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
In Ashanti, boy musicians, singers, and dancers figure in the
processions of welcome of the chiefs and kings, and young girls are
engaged in the service of the fetiches (438. 258). At a funeral dance of
the Latuka, an African tribe, "the women remained outside the row of
dancers dancing a slow, stupid step, and screaming a wild and most
inharmonious chant, whilst boys and girls in another row beat time with
their feet." Burchell, while _en route_ for the Kaffir country,
found among certain tribes that "in the evening a whole army of boys
would come to his hut and listen with manifest pleasure to the tones of
his violin, and would repeat the melodies he played with surprising
accuracy" (546. 3, 199). The _meke-meke_, a dance of the Fiji
Islanders, "is performed by boys and girls for whom an old musician
plays"; at Tahiti the children "are early taught the 'ubus,' songs
referring to the legends or achievements of the gods," and "Europeans
have at times found pleasure in the pretty, plaintive songs of the
children as they sit in groups on the sea-shore" (546. 35, 180, 208). In
some of the Polynesian Islands, young girls are "brought up to dance the
timorodea, a most lascivious dance, and to accompany it with obscene
songs" (100. 62). At Tongatabu, according to Labillardiere, a young girl
"sang a song, the simple theme of which she repeated for half-an-hour"
(546. 31). Wallaschek calls attention to the importance of the child in
song in the following words (546. 75):--
"In some places the children, separated from the adults, sing choruses
among themselves, and under certain circumstances they are the chief
support of the practice of singing. On Hawaii, Ellis found boys and
girls singing in chorus, with an accompaniment of seven drums, a song in
honour of a quondam celebrated chief. Even during supper with the
Governor, table-music was performed by a juvenile bard of some twelve or
fourteen summers, who sang a monotonous song to the accompaniment of a
small drum.... In Fiji a man of position deems it beneath him to sing,
and he leaves it to his wife and children, so that women sing with women
only, and children with children."
Speaking of the natives of Australia, with whom he came into contact,
Beckler says "the octaves of the women and children at the performance
he attended were perfectly in tune, as one rarely hears in a modern
opera chorus, they were in exact accord." In the Kuri dance, witnessed
by Angas, a number of boys take part (546. 37, 223).
In New Guinea "the Tongala-up, a stick with a string whirled in the air,
is played by women and children." Among the Tagals of the Philippines,
Volliner found (with perhaps a little Spanish influence) "a chorus was
performed in a truly charming manner by twelve young girls formed in a
circle, one girl standing in the middle to direct." In the Andaman
Islands, where the men only, as a rule, sing, "the boys were far the
best performers" (546.24, 27, 75).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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