The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought, Alexander F. Chamberlain [first color ebook reader .TXT] 📗

“It is their custom to ‘feed the spirits of the dead’ for the space of one year, by going daily to places which they were accustomed to frequent while living, where they sprinkle piñole upon the ground. A Yokaia mother who has lost her babe goes every day for a year to some place where her little one played while alive, or to the spot where its body was burned, and milks her breasts into the air. This is accompanied by plaintive mourning and weeping and piteous calling upon her little one to return, and sometimes she sings a hoarse and melancholy chant, and dances with a wild, ecstatic swaying of the body.”

Of the Miwok the same authority says:—

“The squaws wander off into the forest, wringing their arms piteously, beating the air, with eyes upturned, and adjuring the departed one, whom they tenderly call ‘dear child,’ or ‘dear cousin’ (whether a relative or not), to return.”

Of the Niskwaili Indians, of the State of Washington, Dr. Gibbs observes

(457. 205):—

“They go out alone to some place a little distant from the lodge or camp, and in a loud, sobbing voice, repeat a sort of stereotyped formula, as, for instance, a mother on the loss of her child:—

‘Ah seahb! shed-da bud-dah ah-ta-bud! ad-de-dah! Ah chief my child dead! alas!’

When in dreams they see any of their deceased friends this lamentation is renewed.”

Very beautiful and touching in the extreme is the conduct of the Kabinapek of California:—

“A peculiarity of this tribe is the intense sorrow with which they mourn for their children when dead. Their grief is immeasurable. They not only burn up everything that the baby ever touched, but everything that they possess, so that they absolutely begin life over again—naked as they were born, without an article of property left” (519. 206).

Besides the custom of “feeding the spirits of the dead,” just noticed, there exists also among certain of the Californian Indians the practice of “whispering a message into the ear of the dead.” Mr. Powers has preserved for us the following most beautiful speech, which, he tells us, was whispered into the ear of a child by a woman of the Karok ere the first shovelful of earth was cast upon it (519. 34): “O, darling, my dear one, good-bye! Never more shall your little hands softly clasp these old withered cheeks, and your pretty feet shall print the moist earth around my cabin never more. You are going on a long journey in the spirit-land, and you must go alone, for none of us can go with you. Listen then to the words which I speak to you and heed them well, for I speak the truth. In the spirit-land there are two roads. One of them is a path of roses, and it leads to the Happy Western Land beyond the great water, where you shall see your dear mother. The other is a path strewn with thorns and briars, and leads, I know not whither, to an evil and dark land, full of deadly serpents, where you wander forever. O, dear child, choose you the path of roses, which leads to the Happy Western Land, a fair and sunny land, beautiful as the morning. And may the great Kareya [the Christ of these aborigines] help you to walk in it to the end, for your little tender feet must walk alone. O, darling, my dear one, good-bye!”

This whispering to the dead is found in other parts of the world. Mr. Hose, describing the funeral of a boy, which he witnessed in Borneo, says (475. 198):—

“As the lid of the coffin was being closed, an old man came out on the verandah of the house with a large gong (Tetawak) and solemnly beat it for several seconds. The chief, who was sitting near, informed me that this was done always before closing the lid, that the relations of the deceased might know that the spirit was coming to join them; and upon his arrival in Apo Leggan [Hades] they would probably greet him in such terms as these: ‘O grandchild, it was for you the gong was beating, which we heard just now; what have you brought? How are they all up above? Have they sent any messages?’” The new arrival then delivers the messages entrusted to him, and gives the cigarettes—which, rolled up in a banana-leaf, have been placed in his hand—as proof of the truth of what he says. These cigarettes retain the smell of the hand that made them, which the dead relations are thought to be able to recognize.

Motherhood and Infanticide.

The intimate relationship recognized as existing between the infant and its mother has been among many primitive peoples a frequent cause of infanticide, or has been held at least to excuse and justify that crime. Of the natives of Ashanti, Ellis says:—

“Should the mother die in childbirth, and the child itself be born alive, it is customary to bury it with the mother…. The idea seems to be that the child belongs to the mother, and is sent to accompany her to Srahmanadzi [ghost-land], so that her srahman [ghost] may not grieve for it” (438. 234). Post states that in Unyóro, when the mother dies in childbirth, the infant is killed; among the Hottentots it was exposed (if the mother died during the time of suckling, the child was buried alive with her); among the Damara, “when poor women die and leave children behind them, they are often buried with the mother” (127. I. 287).

According to Collins and Barrington, among certain native tribes of Australia, “when the mother of a suckling dies, if no adoptive parents can be found, the child is placed alive in the arms of the corpse and buried together with it” (125. II. 589). Of the Banians of Bombay, Niebuhr tells us that children under eighteen months old are buried when the mother dies, the corpse of the latter being burned at ebb tide on the shore of the sea, so that the next tide may wash away the ashes (125. II. 581). In certain parts of Borneo: “If a mother died in childbirth, it was the former practice to strap the living babe to its dead mother, and bury them both, together. ‘Why should it live?’ say they. ‘It has been the death of its mother; now she is gone, who will suckle it?’” (481 (1893). 133).

In certain parts of Australia, “children who have caused their mother great pain in birth are put to death” (127. I. 288), and among the Sakalavas of Madagascar, the child of a woman dying in childbed is buried alive with her, the reason given being “that the child may thus be punished for causing the death of its mother” (125. II. 590).

As has been noted elsewhere, not a few primitive peoples have considered that death, in consequence of giving birth to a child, gained for the mother entrance into Paradise. But with some more or less barbarous tribes quite a different idea prevails. Among the Ewe negroes of the slave coast of West Africa, women dying in childbirth become blood-seeking demons; so also in certain parts of Borneo, and on the Sumatran island of Nias, where they torment the living, plague women who are with child, and kill the embryo in the womb, thus causing abortion; in Java, they make women in labour crazy; in Amboina, the Uliase and Kei Islands, and Gilolo, they become evil spirits, torturing women in labour, and seeking to prevent their successful delivery; in Gilolo, the Kei group, and Celebes, they even torment men, seeking to emasculate them, in revenge for the misfortune which has overtaken them (397.19).

Of the Doracho Indians of Central America, the following statement is made: “When a mother, who is still suckling her child, dies, the latter is placed alive upon her breast and burned with her, so that in the future life she may continue to suckle it with her own milk” (125. II. 589). Powers remarks concerning the Korusi (Patwin) Indians of California (519. 222): “When a woman died, leaving her infant very young, the friends shook it to death in a skin or blanket. This was done even with a half-breed child.” Of the Nishinam Indians, the same authority informs us: “When a mother dies, leaving a very young infant, custom allows the relatives to destroy it. This is generally done by the grandmother, aunt, or other near relative, who holds the poor innocent in her arms, and, while it is seeking the maternal fountain, presses it to her breast until it is smothered. We must not judge them too harshly for this. They knew nothing of bottle nurture, patent nipples, or any kind of milk whatever, other than the human” (519. 328).

Among the Wintun, also, young infants are known to have been buried when the mother had died shortly after confinement (519. 232).

The Eskimo, Letourneau informs us, were wont to bury the little child with its dead mother, for they believed that unless this were done, the mother herself would call from Killo, the other world, for the child she had borne (100. 147, 148).

The Dead Mother.

To none of the saintly dead, to none of our race who have entered upon the life beyond the grave, is it more meet to pray than to the mother; folk-faith is strong in her power to aid and bless those left behind on earth. That sympathetic relation existing between mother and child when both are living, is often believed to exist when one has departed into the other world. By the name wa-hdé ca-pi, the Dakota Indians call the feeling the (living) mother has for her absent (living) child, and they assert that “mothers feel peculiar pain in their breasts when anything of importance happens to their absent children, or when about to hear from them. This feeling is regarded as an omen.” That the mother, after death, should feel the same longing, and should return to help or to nourish her child, is an idea common to the folk-belief of many lands, as Ploss (125. II. 589) and Zmigrodzki have noted.

“Amid the song of the angels,” says Zmigrodzki (174. 142), “the plaint of her child on earth reaches the mother’s ear, and pierces her heart like a knife. Descend to earth she must and does.” In Brittany she is said to go to God Himself and obtain permission to visit earth. Her flight will be all the easier, if, before burial, her relatives have loosed her hair. In various parts of Germany and Switzerland, the belief is that for six weeks the dead mother will come at night to suckle her child, and a pair of slippers or shoes are always put into the coffin with the corpse, for the mother has to travel over thistles, thorns, and sharp stones to reach her child. Widespread over Europe is this belief in the return of the mother, who has died in giving life to her little one. Till cock-crow in the morning she may suckle it, wash it, fondle it; the doors open of themselves for her. If the child is being well treated by its relatives, the mother rejoices, and soon departs; but if it has been neglected, she attends to it, and waits till the last moment, making audible her unwillingness to depart. If the neglect continues, the mother descends to earth once more, and, taking the child with her, returns to heaven for good. And when the mother with her offspring approaches the celestial gates, they fly wide open to receive them. Never, in the folk-faith, was entrance readier granted, never was Milton’s concept more completely realized, when

“Heaven open’d wide Her ever-during