The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-DayChamberlain, Alexander Francis
Science
The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis
Child rearing; Children -- Folklore; Folklore and children
Mr. Powers' reference to "beating the bounds like Bumble the Beadle" is
an apt one. Mr. Frederick Sessions has selected as one of his
_Folk-Lore Topics_ the subject of "Beating the Bounds" (352), and
in his little pamphlet gives us much interesting information concerning
the part played by children in these performances. The author tells us:
"One of the earliest of my childish pleasures was seeing the Mayor and
Corporation, preceded by Sword-bearer, Beadles, and Blue Coat School
boys, going in procession from one city boundary-stone to another,
across the meadows and the river, or over hedges and gardens, or
anything else to which the perambulated border-line took them. They were
followed along the route by throngs of holiday makers. Many of the
crowd, and all the Blue boys, were provided with willow-wands,
_peeled_, if I remember rightly, with which each boundary mark was
well flogged. The youngest boys were bumped against the 'city stones.'"
In the little town of Charlbury in Oxfordshire, "the perambulations seem
to have been performed mostly by boys, accompanied by one or more of
their seniors." At Houghton, a village near St. Ives in Huntingdonshire:
"The bounds are still beaten triennially. They are here marked by holes
in some places, and by stones or trees in others. The procession starts
at one of the holes. Each new villager present is instructed in the
position of this corner of the boundary by having his head forcibly
thrust into the hole, while he has to repeat a sort of mumbo-jumbo
prayer, and receives three whacks with a shovel. He pays a shilling for
his 'footing' (boys only pay sixpence), and then the forty or fifty
villagers march off to the opposite corner and repeat the process,
except the monetary part, and regale themselves with bread and cheese
and beer, paid for by the farmers who now occupy any portion of the old
common lands."
In Russia, before the modern system of land-registration came into
vogue, "all the boys of adjoining Cossack village communes were
'collected and driven like flocks of sheep to the frontier, whipped at
each boundary-stone, and if, in after years two whipped lads, grown into
men, disputed as to the precise spot at which they had been castigated,
then the oldest inhabitant carrying a sacred picture from the church,
led the perambulations, and acted as arbitrator."
Here also ought to be mentioned perhaps, as somewhat akin and
reminiscent of like practices among primitive peoples, "the _blason
populaire_ (as it is neatly called in French), in which the
inhabitants of each district or city are nicely ticketed off and
distinguished by means of certain abnormalities of feature or form, or
certain mental peculiarities attributed to them" (204.19). In parts of
Hungary and Transylvania a somewhat similar practice is in vogue (392
(1892). 128).
_Story-Telling._
Some Indian children have almost the advantages of the modern home in
the way of story-telling. Clark informs us (420.109):--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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