CHILDREN'S FLOWERS, PLANTS, AND TREES.
As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he
flourishes.
--_Psalm_ ciii. 15.
A child at play in meadows green,
Plucking the fragrant flowers,
Chasing the white-winged butterflies,--
So sweet are childhood's hours.
We meet wi' blythesome and kythesome cheerie weans,
Daffin' and laughin' far adoon the leafy lanes,
Wi' gowans and buttercups buskin' the thorny wands--
Sweetly singin' wi' the flower-branch wavin' in their hands.
Many savage nations worship trees, and I really think my first
feeling would be one of delight and interest rather than of surprise,
if some day when I am alone in a wood, one of the trees were to
speak to me.--_Sir John Lubbock_.
O who can tell
The hidden power of herbs, and might of magic spell?--_Spenser_.
_Plant Life and Human Life_.
Flowers, plants, and trees have ever been interwoven with the fate of
man in the minds of poets and folk-thinkers. The great Hebrew psalmist
declared: "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field
so he flourisheth," and the old Greeks said beautifully, [greek:
_oiæper phyllôn geneæ, toiæde kai andrôn_], "as is the generation
of leaves, so is also that of men"; or, to quote the words of Homer
(_Iliad_, vi. 146):--
"Like as the generation of leaves, so also is that of men;
For the wind strews the leaves on the ground; but the forest,
Putting forth fresh buds, grows on, and spring will presently return.
Thus with the generation of men; the one blooms, the other fades away."
One derivation (a folk-etymology, perhaps) suggested for the Greek
[Greek: _anthropos_] connects it with [Greek: _anthos_],
making _man_ to be "that which springs up like a flower." We
ourselves speak of the "flower of chivalry," the "bloom of youth,"
"budding youth"; the poets call a little child a "flower," a "bud," a
"blossom,"--Herrick even terms an infant "a virgin flosculet." Plants,
beasts, men, cities, civilizations, grow and _flourish_; the
selfsame words are applied to them all.
The same idea comes out strongly in the words relating to birth and
childhood in the languages of many primitive peoples. With the
Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala the term _boz_ has the following
meanings: "to issue forth; (of flowers) to open, to blow; (of a
butterfly) to come forth from the cocoon; (of chicks) to come forth from
the egg; (of grains of maize) to burst; (of men) to be born"; in Nahuatl
(Aztec), _itzmolini_ signifies "to sprout, to grow, to be born"; in
Delaware, an Algonkian Indian dialect, _mehittuk_, "tree,"
_mehittgus_, "twig," _mehittachpin_, "to be born," seem
related, while _gischigin_ means "to ripen, to mature, to be born."
In many tongues the words for "young" reveal the same flow of thought.
In Maya, an Indian language of Yucatan, _yax_ signifies "green,
fresh, young"; in Nahuatl, _yancuic_, "green, fresh, new," and
_yancuic pilla_, "a new-born babe"; in Chippeway, _oshki,_
"new, fresh, young," whence _oshkigin_, "young shoot,"
_oshkinawe_, "lad, youth," _oshkinig_, "newly born,"
_oshkinaiaa_, "a new or young object," _oshkiaiaans_, "a young
animal or bird," oshkiabinodji_, "babe, infant, new-born child"; in
Karankawa, an Indian language of Texas, _kwa'-an_, "child, young,"
signifies literally "growing," from _ka'-awan_, "to grow" (said of
animals and plants).
Our English words _lad_ and _lass_, which came to the language
from Celtic sources, find their cognate in the Gothic
_jugga-lauths_, "young lad, young man," where _jugga_ means
"young," and _lauths_ is related to the verb _liudan_, "to
grow, to spring up," from which root we have also the German
_Leute_ and the obsolete English _leet_, for "people" were
originally "the grown, the sprung up."
_Maid (maiden)_, Anglo-Saxon _moegd_, Modern High German
_Magd_, Gothic _magaths_ (and here belongs also old English
_may_) is an old Teutonic word for "virgin, young girl." The Gothic
_magaths_ is a derivative from _magus_, "son, boy, servant,"
cognate with Old Irish _mac_, "boy, son, youth," _mog_ (mug),
"slave," Old Norse _mqgr_, "son," Anglo-Saxon _mago_, "son,
youth, servant, man," the radical of all these terms being _mag_,
"to have power, to increase, to grow,"--the Gothic _magus_ was
properly "a growing (boy)," a "maid" is "a growing (girl)." The same
idea underlies the month-name _May_, for, to the Romans, this was
"the month of growth,"--flowery, bounteous May,--and dedicated to
_Maia_, "the increaser," but curiously, as Ovid tells us, the
common people considered it unlucky to marry in May, for then the rites
of Bona Dea, the goddess of chastity, and the feasts of the dead, were
celebrated.
_Plant-Lore._
The study of dendanthropology and human florigeny would lead us wide
afield. The ancient Semitic peoples of Asia Minor had their "Tree of
Life," which later religions have spiritualized, and more than one race
has ascribed its origin to trees. The Carib Indians believed that
mankind--woman especially--were first created from two trees (509. 109).
According to a myth of the Siouan Indians, the first two human beings
stood rooted as trees in the ground for many ages, until a great snake
gnawed at the roots, so that they got loose and became the first
Indians. In the old Norse cosmogony, two human beings--man and
woman--were created from two trees--ash and elm--that stood on the
sea-shore; while Tacitus states that the holy grove of the Semnones was
held to be the cradle of the nation, and in Saxony, men are said to have
grown from trees. The Maya Indians called themselves "sons of the trees"
(509. 180, 264).
Doctor Beauchamp reports a legend of the Iroquois Indians, according to
which a god came to earth and sowed five handfuls of seed, and these,
changing to worms, were taken possession of by spirits, changed to
children, and became the ancestors of the Five Nations (480. IV. 297).
Classical mythology, along with dryads and tree-nymphs of all sorts,
furnishes us with a multitude of myths of the metamorphosis of human
beings into trees, plants, and flowers. Among the most familiar stories
are those of Adonis, Crocus, Phyllis, Narcissus, Leucothea, Hyacinthus,
Syrinx, Clytie, Daphne, Orchis, Lotis, Philemon and Baucis, Atys, etc.
All over the world we find myths of like import.
A typical example is the Algonkian Indian legend of the transformation
of Mishosha, the magician, into the sugar-maple,--the name
_aninatik_ or _ininatik_ is interpreted by folk-etymology as
"man-tree," the sap being the life-blood of Mishosha. Gluskap, the
culture-hero of the Micmacs, once changed "a mighty man" into the
cedar-tree.
Many of the peculiarities of trees and plants are explained by the folk
as resulting from their having once been human creatures.
Grimm and Ploss have called attention to the widespread custom of
planting trees on the occasion of the birth of a child, the idea being
that some sort of connection between the plant and the human existed and
would show itself sympathetically. In Switzerland, where the belief is
that the child thrives with the tree, or _vice versa_, apple-trees
are planted for boys and pear- or nut-trees for girls. Among the Jews, a
cedar was planted for a boy and a pine for a girl, while for the wedding
canopy, branches were cut from both these trees (385. 6). From this
thought the orators and psalmists of old Israel drew many a noble and
inspiring figure, such as that used by David: "The righteous shall
flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon."
Here belong also "flourishing like a green bay-tree," and the remark of
the Captain in Shakespeare's _King Richard Second:_--
"'Tis thought the king is dead. We will not stay;
The bay-trees in our country are all withered."
_Child-Flowers and -Plants._
The planting of trees for the hero or the heroine and the belief that
these wither when a death is near, blossom when a happy event
approaches, and in many ways react to the fate and fortune of their
human fellows, occur very frequently in fairy-tales and legends.
There is a sweet Tyrolian legend of "a poor idiot boy, who lived alone
in the forest and was never heard to say any words but 'Ave Maria.'
After his death a lily sprang up on his grave, on whose petals 'Ave
Maria' might be distinctly read." (416. 216).
An old Greek myth relates that the Crocus "sprang from the blood of the
infant Crocus, who was accidentally struck by a metal disc thrown by
Mercury, whilst playing a game" (448.299). In Ossianic story, "Malvina,
weeping beside the tomb of Fingal, for Oscar and his infant son, is
comforted by the maids of Morven, who narrate how they have seen the
innocent infant borne on a light mist, pouring upon the fields a fresh
harvest of flowers, amongst which rises one with golden disc, encircled
with rays of silver, tipped with a delicate tint of crimson." Such,
according to this Celtic legend, was the origin of the daisy (448. 308).
The peasants of Brittany believe that little children, when they die, go
straight to Paradise and are changed into beautiful flowers in the
garden of heaven (174. 141). Similar beliefs are found in other parts of
the world, and a like imagery is met with among our poets. Well known is
Longfellow's little poem "The Reaper and the Flowers," in which death,
as a reaper, reaps not alone the "bearded grain," but also "the flowers
[children] that grow between," for:--
"'My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,'
The reaper said, and smiled;
'Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.'"
And so:--
"The mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the field of light above."
According to a myth of the Chippeway Indians, a star once came down from
heaven to dwell among men. Upon consulting with a young man in a dream
as to where it should live, it was told to choose a place for itself,
and, "at first, it dwelt in the white rose of the mountains; but there
it was so buried that it could not be seen. It went to the prairie; but
it feared the hoof of the buffalo. It next sought the rocky cliff; but
there it was so high that the children whom it loved most could not see
it." It decided at last to dwell where it could always be seen, and so
one morning the Indians awoke to find the surface of river, lake, and
pond covered with thousands of white flowers. Thus came into existence
the beautiful water-lilies (440. 68-70).
Perhaps the most beautiful belief regarding children's flowers is that
embodied in Hans Christian Andersen's tale _The Angel_, where the
Danish prose-poet tells us: "Whenever a child dies, an angel from heaven
comes down to earth and takes the dead child in his arms, spreads out
his great white wings, and flies away over all the places the child has
loved and picks quite a handful of flowers, which he carries up to the
Almighty, that they may bloom in heaven more brightly than on earth. And
the Father presses all the flowers to His heart; but He kisses the
flower that pleases Him best, and the flower is then endowed with a
voice and can join in the great chorus of praise" (393.341).
_Star-Flowers_.
Beside this, however, we may perhaps place the following quaint story of
"The Devils on the Meadows of Heaven," of which a translation from the
German of Rudolph Baumbach, by "C. F. P.," appears in the _Association
Record_ (October, 1892), published by the Young Women's Christian
Association of Worcester, Mass.:--
"As you know, good children, when they die, come to Heaven and become
angels. But if you perhaps think they do nothing the sweet, long day but
fly about and play hide-and-seek behind the clouds, you are mistaken.
The angel-children are obliged to go to school like the boys and girls
on the earth, and on week days must be in the angel-school three hours
in the forenoon and two in the afternoon. There they write with golden
pens on silver slates, and instead of ABC-books they have story-books
with gay-coloured pictures. They do not learn geography, for of what use
in Heaven is earth-knowledge; and in eternity one doesn't know the
multiplication table at all. Dr. Faust is the angel-school teacher. On
earth he was an A.M., and on account of a certain event which does not
belong here, he is obliged to keep school in Heaven three thousand years
more before the long vacation begins for him. Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons the little angels have holiday; then they are taken to walk
on the Milky Way by Dr. Faust. But Sunday they are allowed to play on
the great meadow in front of the gate of Heaven, and that they joyfully
anticipate during the whole week.
"The meadow is not green, but blue, and on it grow thousands and
thousands of silver and golden flowers. They shine in the night and we
men call them stars.
"When the angels are sporting about before the gate of Heaven, Dr. Faust
is not present, for on Sunday he must recover from the toil of the past
week. St. Peter, who keeps watch at the Heavenly gate, then takes
charge. He usually sees to it that the play goes on properly, and that
no one goes astray or flies away; but if one ever gets too far away from
the gate, then he whistles on his golden key, which means 'Back!'
"Once--it was really very hot in Heaven--St. Peter fell asleep. When the
angels noticed this, they ceased swarming hither and thither and
scattered over the whole meadow. But the most enterprising of them went
out on a trip of discovery, and came at last to the place where the
world is surrounded by a board fence. First they tried to find a crack
somewhere through which they might peep, but as they found no gap, they
climbed up the board fence and hung dangling and looking over. Yonder,
on the other side, was hell, and before its gate a crowd of little
devils were just running about. They were coal-black, and had horns on
their heads and long tails behind. One of them chanced to look up and
noticed the angels, and immediately begged imploringly that they would
let them into Heaven for a little while; they would behave quite nice
and properly. This moved the angels to pity, and because they liked the
little black fellows, they thought they might perhaps allow the poor
imps this innocent pleasure.
"One of them knew the whereabouts of Jacob's ladder. This they dragged
to the place from the lumber-room (St. Peter had, luckily, not waked
up), lifted it over the fence of boards, and let it down into hell.
Immediately the tailed fellows clambered up its rounds like monkeys, the
angels gave them their hands, and thus came the devils upon Heaven's
meadows.
"At first they behaved themselves in a quite orderly manner. Modestly
they stepped along and carried their tails on their arms like trains, as
the devil grandmother, who sets great value on propriety, had taught
them. But it did not last long; they became frolicsome, turned wheels
and somersaults, and shrieked at the same time like real imps. The
beautiful moon, who was looking kindly out of a window in Heaven, they
derided, thrust out their tongues and made faces (German: long noses) at
her, and finally began to pluck up the flowers which grew on the meadow
and throw them down on the earth. Now the angels grew frightened and
bitterly repented letting their evil guests into Heaven. They begged and
threatened, but the devils cared for nothing, and kept on in their
frolic more madly. Then, in terror, the angels waked up St. Peter and
penitently confessed to him what they had done. He smote his hands
together over his head when he saw the mischief which the imps had
wrought. 'March in!' thundered he, and the little ones, with drooping
wings, crept through the gate into Heaven. Then St. Peter called a few
sturdy angels. They collected the imps and took them where they
belonged.
"The little angels did not escape punishment. Three Sundays in
succession they were not allowed in front of Heaven's gate, and, if they
were taken to walk, they were obliged to first unbuckle their wings and
lay aside their halos; and it is a great disgrace for an angel to go
about without wings and halo.
"But the affair resulted in some good, after all. The flowers which the
devils had torn up and thrown upon the earth took root and increased
from year to year. To be sure, the star-flower lost much of its heavenly
beauty, but it is still always lovely to look at, with its golden-yellow
disk, and its silvery white crown of rays.
"And because of its Heavenly origin, a quite remarkable power resides in
it. If a maiden, whose mind harbours a doubt, pulls off, one by one, the
white petals of the flower-star, whispering meanwhile a certain sentence
at the fall of the last little petal, she is quite sure of what she
desires to know."
The very name _Aster_ is suggestive of star-origin and recalls the
lines of Longfellow:--
"Spake full well, in language quaint and olden,
One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine,
When he called the flowers, so blue and golden,
Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine."
The reference seems to be to Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, of Coblentz, in
whose _Märchen ohne Ende_, a forget-me-not is spoken of as
"twinkling as brightly as a blue star on the green firmament of earth"
(390. II. 149).
Another contribution to floral astrology is the brief poem of H. M.
Sweeny in the _Catholic World_ for November, 1892:--
"The Milky Way is the foot-path
Of the martyrs gone to God;
Its stars are the flaming jewels
To show us the way they trod.
"The flowers are stars dropped lower,
Our daily path to light,
In daylight to lead us upward
As those jewels do at night."
Flower-oracles are discussed in another section, and the "language of
flowers" of which the poet tells,--
"In Eastern lands they talk in flowers,
And they tell in a garland their loves and cares;
Each blossom that blooms in their garden bower
On its leaves a mystic language bears,"
must be studied in Dyer, Friend, and Folkard, or in the various booklets
which treat of this entertaining subject.
Though in Bohemia it is believed that "seven-year-old children will
become beautiful by dancing in the flax," and in some parts of Germany
"when an infant seems weakly and thrives slowly, it is placed naked upon
the turf on Midsummer Day, and flax-seed is sprinkled over it; the idea
being, that, as the flax-seed grows, so the child will gradually grow
stronger" (435. 278, 279); flowers and plants are sometimes associated
with ill-luck and death. In Westphalia and Thuringia the superstition
prevails that "any child less than a year old, who is permitted to
wreathe himself with flowers, will soon die." In the region about
Cockermouth, in the county of Cumberland, England, the red campion
(_Lychnis diurna_) is known as "mother-die," the belief being that,
if children gather it, some misfortune is sure to happen to the parents.
Dyer records also the following: "In West Cumberland, the herb-robert
(_Geranium robertianum_) is called 'death come quickly,' from a
like reason, while in parts of Yorkshire, the belief is that the mother
of a child who has gathered the germander speedwell (_Veronica
chamoedrys_) will die ere the year is out" (435. 276).
_Children's Plant-Names._
Mr. H. C. Mercer, discussing the question of the presence of Indian corn
in Italy and Europe in early times, remarks (_Amer. Naturalist_,
Vol. XXVIII., 1894, p. 974):--
"An etymology has been suggested for the name _Grano Turco_
[Turkish grain], in the antics of boys when bearded and moustached with
maize silk, they mimic the fierce looks of Turks in the high 'corn.' We
cannot think that the Italian lad does not smoke the mock tobacco that
must tempt him upon each ear. If he does, he apes a habit no less
American in its origin than the maize itself. So the American lad
playing with a 'shoe-string bow' or a 'corn-stalk fiddle' would turn to
Italy for his inspiration."
In the interesting lists of popular American plant-names, published by
Mrs. Fanny D. Bergen (400), are found the following in which the child
is remembered:--
Babies' breath, _Galium Mollugo._ In Eastern Massachusetts.
Babies' breath, _Muscari botryoides._ In Eastern Massachusetts.
Babies' feet, _Polygala paucifolia._ In New Hampshire.
Babies' slippers, _Polygala paucifolia._ In Western Massachusetts.
Babies' toes, _Polygala paucifolia._ In Hubbardston, Mass.
Baby blue-eyes, _Nemophila insignis._ In Sta. Barbara, Cal.
Blue-eyed babies, _Houstonia coerulea._ In Springfield, Mass.
Boys and girls, _Dicentra cucullaria._ In New York.
Boys' love, _Artemisia absinthium._ In Wellfleet, Mass.
Death-baby, _Phallus sp. (?)._ In Salem, Mass.
Girls and boys, _Dicentra cucullaria._ In Vermont.
Little boy's breeches, _Dicentra cucullaria._ In Central Iowa.
"Blue-eyed babies" is certainly an improvement upon "Quaker ladies," the
name by which the _Houstonia_ is known in some parts of New
England; "death-baby" is a term that is given, Mrs. Bergen tells us,
"from the fancy that they foretell death in the family near whose house
they spring up. I have known of intelligent people rushing out in terror
and beating down a colony of these as soon as they appeared in the
yard."
The parents have not been entirely forgotten, as the following names
show:--
Mother's beauties, _Calandrina Menziesii_. In Sta. Barbara, Cal.
Mother of thousands, _Tradescantia crassifolia_ (?). In Boston, Mass.
Daddy-nuts, _Tilia sp._ (?). In Madison, Wis.
At La Crosse, Wis., the _Lonicera talarica_, is called "twin
sisters," a name which finds many analogues.
As we have seen, the consideration of children as flowers, plants,
trees, traverses many walks of life. Floral imagery has appealed to many
primitive peoples, perhaps to none more than to the ancient Mexicans,
with whom children were often called flowers, and the Nagualists termed
Mother-Earth "the flower that contains everything," and "the flower that
eats everything"--being at once the source and end of life (413. 54).
A sweet old German legend has it that the laughter of little children
produced roses, and the sweetest and briefest of the "good-night songs"
of the German mothers is this:--
"Guten Abend, gute Nacht!
Mit Rosen bedacht,
Mit Näglein besteckt;
Morgen früh, wenn's Gott will,
Wirst du wieder geweckt."