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
The varieties of cradles are almost endless. We have the "hood"
(sometimes the "boot") of the Eskimo; the birch-bark cradle (or hammock)
of several of the northern tribes (as in Alaska, or Cape Breton); the
"moss-bag" of the eastern Tinné, the use of which has now extended to
the employés of the Hudson's Bay Company; the "trough-cradle" of the
Bilqula; the Chinook cradle, with its apparatus for head-flattening; the
trowel-shaped cradle of the Oregon coast; the wicker-cradle of the
Hupas; the Klamath cradle of wicker and rushes; the Pomo cradle of
willow rods and wicker-work, with rounded portion for the child to sit
in; the Mohave cradle, with ladder-frame, having a bed of shredded bark
for the child to lie upon; the Yaqui cradle of canes, with soft bosses
for pillows; the Nez Percé cradle-board with buckskin sides, and the
Sahaptian, Ute, and Kootenay cradles which resemble it; the Moki
cradle-frame of coarse wicker, with an awning; the Navajo cradle, with
wooden hood and awning of dressed buckskin; the rude Comanche cradle,
made of a single stiff piece of black-bear skin; the Blackfoot cradle of
lattice-work and leather; the shoe-shaped Sioux cradle, richly adorned
with coloured bead-work; the Iroquois cradle (now somewhat modernized),
with "the back carved in flowers and birds, and painted blue, red,
green, and yellow." Among the Araucanians of Chili we meet with a cradle
which "seems to be nothing more than a short ladder, with cross-bars,"
to which the child is lashed. In the tropical regions and in South
America we find the habit of "carrying the children in the shawl or
sash, and bedding them in the hammock." Often, as in various parts of
Africa, the woman herself forms the cradle, the child clinging astride
her neck or hips, with no bands or attachments whatever. Of woman as
carrier much may be read in the entertaining and instructive volume of
Professor Mason (113). The primitive cradle, bed, and carrier, was the
mother.
_Father and Child._
With many of the more primitive races, the idea so tritely expressed in
our familiar saying, "He is a chip of the old block,"--_patris est
filius_, "he is the son of his father,"--and so beautifully wrought
out by Shakespeare,--
"Behold, my lords,
Although the print be little, the whole matter
And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip,
The trick of his frown, his forehead; nay, the valley,
The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles,
The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger,"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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