"Is as sweet as sugar and cinnamon too,"
or that
"Baby is a sweet pill,
That fills my soul with joy"
or when we see a father, mother or nurse--for nurses sometimes become
almost as fond of their little charge as the parents
themselves,--hugging the child to their bosoms as they say that he is
so sweet that "he makes you love him till it kills you," we begin to
appreciate the affection that prompts the utterance.
Another feature of these rhymes is the same as that found in the
nursery songs of all nations, namely, the food element. "Jack Sprat,"
"Little Jacky Horner," "Four and Twenty Black-birds," "When Good King
Arthur Ruled the Land," and a host of others will indicate what I mean.
A little child is a highly developed stomach, and anything which tells
about something that ministers to the appetite and tends to satisfy
that aching void, commends itself to his literary taste, and hence the
popularity of many of our nursery rhymes, the only thought of which is
about something good to eat. Notice the following:
Look at the white breasted crows overhead.
My father shot once and ten crows tumbled dead.
When boiled or when fried they taste very good,
But skin them, I tell you, there's no better food.
In imagination I can see the reader raise his eyebrows and mutter, "Do
the Chinese eat crows?" while at the same time he has been singing all
his life about what a "dainty dish" "four and twenty blackbirds" would
make for the "king," without ever raising the question as to whether
blackbirds are good eating or not.
We note another feature of all nursery rhymes in the additions made by
the various persons through whose hands,--or should we say, through
whose mouths they pass.
When an American or English child hears how a certain benevolent dame
found no bone in her cupboard to satisfy the cravings of her hungry
dog, its feelings of compassion are stirred up to ask: "And then what?
Didn't she get any meat? Did the dog die?" and the nurse is compelled
to make another verse to satisfy the curiosity of the child and bring
both the dame and the dog out of the dilemma in which they have been
left. This is what happened in the case of "Old Mother Hubbard" as will
readily be seen by examining the meter of the various verses. The
original "Mother Hubbard" consisted of nothing more than the first six
lines which contain three rhymes. All the other verses have but four
lines and one rhyme.
We find the same thing in Chinese Mother Goose. Take the following as
an example:
He ate too much,
That second brother,
And when he had eaten his fill
He beat his mother.
This was the original rhyme. Two verses have been added without rhyme,
reason, rhythm, sense or good taste. They are as follows:
His mother jumped up on the window-sill,
But the window had no crack,
She then looked into the looking-glass,
But the mirror had no back.
Then all at once she began to sing,
But the song it had no end
And then she played the monkey trick
And to heaven she did ascend.
The moral teachings of nursery rhymes are as varied as the morals of
the people to whom the rhymes belong. The "Little Mouse" already given
contains both a warning and a penalty. The mouse which had climbed up
the candle-stick to steal tallow was unable to get down. This was the
penalty for stealing, and indicates to children that if they visit the
cupboard in their mother's absence and take her sweetmeats without her
permission, they may suffer as the mouse did. To leave the mouse there
after he had repeatedly called for that halo-crowned grandmother, who
refused to come, would have been too much for the child's sympathies,
and so the mouse doubles himself up into a wheel, and rolls to the
floor.
In other rhymes, children are warned against stealing, but the penalty
threatened is rather an indication of the untruthfulness of the parent
or nurse than a promise of reform in the child, for they are told that,
If you steal a needle
Or steal a thread,
A pimple will grow
Upon your head.
If you steal a dog
Or steal a cat,
A pimple will grow
Beneath your hat.
Boys are warned of the dire consequences if they wear their hats on the
side of their heads or go about with ragged coats or slipshod feet.
If you wear your hat on the side of your head,
You'll have a lazy wife, 'tis said.
If a ragged coat or slipshod feet,
You'll have a wife who loves to eat.
Those rhymes which manifest the affection of parents for children
cultivate a like affection in the child. We have in the Chinese Mother
Goose a rhyme called the Little Orphan, which is a most pathetic tale.
A little boy tells us that,
Like a little withered flower,
That is dying in the earth,
I was left alone at seven
By her who gave me birth.
With my papa I was happy
But I feared he'd take another,
But now my papa's married,
And I have a little brother.
And he eats good food,
While I eat poor,
And cry for my mother,
Whom I'll see no more.
Such a rhyme cannot but develop the pathetic and sympathetic instincts
of the child, making it more kind and gentle to those in distress.
A girl in one of the rhymes urged by instinct and desire to chase a
butterfly, gives up the idea of catching it, presumably out of a
feeling of sympathy for the insect.
Unfortunately all their rhymes do not have this same high moral tone.
They indicate a total lack of respect for the Buddhist priests. This is
not necessarily against the rhyme any more than against the priest, but
it is an unfortunate disposition to cultivate in children. There are
constant sallies at the shaved noddle of the priest. They speak of his
head as a gourd, and they class him with the tiger as a beast of prey.
Some of the rhymes illustrate the disposition of the Chinese to
nickname every one, from the highest official in the empire to the
meanest beggar on the street. One of the great men of the present
dynasty, a prime minister and intimate friend of the emperor, goes by
the name of Humpbacked Liu. Another may be Cross-eyed Wang, another
Club-footed Chang, another Bald-headed Li. Any physical deformity or
mental peculiarity may give him his nickname. Even foreigners suffer in
reputation from this national bad habit.
A man whose face is covered with pockmarks is ridiculed by children in
the following rhyme, which is only a sample of what might be produced
on a score of other subjects:
Old pockmarked Ma,
He climbed up a tree,
A dog barked at him,
And a man caught his knee,
Which scared old Poxey
Until he couldn't see.
A well-known characteristic of the Chinese is to do things opposite to
the way in which we do them. We accuse them of doing things backwards,
but it is we who deserve such blame because they antedated us in the
doing of them. We shake each other's hands, they each shake their own
hands. We take off our hats as a mark of respect, they keep theirs on.
We wear black for mourning, they wear white. We wear our vests inside,
they wear theirs outside. A hundred other things more or less familiar
to us all, illustrate this rule. In some of their nursery rhymes
everything is said and done on the "cart before the horse" plan. This
is illustrated by a rhyme in which when the speaker heard a disturbance
outside his door he discovered it was because a "dog had been bitten by
a man." Of course, he at once rushed to the rescue. He "took up the
door and he opened his hand." He "snatched up the dog and threw him at
a brick." The brick bit his hand and he left the scene "beating on a
horn and blowing on a drum."
Tongue twisters are as common in Chinese as in English, and are equally
appreciated by the children. From the nature of such rhymes, however,
it is impossible to translate them into any other language.
In one of these children's songs, a cake-seller informs the public in
stentorian tones that his wares will restore sight to the blind and that
They cure the deaf and heal the lame,
And preserve the teeth of the aged dame.
They will further cause hair to grow on a bald head and give courage to
a henpecked husband. A girl who has been whipped by her mother mutters
to herself how she would love and serve a husband if she only had one,
even going to the extent of calling that much-despised mother-in-law
her mother, and when overheard by her irate parent and asked what she
was saying, she answers:
I was saying the beans are boiling nice
And it's just about time to add the rice.
These are rather an indication of good cheer on the part of the
children than lack of filial affection. A parent must be cruel indeed
to make a girl willing to give up her mother for a mother-in-law.
Another style of verses comes under the head of pure nonsense rhymes.
They are wholly without sense and I am not sure they are good nonsense.
They are popular, however, with the children, and critics may say what
they will, but the children are the last court of appeal in case of
nursery rhymes. Let me give one:
There's a cow on the mountain, the old saying goes,
On her legs are four feet, on her feet are eight toes.
Her tail is behind on the end of her back,
And her head is in front on the end of her neck.
The Chinese nursery is well provided with rhymes pertaining to certain
portions of the body. They have rhymes to repeat when they play with
the five fingers, and others when they pull the toes; rhymes when they
take hold of the knee and expect the child to refrain from laughing, no
matter how much its knee is tickled; rhymes which correspond to all our
face and sense; rhymes where the forehead represents the door and the
five senses various other things, ending, of course, by tickling the
child's neck.
All of these have called forth rhymes among Chinese children similar to
"little pig went to market," "forehead bender, eye winker," etc. The
parent, or the nurse, taking hold of the toes of the child, repeats the
following rhyme, as much to the amusement of the little Oriental as the
"little pig" has always been to our own children:
This little cow eats grass,
This little cow eats hay,
This little cow drinks water,
This little cow runs away,
This little cow does nothing,
Except lie down all day.
We'll whip her.
And, with that, she playfully pats the little bare foot. If it is the
hand that is played with the fingers are taken hold of one after
another, as the parent, or nurse, repeats the following rhyme:
This one's old,
This one's young
This one has
no meat;
This one's gone
To buy some hay,
And this one's on
the street.
There are various forms of this rhyme, depending upon the place where
it is found. The above is the Shantung version. In Peking it is as
follows:
A great, big brother,
And a little brother, too,
A big bell tower,
And a temple and a show,
And little baby wee, wee,
Always wants to go.
The following rhyme explains itself: The nurse knocks on the forehead,
then touches the eye, nose, ear, mouth and chin successively, as she
repeats:
Knock at the door,
See a face,
Smell an odor,
Hear a voice,
Eat your dinner,
Pull your chin, or
Ke chih, ke chih.
Tickling the child's neck with the last two expressions.
We have in English a rhyme:
If you be a gentleman,
As I suppose you be,
You'll neither laugh nor smile
With a tickling of your knee.
I had tried many months to find if there were any finger, face or body
games other than those already given. Our own nurse insisted that she
knew of none, but one day I noticed her grabbing my little girl's knee,
while she was saying:
One grab silver,
Two grabs gold,
Three don't laugh,
And you'll grow old.
There is no literature in China, not even in the sacred books, which is
so generally known as their nursery rhymes. These are understood and
repeated by the educated and the illiterate alike; by the children of
princes and the children of beggars; children in the city and children
in the country and villages, and they produce like results in the minds
and hearts of all. The little folks laugh over the Cow, look sober over
the Little Orphan, absorb the morals taught by the Mouse, and are sung
to sleep by the song of the Little Snail.
Sometimes however they, like children in other lands, are skeptical as
to the reality of the stories told in the songs. Thus I remember once
hearing our old nurse telling a number of stories and singing a number
of songs to the little folk in the nursery. They had accepted one after
another the legends as they rolled off the old woman's tongue, without
question, but pretty soon she gave them a version of a Wind Song which
aroused their incredulity. She sang:
Old grandmother Wind has come from the East.
She's ridden a donkey--a dear little beast.
Old mother-in-law Rain has come back again.
She's come from the North on a horse, it is plain.
Old grandmother Snow is coming you know,
From the West on a crane--just see how they go.
And old aunty Lightning has come from the South,
On a big yellow dog with a bit in his mouth.
"There is no grandmother Wind, is there, nurse?"
"No, of course not, people only call her grandmother Wind."
"Why do they call the other mother-in-law Rain?"
"I suppose, because mothers-in-law are often disagreeable, just like
rainy weather."
"And why do they speak of snow and the crane, and lightning and a
yellow dog?"
"I suppose, because a crane is somewhat the color of snow, and a yellow
dog swift and the color of lightning."