Chapter XVI: Appendix (1)

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.