but an outgrowth of a
still more ancient childish drama, which has given birth to innumerable
sports, dances, and songs, exhibiting very different external
characteristics all over Europe, but of which primitive and complete
versions at present seem to exist only in America.[45]
No. 9.
_Philander's March._
This rhyme has been familiar throughout the New England States. Some of
our older readers will remember how the doors of all the apartments of
an old-fashioned mansion, with its great chimney in the centre, would
be thrown open at an evening party, and the children march through the
house, and up and down the staircase, singing the familiar air--
Come, Philanders,[46] let's be a-marching,
Every one choose from his heartstrings;[47]
Choose your true love now or never,
And be sure you choose no other.
O, my dear----, how I do love you!
Nothing on earth do I prize above you!
With a kiss now let me greet you,
And I will never, never leave you.
_Plymouth, Mass._ (about 1800).
Another version:
Come, Philander, let us be a-marching,
From the ranks there's no deserting,
Choose your own, your own true lover,
See that you don't choose any other;
Now farewell, dear love, farewell,
We're all a-marching, so farewell.
_Deerfield, Mass._
Why, of all the names of the Damon and Sylvia class, _Philander_,[48]
which, according to derivation, should mean fondness for the male
sex, came to be a proverbial expression for an amorous person, and
contributed to the English language a verb (to philander) we cannot
say. Children's intelligence made wild work of the word. A New England
variation was, "Come, _Lysanders_;" and in Pennsylvania, on the
Maryland border, the first line has been ingeniously distorted into
"_Cumberland city-town-boys_" marching! Cumberland being a town in the
latter state.
No. 10.
_Marriage._
(1.) By this name was known in Massachusetts, at the beginning of the
century, an elaborate dance (for such, though practised in a Puritan
community, it really was) which has a very decided local flavor.
Partners having been chosen, the girl says--
"Come, my dearest partner, and join both heart and hand;
You want you a wife, and I want me a man.
So married we will be, if we can agree,
We'll march down together, so happy are we."
The partners now separate, the lad saying--
"Now I must part, and leave you alone,
So fare you well, my true love, till I return."
The maid replies--
"I mourn, I mourn, for that is the cry,
I'm left all alone, and I'm sure I shall die."
But, after walking round, rejoins her partner, who welcomes her--
"Oh, here comes my love, and how do you do?
And how have you been since I parted with you?"
The pair then address the row--
"There is a scene secure from all harm,
Please to give us joy by the raising of the arm."
The other players, who stand each lad opposite his lass, raise arms,
and the couple walk down under the arch so formed, pausing at the foot--
"Now we are married, and never more to part,
Please to give a kiss from the bottom of the heart."
And the game proceeds with the next couple.
_Scituate, Mass._ (about 1800).
(2.) No better as respects poetry, but with more evidence of old
English origin, is the following game, in which couples circle in a
ring about two chairs, from time to time changing partners. We have not
been clearly informed of the way of playing, but presume that at the
time of the change the youth or girl in the ring must select a mate.
"On the green carpet here we stand,
Take your true love in your hand;
Take the one whom you profess
To be the one whom you love best."
A change of partners.
"Very well done, said Johnny Brown,
Is this the way to London town?
Stand ye here, stand ye there,
Till your true love doth appear."
A mate is finally chosen, and the ring sings--
"Oh, what a beautiful choice you've made!
Don't you wish you'd longer stayed?
[Give her a kiss, and send her away,
And tell her she can no longer stay."[49]]
_Salem, Mass._
The "green carpet" is, of course, the grass, on which the village dance
proceeds in the summer-time,[50] and the remains of an ancient "carol"
appear in the corrupt rhyme.
(3.) To the game of _Marriage_, as played in France and Italy, the
following closely corresponds:
A boy and girl having been chosen by singing our No. 17, and standing
in the centre of the ring, the game proceeds, with imitative motion and
gesture--
"Row the boat! Row the boat!
Let the boat stand!
I think ---- ---- is a handsome young man;
I think ---- ---- is as handsome as he,
And they shall be married, if they can agree."[51]
Such short rhymes are not used independently, but joined to some
fragment of a ballad, which they serve to turn into a game, as may be
seen in our No. 12.
(4.) We take this opportunity to give one or two other familiar
examples of kissing rounds:
Had I as many eyes as the stars in the skies,
And were I as old as Adam,
I'd fall on my knees, and kiss whom I please,
Your humble servant, madam.
In Boston, half a century since, this ran--
As many _wives as the stars in the skies_,
And each _as old as Adam_, etc.
In Georgia, at the present day--
Many, many stars are in the skies,
And _each as old as Adam_, etc.
(5.) The following is yet more inane, yet it furnishes a curious
example of correspondence--
"---- ---- languishes."
"For whom?"
"For ---- ----."
This is not much more crude than the French equivalent.[52]
(6.) We may add that the familiar American game, known as "Pillow,"
or "Pillows and Keys" (why _keys_?), in which a player kneels on a
_pillow_ and solicits a kiss, is no doubt a descendant of the "Cushion
Dance," alluded to by old dramatists.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] The game, half a century since, was played by boys as well as
girls. New England variations are numerous; thus for the last line of
verse 4, "I'll turn my face another way." For verse 7, "Go through the
kitchen and through the hall, and choose the fairest one of all." A New
York variety puts the last words into the mouth of the bride: "I'm so
happy that I could sing."
[36] So in an English variety:
"I will give you pots and pans, I will give you brass,
I will give you anything for a pretty lass."
"No."
"I will give you gold and silver, I will give you pearl,
I will give you anything for a pretty girl."
"Take one, take one, the fairest you may see."
Halliwell, "Nursery Rhymes."
[37] The ending is like ours--
"Prenez la plus jolie de toutes."
"Voilà la plus jolie de toutes."
[38]
Eco la Nina al campo--fra tanti suoni e canti;
Eco la Nina al campo--olà, olà, olà.
Faciamo un bel' inchino--profondo al suo rispeto;
Faciamo un bel' inchino--olà, olà, olà.
[39] A New Hampshire fragment has here,
"The _scornful maid_, she won't come out,"
which seems more genuine.
[40] An English variety, printed a century since in "Gammer Gurton's
Garland," has as the first line of the refrain,
_My-a-dildin, my-a-daldin_;
and as the alternate line,
_Lily white and shine-a_.
The last phrase comes to us as the fragment of a game in Massachusetts,
about 1800. We are reminded of the songs of Autolycus in "A Winter's
Tale," "with such delicate burdens of _dildos_ and fadings."
[41] Here verses may be improvised at pleasure; for instance, said the
little reciter,
"I'll give to you a dress of black,
A green silk apron and a white cap,
If you will marry," etc.
[42] In the English version "to ring up _your maidens_."
[43] Variation: "Here comes an old woman from Sunderland," or
"Cumberland."
[44] In Canada the game goes:
J'ai tant d'enfants à marier!
J'ai tant d'enfants à marier!
Grand Dieu! je n' sais comment
Pouvoir en marier tant.
Mademoiselle, on parle à vous;
On dit que vous aimez beaucoup;
Si c'est vrai que vous aimez,
Entrez dans la danse, entrez!
[45] See Note; also No. 154, and Note.
[46] Usually plural.
[47] Or, dialectically, "every one his true lover _sarching_."
[48] "Were his men like him, he'd command a regiment of Damons and
_Philanders_."--"Two Faces under One Hood," by Thomas Dibdin.
[49] From another version.
[50] As Lodge has it--
Footing it featlie on the grassie ground,
These damsels circling with their brightsome faires--
[51] Fifty years ago the corresponding French game was still played as
a "game of society"--
Eh! qui marirons-nous?
Mademoiselle, ce sera vous:
Entrez dans la danse;
J'aimerai qui m'aimera, j'aimerai qui m'aime.
The round then proceeds--
Eh! qui lui donnerons-nous?
Mon beau monsieur, ce sera vous.
Amans, embrassez-vous, etc.
[52]
"Qui est-ce qui languira?"
"Ce sera ---- ---- qui languira."
"---- ---- la guerira."
_French game in Cambrai_.
II.
_HISTORIES._
A fresh wreath of crimson roses
Round my forehead twine will I;
I will wear them for a garland,
Wear them till the day I die.
I desire that in my coffin
May be room enough for three;
For my father, for my mother,
And my love to lie with me.
Afterwards above the coffin
We will let a flower grow;
In the morning we will plant it,
In the evening it will blow.
Wayfarers will pause demanding,
"Whose may be the flower there?"
"'Tis the flower of Rosetina,
She who died of love's despair."
_Round of Girls in Venice._
No. 11.
_Miss Jennia Jones._
This childish drama has been familiar in the Middle States since the
memory of the oldest inhabitant. The Scotch equivalent shows that the
heroine's name was originally _Jenny jo_. "Jo" is an old English word
for sweetheart, probably a corruption of _joy_, French _joie_, used as
a term of endearment. _Jenny my joy_ has thus been modernized into Miss
Jennia (commonly understood to be a contraction for Virginia) Jones!
The story is originally a love-tale. The young lady, like Rosetina in
the Venetian song (a part of which we have translated above) dies of
blighted affection and the prohibition of cruel parents. The suitor, in
America, is represented by feminine friends. Yet the drama has lived;
a proof that in singing and playing love-tales the children rather
imitated their elders than followed a necessity of their own nature.
From various versions we select the following:
A mother, seated. Miss Jennia Jones stands behind her chair, or
reclines on her lap as if lying sick. A dancer advances from the ring.
"I've come to see Miss Jennia Jones,
Miss Jennia Jones, Miss Jennia Jones--
I've come to see Miss Jennia Jones,
And how is she to-day?"
"She's up-stairs washing,
Washing, washing--
She's up-stairs washing,
You cannot see her to-day."
The questions are repeated to the same air for every day of the
week, and the reply is that Miss Jennia Jones is ironing, baking, or
scrubbing. She is then represented as sick, as worse, and finally as
dead, which announcement is received with signs of deep grief. The
dancers of the ring then discuss the costume in which she shall be
buried:
"What shall we dress her in,
Dress her in, dress her in;
What shall we dress her in--
Shall it be blue?"
"Blue is for sailors,
So that will never do."
"What shall we dress her in,
Shall it be red?"
"Red is for firemen,
So that will never do."
"Pink is for babies,
So that will never do."
"Green is forsaken,
So that will never do."
"Black is for mourners,
So that will never do."
"White is for dead people,
So that will just do."
"Where shall we bury her?
Under the apple-tree."
After the ceremonies of burial have been completed, the ghost of Miss
Jennia Jones suddenly arises--
"I dreamt I saw a ghost last night,
Ghost last night, ghost last night--
I dreamt I saw a ghost last night,
Under the apple-tree!"
The ring breaks up, and flies with shrieks, and the one caught is to
represent Miss Jennia Jones.
An interesting feature of our game is the symbolism of color. "Each of
these colors," says an informant, "which denoted a profession, also
typified a feeling. Thus, blue, which is said to be for _sailors_,
suggested _constancy_."
In one version of the game, which comes to us from an Irish source,
_green_ is for _grief, red_ for _joy, black_ for _mourning_, and
_white_ for _death_. In another such version, _white_ is for _angels_,
and is the chosen color; a reading we would willingly adopt, as
probably more ancient, and as expressing the original seriousness of
the whole, and the feeling which the color of white symbolized. In more
common Irish phrase, _green_ is for _Irish_, _yellow_ for _Orangemen_.
In Cincinnati, _purple_ is for _kings_ and _queens_, _gray_ for
_Quakers_. In a Connecticut variation, _yellow_ is for _glad folks_.
An English saying corresponds closely to the significance of colors in
our game:
Blue is true, yellow is jealous,
Green is forsaken, red is brazen,
White is love, and black is death.
A variation from West Virginia makes the question apply to the dress of
the mourners, not of the deceased: "What shall we dress in?" "In our
red, in our blue," etc., are rejected, and the decision is, "In our
white."
Such imitations of burial ceremonies are not merely imaginative. It
was once the custom for the girls of a village to take an active
part in the interment of one of their number. In a Flemish town, a
generation since, when a young girl died, her body was carried to
the church, thence to the cemetery, by her former companions. "The
religious ceremony over, and the coffin deposited in the earth, all the
young girls, holding in one hand the mortuary cloth, returned to the
church, chanting the _maiden's dance_ with a spirit and rhythm scarcely
conceivable by one who has not heard it. The pall which they carried to
the church was of sky-blue silk, having in the middle a great cross of
white silk, on which were set three crowns of silver."
The following is a rendering of the "Maiden's Dance:"
In heaven is a dance;
Alleluia!
There dance all the maids;
Benedicamus Domino--
Alleluia!
It is for Amelia;
Alleluia!
We dance like the maids;
Benedicamus Domino--
Alleluia!
Such touching customs show the profound original earnestness
underlying the modern child's play, as well as the primitive religious
significance of the dance. In England, too, it was the practice for the
bearers of a virgin to be maids, as a ballad recites:
A garland fresh and faire
Of lilies there was made,
In signe of her virginity,
And on her coffin laid.
Six maidens, all in white,
Did beare her to the grave.
No. 12.
_Down She Comes as White as Milk._
This round is remarkable for being introduced, wherever it occurs, by
a stanza with a different melody, whereby the ballad is turned into
a game. By this introduction the hero and heroine of the action are
selected.
"Little Sally Waters," or "Uncle John," having been first played, the
round proceeds about the couple standing in the ring:
He knocks at the door, and picks up a pin,
And asks if Miss ---- is in.
She neither is in, she neither is out,
She's in the garret a-walking about.
Down she comes as white as milk,
A rose in her bosom, as soft as silk.
She takes off her gloves, and shows me a ring;
To-morrow, to-morrow, the wedding begins.[53]
_Concord, Mass._ (_before 1800_).
The version now played in New York streets is corrupt, but has a
spirited melody:
[Illustration]
Wa-ter, wa-ter, wild-flowers, grow-ing up so high;
We are all young la-dies, And we are sure to die,
Ex-cept-ing Su-sie Al-len, She is the fin-est flow-er.
Fie, fie, fie for shame; Turn about and tell your beau's name.
The girl complying, the ballad proceeds--
[Illustration]
Mr. _Nobody_ is a nice young man,
He comes to the door with his hat in his hand.
Down she comes, all dressed in silk,
A rose in her bosom, as white as milk.
She takes off her gloves, she shows me her ring,
To-morrow, to-morrow, the wedding begins.
The song before us furnishes a good example of the persistency of
childish tradition. Not only is it still current in New England and
the Middle States, with words closely corresponding to those given in
our version of almost a century since, but these words are also nearly
identical with the language of the round as we are told it is sung at
the present day in Ireland.
Of a type similar to the foregoing is an ancient and curious, but
unpublished, nursery song,[54] the first lines of which, at least, will
be familiar to some of our readers:
Sing, sparrow, sing!
What shall I sing?
All the boys in our town have gone courting;
All but little Charley,
And he stays at home,
And he says he'll have Mary,
Or else he'll have none.
Row, boat, row!
Where shall I row?
Up to little Mary's door.
Out jumps little Charley in his boots and spurs,
And goes to the door, and pulls at the string--
"Where's little Mary? Is she within?"
"Miss Mary's up-stairs, a-making a cap."
Then down comes Miss Mary, as white as the milk,
All dressed in pink posies and sweet pretty silk,
And goes to the cupboard, and takes up the can,
And drinks to little Charley, a pretty little man.
He takes her in his lap, and pares her nails,[55]
And gives her a posy of peacock's tails,
And rings and jewels fit for her hand,
And tells little Mary he'll come again.
The mention in this rhyme of the cupboard and the can carries us to
a time not so remote indeed in years, but far removed in customs. At
the beginning of the century, in the old colonial towns, tumblers were
unknown; the silver can stood on the table, and was passed from hand to
hand at the meal, the elders drinking first. This usage was accompanied
with much ceremony. An informant (born in Salem, Mass.), whose memory
goes back almost to the beginning of the century, recollects how, when
it came to be his turn to drink, he was obliged to rise and wipe his
lips (the use of the same vessel by a whole family made this habit
proper), and repeat the words, while parents and friends laid down
knives and forks and looked on, "Duty to Sir and Ma'am, respects to
aunt, love to brother and sister, and health to myself." Sometimes, he
said, sensitive children would rather "go dry" than endure this ordeal.
No. 13.
_Little Sally Waters._
A girl in the centre of the ring, seated, and covering her face with
her hands. At the word "rise," she chooses and salutes any one whom she
pleases.
Little Sally Waters,
Sitting in the sun,
Crying and weeping,
For a young man.
Rise, Sally, rise,
Dry your weeping eyes,
Fly to the East,
Fly to the West,
Fly to the one you love best.
In the north of England the heroine's name is _Sally Walker_:
Sally Walker, Sally Walker,
Come spring-time and love--
She's lamenting, she's lamenting,
All for her young man.
A ballad situation has been united with a dance-rhyme.
No. 14.
_Here Sits the Queen of England._
Here sits the Queen of England in her chair,
She has lost the true love that she had last year;
So rise upon your feet, and kiss the first you meet,
For there's many around your chair.
_Georgia._
No. 15.
_Green Gravel._
A girl sits in the ring, and turns her head gravely as a messenger
advances, while the rest sing to a pleasing air--
[Illustration]
Green gravel, green gravel, the grass is so green,
And all the free _masons_ (maidens) are _ashamed_ (arrayed?) to
"be seen;"[56]
O Mary, O Mary, your true love is dead,
The king sends you a letter to turn back your head.[57]
There are only two lines left of the ballad, or rather reminiscence of
one.
A French round begins similarly: "Ah, the bringer of letters! What
news is this? Ah, it is news that you must change your love.[58] Must
I change my love, I prefer to die; he is not here, nor in France; he
is in England, where he serves the gracious king." To this fragment
belong the ancient verses which we have set as the motto of Chapter
II. of our Introduction. All the other ladies of Paris are at the
dance; the king's daughter alone "regarde à coté," "turns her head,"
looking at a messenger who is approaching; he brings news of her love's
unfaithfulness; a rival skilled in magic arts has enchanted him, in the
far country where he is warring. There is no more left of the ancient
ballad, which, we presume, went on to describe her departure in man's
costume, and rescue of her lover. We cannot prove the identity of our
fragment, but we see how the child's game may have arisen.
No. 16.
_Uncle John._
A ring of dancers who circle and sing--
Uncle John is very sick, what shall we send him?
A piece of pie, a piece of cake, a piece of apple-dumpling.[59]
What shall we send it in? In a piece of paper.
Paper is not fine[60] enough; in a golden saucer.
Who shall we send it by? By the governor's[61] daughter.
Take her by the lily-white hand, and lead her over the water.
After the words "governor's daughter" all the dancers fall down, and
the last down stands apart, selects her confidential friend, and
imparts with great mystery the _initials_ of some boy in whom she takes
an interest. She then returns, and takes her place in the ring with
face reversed, while the friend announces the initials, and the dancers
sing, using the letters given--
A. B., so they say,
Goes a-courting night and day,
Sword and pistol by his side,
And ---- ---- to be his bride;
Takes her by the lily-white hand,
And leads her o'er the water--
Here's a kiss, and there's a kiss
For Mr. ----'s daughter.
If the person representing "Uncle John" be a boy, his full name comes
first in this rhyme, and the initials of the girl are used.
The choice of the confidante is said to require as much deliberation as
the selection of an ambassador of state.
_Hartford, Conn._
This is one of the most familiar of all children's rounds in our
country. It is, we see, a love-history; and, thrice vulgarized as
it is, bears traces of ancient origin, and may perhaps be the last
echo of the mediæval song in which an imprisoned knight is saved from
approaching death by the daughter of the king, or soldan, who keeps him
in confinement.[62]
No. 17.
_King Arthur was King William's Son._
A row of hats of various sizes, and belonging to both sexes, are placed
on the floor. The leader picks up the first hat, and puts it on his
own head, marching and singing the verse. He then takes up the next
hat, and places it on the head of any one he pleases; the person chosen
stands behind him, and they once more march, singing. The process is
continued, until all the company are arranged in line:
King Arthur was King William's son,
And when the battle he had won,
Upon his breast he wore a star,
And it was called the sign of war.
_Orange, New Jersey._
The following rhyme is exceedingly familiar, throughout the Middle and
Southern States, as a kissing-round:
King William was King James's son, And all the roy-al race he run; Upon
his breast he wore a star, And it was called the sign of war.
King William was King James's son,[63]
And all the royal race he run;
Upon his head he wore a star.
Star of the East,
Star of the West,
Star of the one you love the best.
If she's not here don't take her part,
But choose another with all your heart.
Down on the carpet you must kneel,
As the grass grows on the field,
Salute your bride, and kiss her sweet,
And rise again upon your feet.
The round is also familiar in Ireland. We learn from an informant that
in her town it was formerly played in a peculiar manner. Over the
head of a girl, who stood in the centre of a ring, was held a shawl,
sustained by four others grasping the corners. The game then proceeded
as follows:
King William was King George's son--
_From the Bay of Biscay, O!_
Upon his breast he wore a star--
_Find your way to English schools._
Then followed the game-rhyme, repeated with each stanza, "Go choose you
East," etc. King William is then supposed to enter--
The first girl that I loved so dear,
Can it be she's gone from me?
If she's not here when the night comes on,
Will none of you tell me where she is gone?
He recognizes the disguised girl--
There's heart beneath the willow-tree,
There's no one here but my love and me.
"He had gone to the war, and promised to marry her when he came back.
She wrapped a shawl about her head, to see if he would recognize her."
This was all the reciter could recollect; the lines of the ballad were
sung by an old woman, the ring answering with the game-rhyme.
_Waterford, Ireland._
The round now in use in the town whence this comes, but where the
ballad is not at present known, begins:
King William was King George's son--
_From the Bay of Biscay, O!_
Upon his breast he wore a star--
_Point your way across the sea._
In the year 1287, Folke Algotson, a high-born Swedish youth, carried
off to Norway (at that time the refuge of such boldness) Ingrid, a
daughter of the "law-man" or judge of East Gothland, who was betrothed
to a Danish noble. Popular ballads attached themselves to the
occurrence, which are still preserved. The substance of that version
of the story with which we are concerned is as follows: A youth loves
a maid, who returns his affection, but in his absence her friends have
"given" her to another. He rides to the wedding ceremony with a troop
of followers. The bride, seeing him approach, and wishing to test his
affection, calls on her maidens to "take off her gold crown, and coif
her in linen white." But the hero at once recognizes his love, mounts
with her on horseback, and flees to Norway.
We cannot believe the resemblance to be accidental, and look upon our
rhymes as a branch from the same ancient--but not historical--root.
No. 18.
_Little Harry Hughes and the Duke's Daughter._
The writer was not a little surprised to hear from a group of colored
children, in the streets of New York city (though in a more incoherent
form) the following ballad. He traced the song to a little girl living
in one of the cabins near Central Park, from whom he obtained this
version. The hut, rude as the habitation of a recent squatter on the
plains, was perched on a rock still projecting above the excavations
which had been made on either side, preparatory to the erection of the
conventional "brown-stone fronts" of a New York street. Rocks flung by
carelessly managed explosions flew over the roof, and clouds of dust
were blown by every wind into the unswept hovel. In this unlikely spot
lingered the relics of old English folk-song, amid all the stir of the
busiest of cities. The mother of the family had herself been born in
New York, of Irish parentage, but had learned from her own mother, and
handed down to her children, such legends of the past as the ballad
we cite. A pretty melody gave popularity to the verse, and so the
thirteenth-century tradition, extinct perhaps in its native soil, had
taken a new lease of existence as a song of negro children in New York.
Under the thin disguise of the heading will be recognized the ballad
of "Hugh of Lincoln and the Jew's Daughter," the occasion of which
is referred by Matthew Paris to the year 1255. Chaucer, in exquisite
verse, has made his Prioress recount the same story: how the child,
This gemme of chastitè, this emeraude,
And eek of martirdom the ruby bright,
has his throat cut by "false Jewes," and, cast into a pit, still sings
his chant in honor of
This welle of mercy, Christes moder sweet;
and, when discovered, cannot be buried in peace till the magic grain is
removed which "that blissful maiden fre" has laid under his tongue.
The conclusion is, in our version, only implied. In that given by
Jamieson the murdered child, speaking from the well, bids his mother
prepare the winding-sheet, for he will meet her in the morn "at the
back of merry Lincoln;" and the funeral service is performed by angels.
[Illustration]
It was on a May, on a midsummer's day,
When it rained, it did rain small;
And little Harry Hughes and his playfellows all
Went out to play the ball.
He knocked it up, and he knocked it down,
He knocked it o'er and o'er;
The very first kick little Harry gave the ball,
He broke the duke's windows all.
She came down, the youngest duke's daughter,
She was dressed in green;
"Come back, come back, my pretty little boy,
And play the ball again."
"I won't come back, and I daren't come back,
Without my playfellows all;
And if my mother she should come in,
She'd make it the bloody ball."[64]
She took an apple out of her pocket,
And rolled it along the plain;
Little Harry Hughes picked up the apple,
And sorely rued the day.
She takes him by the lily-white hand,
And leads him from hall to hall,
Until she came to a little dark room,
That none could hear him call.
She sat herself on a golden chair,
Him on another close by;
And there's where she pulled out her little penknife
That was both sharp and fine.
Little Harry Hughes had to pray for his soul,
For his days were at an end;
She stuck her penknife in little Harry's heart,
And first the blood came very thick, and then came very thin.[65]
She rolled him in a quire of tin,
That was in so many a fold;
She rolled him from that to a little draw-well
That was fifty fathoms deep.
"Lie there, lie there, little Harry," she cried,
"And God forbid you to swim,
If you be a disgrace to me,
Or to any of my friends."
The day passed by, and the night came on,
And every scholar was home,
And every mother had her own child,
But poor Harry's mother had none.[66]
She walked up and down the street,
With a little sally-rod[67] in her hand;
And God directed her to the little draw-well,
That was fifty fathoms deep.
"If you be there, little Harry," she said,
"And God forbid you to be,
Speak one word to your own dear mother,
That is looking all over for thee."
"This I am, dear mother," he cried,
"And lying in great pain,
With a little penknife lying close to my heart,
And the duke's daughter she has me slain.
"Give my blessing to my schoolfellows all,
And tell them to be at the church,
And make my grave both large and deep,
And my coffin of hazel and green birch.
"Put my Bible at my head,
My busker[68] (?) at my feet,
My little prayer-book at my right side,
And sound will be my sleep."
No. 19.
_Barbara Allen._
In the first quarter of the century, this celebrated ballad was still
used in New England as a children's game or dance at evening parties.
We have here, perhaps, the latest English survival, in cultivated
society, of a practice which had once been universal. It is noteworthy
that while, in the town of which we speak,[69] the establishment, at
the period alluded to, of a children's dancing-school was bitterly
opposed, and the children of "church members" were hardly permitted to
attend, no such prohibition applied to amusements like this, which were
shared in irrespective of sectarian prejudice, by boys as well as by
girls.
Our informant describes the performers as standing in couples,
consisting each of a boy and a girl, facing each other. An elderly
lady, who was in particular request at children's parties on account
of her extensive stock of lore of the sort, sang the ballad, to which
the dancers kept time with a slow metrical movement, balancing without
any considerable change of place. At the final words, "Barbara Allen,"
which end every stanza, a courtesy took the place of the usual refrain.
The whole performance is described as exceedingly pretty, stately, and
decorous. It cannot be doubted that the version of the ballad sung was
traditional, but we have not been able to secure it.
FOOTNOTES:
[53] The song exhibits numerous marks of antiquity. "Picks up a pin"
was originally, no doubt, "pulls at the pin." The word "garret" here
appears to correspond to the Scandinavian "high-loft," the upper part
and living-room of an ancient house. The third verse is a very ancient
ballad commonplace--
Shee's as soft as any silk,
And as white as any milk.
"Ballad of Kinge Adler," in the Percy MS.
Instead of "Water, water, wild-flowers," as printed on the next page,
we find in Philadelphia, "_Lily, lily, white-flower_," which may have
been the original, and reminds us of the refrains of certain ballads.
In Yorkshire, England, "_Willy, willy, wall-flower_."
A specimen of the quintessence of absurdity is the following
street-song:
Swallow, swallow, weeping
About a willow tree,
All the boys in Fiftieth Street
Are dying down below;
Excepting ---- ----
His love he can't deny,
For he loves ---- ----
And she loves him beside, etc.
Notwithstanding the vulgarity of these stanzas, and of others
which are employed for the same purpose, the practice which they
illustrate--namely, the adaptation of a ballad to the dance by uniting
with it a game-rhyme--is no doubt ancient. We have other examples in
the numbers which follow.
[54] "Lines told to Lydia Jackson (now Mrs. R. W. Emerson, of Concord,
Mass.) by her aunt, Joanna Cotton, in 1806-7-8, in Plymouth."
[55] Observe how the nursery song differs from the children's dance.
The nurse wishes to persuade the little child in her lap that _paring
nails_ is a mark of great regard and affection, as, while performing
that office, she chants the ballad to amuse her charge.
[56] "It is on a summer's tide, when ladies' hearts are free and gay,
when they go arrayed in ermine and silk. The hart strikes his horn
against the linden, and the fish leaps in the stream."--_Icelandic
Ballad._
[57] Some little friends, feeling the unsatisfactoriness of the
fragment, added a couplet to the dance--
O Mary, O Mary, your true love's not slain,
The king sends you a letter _to turn round again_.
[58]
Eh! la _clinquet_ (?) de lettres, que nouvelle est celle-ci?
Eh! ce sont des nouvelles qu'il faut changer d'ami.
[59] Or, "Three gold wishes, three good kisses, and a slice of
_ginger_!"
[60] Or, "strong."
[61] Or, "king's daughter," "queen's daughter."
[62] See French ballad referred to in the Appendix.
[63] Or, "King _George's_ son." For convenience sake, the last couplet
of the first version is printed with the melody.
[64]
For if my mother should chance to know,
She'd make my blood to fall.--_Version of Sir Egerton Brydges._
[65]
And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin;
And syne came out the bonny heart's blood,
There was nae mair within.
_Jamieson._
[66]
When bells were rung, and mass was sung,
And a' the bairns came hame,
When every lady gat hame her son,
The lady Maisry gat nane.
_Jamieson._
[67] Sallow; willow.
[68] In other versions it is "Testament" or "Catechism."
[69] Keene, New Hampshire.
III.
_PLAYING AT WORK._
"The king (George III.) danced all night, and finished with the
_Hemp-dressers_, that lasted two hours."--_Memoir of Mrs.
Delany._
No. 20.
_Virginia Reel._
This dance, which we will not here attempt to describe, is no doubt
well known to our readers; but we doubt if any of them has reflected on
its significance. It is, in fact, an imitation of _weaving_. The first
movements represent the shooting of the shuttle from side to side, and
the passage of the woof over and under the threads of the warp; the
last movements indicate the tightening of the threads, and bringing
together of the cloth.[70]
There is a very similar Swedish dance, called "Weaving Woollen," in
which the words sung are--
Weave the woollen and bind it together,
Let the shuttle go round!
The originally imitative character of the dance is thus well
illustrated. The "Hemp-dressers' Dance," in which George III. figured,
seems to have resembled this, according to the description quoted in
the memoir referred to in the heading of this chapter.
No. 21.
_Oats, Pease, Beans, and Barley Grows._
This round, although very familiar to all American children, seems,
strangely enough, to be unknown in Great Britain; yet it is still
a favorite in France, Provence, Spain, Italy, Sicily, Germany, and
Sweden; it was played by Froissart (born 1337), and Rabelais (born
1483); while the general resemblance of the song in European countries
proves that in the five centuries through which we thus trace it,
even the words have undergone little change. Like the first game of
our collection, it is properly a dance rather of young people than
of children; and a comparative examination of versions inclines us
to the belief that it is of Romance descent. The lines of the French
refrain,[71] and the general form of the dance, suggest that the song
may probably have had (perhaps in remote classic time) a religious and
symbolic meaning, and formed part of rustic festivities designed to
promote the fertility of the fields; an object which undoubtedly formed
the original purpose of the May festival. So much for conjecture;
but, in any case, it is pleasant to think of the many generations of
children, in so many widely separated lands, who have rejoiced in the
pretty game.
The ring circles, singing, about a child in the centre--
[Illustration]
Oats, pease, beans, and barley grows,
Oats, pease, beans, and barley grows;
How you, nor I, nor nobody knows,
Oats, pease, beans, and barley grows.
The children now pause, and sing with appropriate gestures--
Thus the farmer sows his seed,
Stands erect and takes his ease,
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,
And turns about to view his lands.
[Illustration]
Waiting for a partner,
Waiting for a partner,
Open the ring and take her in,
And kiss her when you get her in.
The boy selects a girl, and the two kneel in the ring, and salute--
Now you're married, you must obey,
You must be true to all you say,
You must be kind, you must be good,
_And make your husband chop the wood_.
What we have said of the permanency of the words applies only to the
action, the essential part, of the game. The _amatory chorus_, by which
the song is made to serve the purpose of love-making, is very variable.
Thus we have the quaint conclusion of the last line at greater length:
And now you're married in Hymen's band,
You must obey your wife's command;
You must obey your constant good,
And keep your wife in hickory wood--
Split the wood and carry it in, [_twice_]
And then she'll let you kiss her again.
"Splitting the wood" was a very troublesome part of the New England
farmer's ménage.
More commonplace are the choruses:
You must be good, you must be true,
And do as you see others do.
Or--
And live together all your life,
And I pronounce you man and wife.
Or again--
And love each other like sister and brother,
And now kneel down and kiss each other.[72]
In place of "sister and brother," the malicious wit of little girls
substituted "cats and dogs."[73]
In the early part of the century the essential stanza went thus in New
Hampshire:
Thus my father sows his seed,
Stands erect and takes his ease,
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,
Whirls about, and thus he stands.
The Swedish quatrain is nearly the same:
I had a father, he sowed this way,
And when he had done, he stood this way;
He stamped with his foot, he clapped with his hand,
He turned about, he was so glad.
The French rhyme, by its exact correspondence, proves the great
antiquity of the formula.[74]
The German game, as is often the case with German children's games and
ballads in general, is more modernized than in the other tongues, and
has become a coarse jest. It is represented how the farmer sows his
oats, cuts it, binds it, carries it home, stores it, threshes it, takes
it to market, sells it, spends the money in carousal, comes home drunk,
and quarrels with his wife, because she has cooked him no supper!
Verily, a satire from the lips of children!
Fauriel, in his history of Provençal literature, alludes to this
song, which it seems he had seen danced in Provence, and considers to
be derived from, and to represent, choral dances of Greek rustics.
"The words of the song," he says, speaking of these ancient dances,
"described an action, a succession of different situations, which the
dancers reproduced by their gestures. The song was divided into many
stanzas, and terminated by a refrain alike for all. The dancers acted
or gesticulated only to imitate the action or situation described in
each stanza; at the refrain they took each other by the hand and danced
a round, with a movement more or less lively. There are everywhere
popular dances derived from these, which more or less resemble
them.... I remember to have seen in Provence some of these dances,
of which the theme seems to be very ancient--one, among the rest,
imitating successively the habitual actions of a poor laborer, working
in his field, sowing his wheat or oats, mowing, and so on to the end.
Each of the numerous couplets of the song was sung with a slow and
dragging motion, as if to imitate the fatigue and the sullen air of
the poor laborer; and the refrain was of a very lively movement, the
dancers then giving way to all their gayety."[75]
The French, Italian, and Spanish versions of this game also represent
a series of actions, sowing, reaping, etc., of which our own rhyme has
retained only one stanza. There is a whole class of similar rounds,
which describe the labors of the farmer, vine-dresser, etc. That such
a song, danced in sowing-time, and representing the progress and
abundance of the crop, should be supposed to bring a blessing on the
labors of the year, is quite in conformity with what we know of popular
belief, ancient and modern. When a French savant asked the peasants of
La Châtre why they performed the dance of "Threading the Needle" (see
No. 29), the answer was, "To make the hemp grow." It is not in the
least unlikely that the original of the present chant was sung, with a
like object, by Italian rustics in the days of Virgil.
No. 22.
_Who'll Be the Binder?_
Couples circle in a ring about a single player--
It rains, it hails, it's cold stormy weather,
In comes the farmer drinking all the cider;
You be the reaping-boy and I'll be the binder;
I've lost my true love, and don't know where to find her.
Each girl then lets go of her partner's arm, and takes the arm of the
one in advance, and the solitary player endeavors meanwhile to slip
into the line.
The following is a variation:
It snows and it blows, and it's cold frosty weather,
Here comes the farmer drinking all his cider;
I'll be the reaper, who'll be the binder?
I've lost my true love, where shall I find her?
It is played by children in New York city as a kissing-game in the ring,
as follows:
[Illustration]
In comes the farmer, drinking all the cider;
I have a true love and don't know where to find her.
Go round the ring, and see if you can find her;
If you cannot find her, go and choose another one.
We meet our game once more in North Germany. But its prettiest form is
among the Fins of the Baltic coast, where it is extremely pleasing and
pastoral:
Reap we the oat harvest,
Who will come and bind it?
Ah, perhaps his darling,
Treasure of his bosom.
Where have I last seen her?
Yesterday at evening,
Yesterday at morning!
When will she come hither,
With her little household,
With her gentle escort,
People of her village?
Who has not a partner,
Let him pay a forfeit!
It is a remarkable fact that, even where this simple people have
borrowed the dramatic idea of an amusement from their more civilized
neighbors, they have developed it with a sweetness and grace which put
the latter to shame.
No. 23.
_As We Go Round the Mulberry Bush._
[Illustration]
As we go round the mulberry bush,
The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush;
As we go round the mulberry bush,
So early in the morning.
This is the way we wash our clothes,
All of a Monday morning.
This is the way we iron our clothes,
All of a Tuesday morning.
This is the way we scrub our floor,
All of a Wednesday morning.
This is the way we mend our clothes,
All of a Thursday morning.
This is the way we sweep the house,
All of a Friday morning.
This is the way we bake our bread,
All of a Saturday morning.
This is the way we go to church,
All of a Sunday morning.
In Massachusetts the song goes--
Here we go round the _barberry bush_,
So early in the morning.
A variation makes the last line--
All on a frosty morning.
No. 24.
_Do, Do, Pity my Case._
Do, do, pity my case,
In some lady's garden;
My clothes to wash when I get home,
In some lady's garden.
Do, do, pity my case,
In some lady's garden;
My clothes to iron when I get home,
In some lady's garden.
And so on, the performers lamenting the duty which lies upon them of
scrubbing their floors, baking their bread, etc.
_Louisiana._
This pretty dance, with its idiomatic English, which comes to us from
the extreme South, is obviously not modern. The chorus refers, not to
the place of the labor, but to the locality of the dance: it may have
been originally _in my lady's garden_. Our informant remembers the
game as danced by negro children, their scanty garments flying as the
ring spun about the trunk of some large tree; but (though the naive
appeal to pity may seem characteristic of Southern indolence) this is
evidently no negro song.
No. 25.
_When I Was a Shoemaker._
[Illustration]
A ROUND.
When I was a shoemaker,
And a shoemaker was I,
This way,[76] and this way,
And this way went I.
When I was a gentleman,
And a gentleman was I,
This way, and this way,
And this way went I.
When I was a lady,
And a lady was I,
This way, and this way,
And this way went I.
So on, indefinitely. The gentleman places his hands in his waistcoat
pockets, and promenades up and down; the lady gathers her skirts
haughtily together; the fireman makes a sound in imitation of the
horns which firemen formerly blew; the shoemaker and hair-dresser are
represented by appropriate motions, etc.
_New York streets._
As with most street-games, further inquiry has shown us that the song
is old in America. Not merely the substance (which is identical with
our last two numbers), but also the expression, is paralleled in France
and Italy, and even on the extreme limits of European Russia.
The well-known French name of this game "The Bridge of Avignon,"[77]
indicates a high antiquity. This bridge, which figures in French
nursery-lore as London Bridge does in our own, was built in 1177.
Bridges, in the Middle Age, were the most important structures in the
land, places of festivity and solemnity, dances, trials, and executions.
No. 26.
_Here We Come Gathering Nuts of May._
Two opposite rows of girls. One side advances and sings, the other side
replying:
"Here we come gathering nuts of May, [_thrice_]
On a May morning early."
"Whom will you gather for nuts of May,
On a May morning early?"
"We'll gather [naming a girl] for nuts of May,
On a May morning early."
"Whom will you send to fetch her away,
On a May morning early?"
"We'll send [naming a strong girl] to pull her away,
On a May morning early."
The game is continued until all players are brought to one side.
_Charlestown, W. Va._
This game is probably a recent importation from England, where it
is very well known. It seems likely that the imitative dance really
belongs to the season of nut-gathering,[78] and that the phrase, "Nuts
of _May_," and the refrain, have crept in from its later use as a
May-game.
No. 27.
_Here I Brew, and Here I Bake._
A ring of children clasp hands by clenching fingers; a single child
within the circle repeats the rhyme, making appropriate gestures over
successive pairs of hands; at the last words he (or she) throws himself
(or herself) against what is thought the most penetrable point.
Here I brew and here I bake,
And here I make my wedding-cake,
And here I must break through.
The following is a different version:
Here I bake and here I brew,
And here I lay my wedding-shoe,
And here I must and shall break through.
If the first attempt is not successful, the player within the ring runs
to attack some other point. After the ring is broken, the child on his
right continues the game. In New York, a violent form of the same sport
goes by the name of "Bull in the Ring."
No. 28.
_Draw a Bucket of Water._
Four girls cross hands, and pull in rhythmical movement against each
other while singing, one pair changing the position of their hands from
above to below that of the other pair at the words, "Here we go under,"
etc.
Draw a bucket of water
For my lady's daughter.
One in a rush,
Two in a rush,
Here we go under the mulberry bush.
_New York._
In Massachusetts this was a ring game:
Draw a pail of water
For my lady's daughter.
Give her a ring and a silver pin,
And pay for my lady's pop under.
At the last words the girl within the ring endeavors to pass under the
hands of one of the couples.
No. 29.
_Threading the Needle._
A boy and a girl, standing each on a stool, make an arch of their
hands, under which an endless chain passes, until the hands are
dropped, and one of the players is enclosed.
The needle's eve
That doth supply
The thread that runs so true;
Ah! many a lass
Have I let pass
Because I wanted you.
Or--
The needle's eye
You can't pass by,
The thread it runs so true;
It has caught many a seemly lass,
And now it has caught you.
_Massachusetts._
In the following more complicated form of the game, in use half a
century ago, both a boy and a girl were caught by the players who
raised their arms:
The needle's eye
None can surpass
But those who travel through;
It hath caught many a smiling lass,
But now it hath caught you.
There's none so sweet
That is dressed so neat;[79]
I do intend,
Before I end,
To make this couple meet.
The pair then kissed, and the game proceeded as in "London Bridge,"
ending with a tug-of-war.
The name, "Threading the Needle," is still applied, in a district of
central France, to a dance in which many hundred persons take part, in
which from time to time the pair who form the head of the row raise
their arms to allow the line to pass through, coiling and winding like
a great serpent.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] An acquaintance says, that in the interior of New York State the
men and girls stand in the row by sevens; an arrangement which she
suggests may imitate the different colors of strands.
[71]
Oats, oats, oats,
May the good God prosper you!
[72] These choruses, which may be paralleled from Great Britain, do not
in themselves belong to any particular game.
[73] We find the same benevolent wish, under like circumstances, in a
Swedish game. Is the correspondence accident or tradition?
[74]
Qui veut ouir, qui veut savoir,
Comment on sème l'aveine?
Mon père la sèmait ainsi,
Puis il se reposait à demi;
Frappe du pied, puis de la main,
Un petit tour pour ton voisin;
Aveine, aveine, aveine,
Que le Bon Dieu t'amène!
[75] Fauriel supposed the present round to be derived from Massiliot
Greeks; but he was unacquainted with its diffusion in Europe.
[76] Sung "_a this a way_."
[77]
Sur le Pont d'Avignon,
Les messieurs font ça,
Et puis encore ça.
Then come "les dames," "les cordonniers," etc.
In the corresponding Russian game, a single player mimics the walk of
old men, priests, or the habits of any trade or person in the company.
[78]
Nous sommes à trois fillettes,
Pour aller cueillir noisettes;
Quand les noisettes sont cueillies,
Nous sommes mises à danser.
[79] "We considered this a personal compliment. I remember we used to
feel very much pleased--children are so sensitive!"--_Informant._
IV.
_HUMOR AND SATIRE._
_Andante._
Perrette est bien malade,
En danger de mourir.
_Presto._
Son ami la va voire;
Te laira' tu mourir?
_Andante._
Non, non, répondit-elle,
Je ne veux pas mourir.
_Canadian Song._
No. 30.
_Soldier, Soldier, Will You Marry Me?_
[Illustration]
_First voice._-- "Soldier, soldier, will you marry me,
With a knapsack, fife, and drum?"
"Oh no, my pretty maiden, I cannot marry you,
For I have no coat to put on."
[Illustration]
_Second voice._-- Then away she ran to the tailor's shop,
As fast as legs could run;
And bought him one of the very best,
And the soldier put it on.
The question is then repeated, the soldier pleading his want of shoes
gloves, etc., which the confiding fair procures, until at last--
"Soldier, soldier, will you marry me,
With your knapsack, fife, and drum?"
"Oh no, my pretty maiden, I cannot marry you,
For I have--a good wife--at home!"
This piece and the following are more or less familiar as children's
songs through the United States. Our version was sung by children of
from five to eight years of age, and made a favorite amusement at the
afternoon gatherings. When one couple had finished, another pair would
begin, and so on for hours at a time. The object was to provide for the
soldier the most varied wardrobe possible; while the maiden put the
question with spirit, laying her hand on her heart, respecting which
the prevailing opinion was that it was under the left arm.
No. 31.
_Quaker Courtship._
In this piece, two children (in costume or otherwise) impersonate a
Quaker paying his addresses to a young lady of the world.
[Illustration]
"Madam, I am come a-courting--
_Hum, hum, heigho hum!_
'Tis for pleasure, not for sporting--
_Hum, hum, heigho hum!_"
"Sir, it suits me to retire,
_Teedle link tum, teedle tum a tee_;
You may sit and court the fire,
_Teedle link tum, teedle tum a tee_."
"Madam, here's a ring worth forty shilling,
Thou may'st have it if thou art willing."
"What care I for rings or money?
I'll have a man who will call me honey."
"Madam, thou art tall and slender;
Madam, I know thy heart is tender."
"Sir, I see you are a flatterer,
And I never loved a Quaker."
"Must I give up my religion?
Must I be a Presbyterian?"
"Cheer up, cheer up, loving brother,
If you can't catch one fish, catch another."
_Hartford, Conn._
No. 32.
_Lazy Mary._
A mother and daughter in the centre of a ring, the daughter kneeling
with closed eyes. Mother advances--
[Illustration]
"Lazy Mary, will you get up,
Will you get up, will you get up,
Will you get up to-day?"
"What will you give me for my breakfast,
If I get up, if I get up,
If I get up to-day?"
The reply is, "A slice of bread and a cup of tea," whereon Mary
answers, "No, mother, I won't get up," and responds similarly to the
call to dinner; but for supper the mother offers "a nice young man with
rosy cheeks," which is accepted with the words, "Yes, mother, I will
get up," whereon the ring clap their hands. The round is familiar in
New York streets. There is a corresponding English song, with a tragic
ending.
No. 33.
_Whistle, Daughter, Whistle._
"Whistle, daughter, whistle,
And I'll give you a sheep."
[_After an interval._] "Mother, I'm asleep."
"Whistle, daughter, whistle,
And I'll give you a cow."
[_A faint attempt._] "Mother, I don't know how."
"Whistle, daughter, whistle,
And I'll give you a man."
[_A loud and clear whistle._] "Mother, now I can!"
_New York._
The subject of this and the preceding number has furnished endless
mirth to popular poetry. The present song is ancient; for it is
identical with a German, Flemish, and French round of the fifteenth or
sixteenth century, in which a _nun_ (or monk) is tempted to _dance_
by similar offers. The spirit of the latter piece seems to be rather
light-hearted ridicule than puritanic satire, and the allusion does not
show that the piece is subsequent to the Reformation.
No. 34.
_There were Three Jolly Welshmen._
There were three jolly Welshmen,
And I have heard them say,
That they would go a-hunting
Upon St. David's day--
_Look--a--there--now!_
They hunted, they hunted,
And nothing could they find,
But a woman in the road,
And her they left behind--
_Look--a--there--now!_
One said it was a woman,
The other said nay;
One said it was an angel
With the wings blowed away--
_Look--a--there--now!_
We have obtained only three verses of the song, which was a favorite
with little children as they sat on the door-step of a summer's
evening. Another version of the ancient jest comes to us as sung by
college students:
(_Slow and mournful, in C minor._)
And so they went along,
To see what they could see,
And soon they saw a frog
A-sitting under a tree.
(_Recit._) So--they--did.
One said it was a frog,
But the other said nay--
One said it was a canary-bird
With the feathers blown away.
(_Recit._) So--it--was.
And so they went along,
To see what they could see,
And soon they saw a barn
A-standing by a tree.
One said it was a barn,
But the other said nay,
One said it was a meeting-house
With the steeple blown away.
And so they went along,
To see what they could see,
And soon they saw an owl,
A-sitting on a tree.
One said it was an owl,
But the other said nay,
One said it was the Evil One!
And they all ran away.
No. 35.
_A Hallowe'en Rhyme._
A ROUND.
Oh, dear doctor, don't you cry!
Your true love will come by-and-by.
If she comes all dressed in green,
That's a sign she's to be seen.
If she comes all dressed in white,
That's a sign she'll cry all night.
If she comes all dressed in gray,
That's a sign that she's away.
If she comes all dressed in blue,
That's a sign she'll marry you.
_New York._
A variation:
Oh, Miss Betsy, don't you cry!
For your true love will come _by'm-bye_;
When he comes he'll dress in blue--
Then he'll bring you, something new.
_Massachusetts._
These corrupt rhymes are only interesting as illustrating the
permanence of Hallowe'en customs, even in America. The Scotch rhyme of
Chambers goes--
This knot, this knot, this knot I knit,
To see the thing I ne'er saw yet--
To see my love in his array,
And what he walks in every day;
And what his occupation be,
This night I in my sleep may see.
And if my love be clad in green,
His love for me is well seen;
And if my love be clad in gray,
His love for me is far away;
But if my love be clad in blue,
His love for me is very true.
After repeating these words, the girl puts her knotted garter beneath
her pillow, and sleeps on it, when her future husband will appear to
her in a dream.
No. 36.
_The Doctor's Prescription._
A ROUND.
Oh, dear doctor, can you tell,
What will make poor ---- well?
She is sick and like to die,
And that will make poor ---- cry.
A kiss was the prescription.
We insert this silly little round, chiefly because, according to Madame
Celnart, a French equivalent was in favor, not with infants, but
ladies and gentlemen in polite society, only half a century since. Our
authority says:
"The master or the mistress of this round is called _doctor_. This
doctor takes the arm of the person seated on his right, regards him
or her with an eye of compassion, feels his pulse, and then gives his
order, which everybody repeats, singing, 'Give me your arm that I may
cure you, for you seem to me to look ill.'[80] Then, designating by a
glance some person of the other sex, he says, 'Embrace monsieur (or
madame) to cure you; it is an excellent remedy.' All the persons in the
ring are submitted to this treatment, which the physician knows how to
render piquant by the choice of the panacea which he recommends to his
patient; when everybody is cured, the doctor passes over his science
and dignity to the last person who has tested the efficacy of his
prescription, and in his turn falls sick, to make trial of the pleasing
remedy."
The general theme of our vulgarized round is more agreeably expressed
in the quaint and ancient Canadian song which we have cited as the
motto of the present chapter.
No. 37.
_Old Grimes._
Old Grimes is dead and in his grave laid,
In his grave, in his grave, in his grave laid--
_O aye O!_
There grew up an apple-tree over his head--
The apples were ripe and ready to fall--
Then came an old woman a-picking them up--
Old Grimes got up and gave her a kick--
And made her go hobbledy, hobbledy, hip--
The bridles and saddles they hang on the shelf--
And if you want any more you must sing it yourself--
_O aye O!_
_New York streets._
A friend informs us that he has often heard the words of this
unintelligible round sung as a "shanty," or song used by sailors at
their work, with the chorus, _yeo heave-ho_! In Cambridge, Mass., the
name of the deceased was "Old Cromwell." We have also a version of half
a century since, beginning,
Jemmy and Nancy went up to Whitehall,
Jemmy fell sick among them all.
No. 38.
_The Baptist Game._
Such is the peculiar title of this amusement in Virginia, where it is
said to be enjoyed by pious people who will not dance. There is a row
of couples, with an odd player at the head. At the sudden close of the
song occurs a grand rush and change of partners.
[Illustration]
Come, all ye young men, in your evil ways,
And sow your wild oats in your youthful days;
You shall be happy,
You shall be happy,
When you grow old.
The night is far spent, and the day's coming on,
So give us your arm, and we'll jog along,
You shall be happy,
You shall be happy,
When you grow old.
_Albemarle Co., Va._
This game, with verbal identity (save the title), was a few years since
an amusement of well-bred girls in New York city. It has also been
familiar in Massachusetts, with the exception of one line--
Come all ye _old maids_ in your sinful ways!
No. 39.
_Trials, Troubles, and Tribulations._
All participating are blindfolded, and, joining hands, march forward,
singing--
Here we go through the Jewish nation,
Trials, troubles, and tribulation.
The fun consists in bringing up against a door, or in causing a general
downfall by tripping over some obstacle.
_New York._
No. 40.
_Happy is the Miller._
An odd number of players, of whom the one not paired stands in the
centre of the ring. The others march in couples, each consisting of a
girl and a boy, till the sudden end of the song, when each boy grasps
the girl in front of him.
Happy is the miller, who lives by himself,
All the bread and cheese he piles upon the shelf,
One hand in the hopper, and the other in the bag,
The wheel turns around, and he cries out, Grab!
_Western New York._
Another version:
Happy is the miller that lives in the mill;
While the mill goes round, he works with a will;
One hand in the hopper, and one in the bag,
The mill goes around, and he cries out, Grab!
_Cincinnati._
The miller, whose pay used to be taken in a proportion of corn ground,
was a common object of popular satire.
In Germany the mill-wheel, as it slowly revolves, is said to exclaim--
There is--a thief--in the mill!
Then, moving more quickly--
Who is he? who is he? who is he?
And at last answers very fast, and without pausing--
The miller! the miller! the miller!
"Round and Round, the Mill Goes Round," is mentioned as an English
dance at the end of the seventeenth century. A song of "The Happy
Miller" is printed in "Pills to Purge Melancholy" (1707), of which the
first verse is--
How happy is the mortal that lives by his mill!
That depends on his own, not on Fortune's wheel;
By the sleight of his hand, and the strength of his back,
How merrily his mill goes, clack, clack, clack!
This song was doubtless founded on the popular game; but the modern
children's sport has preserved the idea, if not the elegance, of the
old dance better than the printed words of a hundred and seventy years
since. A variation of the same game is still familiar in Canada and
Sweden.[81]
No. 41.
_The Miller of Gosport._
That the prejudice against the honesty of the miller was not confined
to the Old World will appear from the following ballad:
There was an old miller in Gosport did dwell:
He had three sons whom he loved full well;
He called them to him, one--by--one,
Saying, "My--life--is--al--most--done!"[82]
He called to him his eldest son,
Saying, "My life is almost done,
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "my name is Dick,
And aout of each bushel I'll take one peck--
Of every bushel--that--I--grind,
I'll take one peck to ease my mind."
"Thou foolish son," the old man said,
"Thou hasn't but one half larnt thy trade!
The mill to you I'll never give,
For by such toll no man can thrive."
He called to him his second son,
Saying, "My life is almost done,
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "my name is Ralph,
And aout of each bushel I'll take one half--
Of every bushel that I grind,
I'll take one half to ease my mind."
"Thou foolish son," the old man said,
"Thou hasn't but one half larnt thy trade;
The mill to you I'll never give,
For by such toll no man can thrive."
He called to him his youngest son,
Saying, "My life is almost done;
And if I to you the mill shall make,
Pray, say what toll you mean to take?"
"Father," says he, "I _am_ your boy,
And in taking of toll shall be all my joy;
That an honest living I ne'er may lack,
I'll take the whole, and steal the sack."
"Thou _art_ my son," the old man said;
"Thou'st larnt thy good--old--fayther's trade;
The mill to you I do--betide"--
And--so--he--closed--his eyes--and--died.
Another version finds its way to us from the West, and ends with an
uncomplimentary opinion as to the habitation of the miller in the other
world.
FOOTNOTES:
[80]
Donne-moi ton bras que je te guérisse,
Car tu m'as l'air malade,
Loula,
Car tu m'as l'air malade!
[81] The Canadian words are, "J'entends le moulin, tique, tique,
tique." Probably the old English dance ended, "How merrily the mill
goes, clack, clack, clack!" after which, as now in Canada, partners
were changed, and the odd player in the centre had an opportunity to
secure a place, or to find a mate.
[82] The pauses lengthen as the patient grows weaker.
V.
_FLOWER ORACLES, ETC._
A spire of grass hath made me gay;
It saith, I shall find mercy mild.
I measured in the selfsame way
I have seen practised by a child.
Come look and listen if she really does:
She does, does not, she does, does not, she does.
Each time I try, the end so augureth.
That comforts me--'tis right that we have faith.
_Walther von der Vogelweide_ [A.D. 1170-1230].
No. 42.
_Flower Oracles._
Plucking one by one the petals of the ox-eye daisy (_Leucanthemum
vulgare_), children ask:
Rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.[83]
Girls then take a second flower, and, getting some one else to name it,
proceed, in order to determine where they are to live:
Big house, little house, pigsty, barn.
And in like manner use a third to discover in what dress they are to be
married:
Silk, satin, calico, rags.
Finally, they consult a fourth, to find out what the bridal equipage is
to be:
Coach, wagon, wheelbarrow, chaise.
Another version gives for the second line of the first formula:
Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief.
In Switzerland, girls in like manner say, as they pick off the
flower-leaves of the common daisy (_Bellis perennis_):
Be single, marry, or go into the cloister?
And boys--
Rich, poor, moderate?
The marguerite (_Doronicum bellidiastrum_) is asked in the same country:
Heaven, hell, purgatory, paradise?
And in Styria is called "Love's Measure," because it determines the
return of affection according to the well-known formula, "He loves me,
he loves me not," for which a French equivalent is:
Je t'aime, un peu, beaucoup,
Tendrement, pas du tout.
But in Switzerland again the questions for the marguerite exactly match
ours:
Nobleman, beggar-man, farmer, soldier, student,
Emperor, king, gentleman.
The verse is similar in Italy. It is curious to see the precise
correspondence of English and Continental forms.
Mediæval writers do not mention this use of flower-petals, but
frequently allude to the custom of drawing spires of grass, to secure
the longer (or shorter, as might be agreed). Thus lads might draw
grasses, for the purpose of deciding to which of the two a maiden
might belong as a partner. This was so usual a way of deciding a
controversy that it was even recognized in law, where the parties to
a suit drew straws from a thatch or sheaf. Children still resort to a
like arbitrament, where one holds the straws in the hand, and the other
draws, the shorter straw winning. To our surprise, we find that girls
in Massachusetts still keep up the mediæval usage; they draw stalks
of grass in the field, and match them, to decide who shall begin a
game--be "it."[84]
We have seen that the formula "Loves me, loves me not," was used in
the Middle Age with grasses. In Italy the oracle is consulted by means
of the branch of a tree. A twig is taken having alternate leaves, and
they are detached one by one, the consulter always turning the head
as the words of the oracle are spoken. The formulas for this purpose
closely resemble our own: thus, "This year, another year, soon, never,"
which is exactly identical with the English "This year, next year, some
time, never;" or, "He loves me, longs for me, desires me, wishes me
well; wishes me ill, does not care;" or, as in the Swiss form given,
"Paradise, Purgatory, _Caldron_" (that is, Inferno).
No. 43.
_Use of Flowers in Games._
Flowers are gathered and loved by children as they have always been,
and are used by them in all sorts of imaginative exercises of their own
invention, as, for instance, by girls in their imitative housekeeping;
but there is singularly little employment of them in any definite
games. Formerly it was otherwise; but the deep sympathy which blooming
youth once felt and expressed for the bloom of the year seems to have
almost disappeared.
In the Middle Age, as in classic antiquity, flowers were much in use
for dances. Great attention was paid to the significance of particular
blooms. "What flowers will you give me for a garland? What flowers
are proper for adornment?" are mentioned as names of sports. It was a
practice for the lover to approach his mistress with a flower or fruit
which he offered for her acceptance. If the girl accepted the gift, the
youth led her out, and the dance began. Another ancient practice was
to throw to a girl some bloom, at the same time pronouncing a couplet
which rhymed with the name of the flower. The ball, too, with which
youths and maids played, was sometimes made of flowers.
Almost the only relic of ancient usage of this sort, with us, is the
employment little girls make of dandelions, with which (in some parts
of the country) they make long garlands, cutting off the heads and
stringing them together.
This use of the dandelion is very old, from which it derives one of
its many German names, the _chain-flower_ or _ring-flower_. On account
of its early bloom and golden hue it is especially the flower of
spring, and seems to have had a religious and symbolic meaning. In
Switzerland these garlands are used in the dance, the children holding
a long wreath of the flowers so as to form a circle within the ring;
and whoever breaks the chain pays forfeit. The plant is said to be
of healing virtue, gives happiness to the lover, and, if plucked on
particular days, will heal troubles of the ey
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