THE CHRIST-CHILD.
The holy thing that is to be born shall be called the Son of
God.--_Luke_ i. 35. There is born to you this day in the city of
David a Saviour, which is anointed Lord.--_Luke_ ii. 11.
Great little One! whose all-embracing birth
Lifts Earth to Heaven, stoops Heaven to Earth.--_Richard Crashaw._
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling hands control the damnèd crew.--_Milton._
The heart of Nature feels the touch of Love;
And Angels sing:
"The Child is King!
See in his heart the life we live above."--_E. P. Gould._
During the nineteen centuries that have elapsed since Jesus of Nazareth
was born, art and music, eloquence and song, have expended their best
talents in preserving forever to us some memories of the life and deeds
of Him whose religion of love is winning the world. The treasures of
intellectual genius have been lavished in the interpretation and
promulgation of the faith that bears his name. At his shrine have
worshipped the great and good of every land, and his name has penetrated
to the uttermost ends of the earth.
But in the brief record of his history that has come down to us, we
read: "The common people heard him gladly"; and to these, his simple
life, with its noble consecration and unselfish aims, appealed
immeasurably more even than to the greatest and wisest of men. This is
evident from a glance into the lore that has grown up among the folk
regarding the birth, life, and death of the Christ. Those legends and
beliefs alone concern us here which cluster round his childhood,--the
tribute of the lowly and the unlearned to the great world-child, who was
to usher in the Age of Gold, to him whom they deemed Son of God and Son
of Man, divinely human, humanly divine.
_Nature and the Christ-Birth._
The old heathen mythologies and the lore of the ruder races of our own
day abound in tales of the strange and wonderful events that happened
during the birth, passion, and death of their heroes and divinities.
Europe, Africa, Asia, America, and the Isles of the Sea, bring us a vast
store of folk-thought telling of the sympathy of Mother Nature with her
children; how she mourned when they were sad or afflicted, rejoiced when
they were fortunate and happy. And so has it been, in later ages and
among more civilized peoples, with the great good who have made their
influence felt in the world,--the poets, musicians, artists, seers,
geniuses of every kind, who learned to read some of the secrets of the
universe and declared them unto men. They were a part of Nature herself,
and she heralded their coming graciously and wept over them when they
died. This deep feeling of kinship with all Nature pervades the writings
of many of our greatest poets, who "live not in themselves," but are
become "a portion of that around them." In the beautiful words of
Scott:--
"Call it not vain; they do not err
Who say, that, when the poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies;
Who say, tall cliff, and cavern lone,
For the departed bard make moan;
That mountains weep in crystal rill;
That flowers in tears of balm distil;
Through his loved groves the breezes sigh,
And oaks, in deeper groan, reply;
And rivers teach their rushing wave
To murmur dirges round his grave."
And with a holier fervour, even, are all things animate and inanimate
said to feel the birth of a great poet, a hero, a genius, a prophet; all
Nature thrills with joy at his advent and makes known her satisfaction
with the good that has fallen to the lot of earth. With such men, as
Goethe said, Nature is in eternal league, watching, waiting for their
coming.
How Nature must have rejoiced on that auspicious day, nineteen centuries
ago, when the Messiah, long looked for, long expected, came! The sacred
historians tell us that the carol of angels heralded his birth and the
bright star in the East led the wise men to the modest manger where he
lay. Never had there been such gladness abroad in the world since
"The morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy."
Shakespeare, in _Hamlet,_--a play in which so many items of
folk-lore are to be found,--makes Marcellus say:--
"It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time,"
to which Horatio replies:--
"So have I heard, and do in part believe it."
This belief in the holy and gracious season of the birth of Christ,--a
return to the old ideas of the Golden Age and the kinship of all
Nature,--finds briefest expression in the Montenegrin saying of
Christmas Eve: "To-night, Earth is blended with Paradise." According to
Bosnian legend, at the birth of Christ: "The sun in the East bowed down,
the stars stood still, the mountains and the forests shook and touched
the earth with their summits, and the green pine tree bent; heaven and
earth were bowed." And when Simeon took the Holy Child from the mother's
arms:--
"The sun leaped in the heavens and the stars around it danced. A peace
came over mountain and forest. Even the rotten stump stood straight and
healthy on the green mountain-side. The grass was beflowered with
opening blossoms, and incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest,
and birds sang on the mountain-top, and all gave thanks to the great
God" (_Macmil-lan's Mag.,_ Vol. XLIII, p. 362).
Relics of the same thoughts crop out from a thousand Christmas songs and
carols in every country of Europe, and in myriads of folk-songs and
sayings in every language of the Continent.
And in those southern lands, where, even more than with us, religion and
love are inseparable, the environment of the Christ-birth is transferred
to the beloved of the human heart, and, as the Tuscans sing in their
_stornelli_ (415. 104):--
"Quando nascesti tu, nacque un bel flore;
La luna si fermò di camminare,
Le stelle si cambiaron di colore,"
in Mrs. Busk's translation:--
"Thy birth, Love, was the birth of a fair flower;
The moon her course arrested at that hour,
The stars were then arrayed in a new colour,"
so, in other lands, has the similitude of the Golden Age of Love and the
Golden Time of Christmas been elaborated and adorned by all the genius
of the nameless folk-poets of centuries past.
_Folk-Lore of Christmas Tide._
Scottish folk-lore has it that Christ was born "at the hour of midnight
on Christmas Eve," and that the miracle of turning water into wine was
performed by Him at the same hour (246. 160). There is a belief current
in some parts of Germany that "between eleven and twelve the night
before Christmas water turns to wine"; in other districts, as at
Bielefeld, it is on Christmas night that this change is thought to take
place (462. IV. 1779).
This hour is also auspicious for many actions, and in some sections of
Germany it was thought that if one would go to the cross-roads between
eleven and twelve on Christmas Day, and listen, he "would hear what most
concerns him in the coming year." Another belief is that "if one walks
into the winter-corn on Holy Christmas Eve, he will hear all that will
happen in the village that year."
Christmas Eve or Christmas is the time when the oracles of the folk are
in the best working-order, especially the many processes by which
maidens are wont to discover the colour of their lover's hair, the
beauty of his face and form, his trade and occupation,--whether they
shall marry or not, and the like. The same season is most auspicious for
certain ceremonies and practices (transferred to it from the heathen
antiquity) of the peasantry of Europe in relation to agriculture and
allied industries. Among those noted by Grimm are the following:--
On Christmas Eve thrash the garden with a flail, with only your shirt
on, and the grass will grow well next year.
Tie wet strawbands around the orchard trees on Christmas Eve and it will
make them fruitful.
On Christmas Eve put a stone on every tree, and they will bear the more
(462. IV. 1790-1825).
Beat the trees on Christmas night, and they will bear more fruit (448.
337).
In Herefordshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, in England, the farmers and
peasantry "salute the apple-trees on Christmas Eve," and in Sussex they
used to "worsle," _i.e._ "wassail," the apple-trees and chant
verses to them in somewhat of the primitive fashion (448. 219).
Some other curious items of Christmas folk-lore are the following,
current chiefly in Germany (462. IV. 1779-1824):--
If after a Christmas dinner you shake out the table-cloth over the bare
ground under the open sky, crumb-wort will grow on the spot.
If on Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, you hang a wash-clout on a hedge,
and then groom the horses with it, they will grow fat.
As often as the cock crows on Christmas Eve, the quarter of corn will be
as dear.
If a dog howls the night before Christmas, it will go mad within the
year.
If the light is let go out on Christmas Eve, some one in the house will
die.
When lights are brought in on Christmas Eve, if any one's shadow has no
head, he will die within a year; if half a head, in the second
half-year.
If a hoop comes off a cask on Christmas Eve, some one in the house will
die that year.
If on Christmas Eve you make a little heap of salt on the table, and it
melts over night, you will die the next year; if, in the morning, it
remain undiminished, you will live.
If you wear something sewed with thread spun on Christmas Eve, no vermin
will stick to you.
If a shirt be spun, woven, and sewed by a pure, chaste maiden on
Christmas Day, it will be proof against lead or steel.
If you are born at sermon-time on Christmas morning, you can see
spirits.
If you burn elder on Christmas Eve, you will have revealed to you all
the witches and sorcerers of the neighbourhood (448. 319).
If you steal hay the night before Christmas, and give the cattle some,
they thrive, and you are not caught in any future thefts.
If you steal anything at Christmas without being caught, you can steal
safely for a year.
If you eat no beans on Christmas Eve, you will become an ass.
If you eat a raw egg, fasting, on Christmas morning, you can carry heavy
weights.
The crumbs saved up on three Christmas Eves are good to give as physic
to one who is disappointed (462. IV. 1788-1801).
It is unlucky to carry anything forth from the house on Christmas
morning until something has been brought in.
It is unlucky to give a neighbour a live coal to kindle a fire with on
Christmas morning.
If the fire burns brightly on Christmas morning, it betokens prosperity
during the year; if it smoulders, adversity (246. 160).
These, and many other practices, ceremonies, beliefs, and superstitions,
which may be read in Grimm (462), Gregor (246), Henderson (469), De
Gubernatis (427, 428), Ortwein (3l5), Tilte (370), and others who have
written of Christmas, show the importance attached in the folk-mind to
the time of the birth of Christ, and how around it as a centre have
fixed themselves hundreds of the rites and solemnities of passing
heathendom, with its recognition of the kinship of all nature, out of
which grew astrology, magic, and other pseudo-sciences.
_Flowers of the Christ-Child._
Many flowers are believed to have first sprung into being or to have
first burst into blossom at the moment when Christ was born, or very
near that auspicious hour.
The Sicilian children, so Folkard tells us, put pennyroyal in their cots
on Christmas Eve, "under the belief that at the exact hour and minute
when the infant Jesus was born this plant puts forth its blossom."
Another belief is that the blossoming occurs again on Midsummer Night
(448. 492).
In the East the Rose of Jericho is looked upon with favour by women with
child, for "there is a cherished legend that it first blossomed at our
Saviour's birth, closed at the Crucifixion, and opened again at Easter,
whence its name of Resurrection Flower" (448. 528).
Gerarde, the old herbalist, tells us that the black hellebore is called
"Christ's Herb," or "Christmas Herb," because it "flowreth about the
birth of our Lord Jesus Christ" (448. 281).
Certain varieties of the hawthorn also were thought to blossom on
Christmas Day. The celebrated Abbey of Glastonbury in England possessed
such a thorn-tree, said to have sprung from the staff of Joseph of
Arimathea, when he stuck it into the ground, in that part of England,
which he is represented as having converted. The "Glastonbury Thorn" was
long believed to be a convincing witness to the truth of the Gospel by
blossoming without fail every Christmas Day (448. 352, 353).
Many plants, trees, and flowers owe their peculiarities to their
connection with the birth or the childhood of Christ. The
_Ornithogalum umbellatum_ is called the "Star of Bethlehem,"
according to Folkard, because "its white stellate flowers resemble the
pictures of the star that indicated the birth of the Saviour of mankind"
(448. 553). The _Galium verum,_ "Our Lady's Bedstraw," receives its
name from the belief that the manger in which the infant Jesus lay was
filled with this plant (448. 249).
The flight of the Holy Family into Egypt has attracted to it as a centre
a large group of legends belonging to this category, many of which are
to be found in Folkard and Busk.
Of a certain tree, with leaves like the sensitive plant, in Arabia, we
read that this peculiarity arose from the fact that when near the city
of Heliopolis "Joseph led the dromedary that bore the blessed Mother and
her Divine Son, under a neighbouring tree, and as he did so, the green
branches bent over the group, as if paying homage to their Master."
Near Mataria there was said to be a sycamore-tree, called "the Tree of
Jesus and Mary," which gave shelter at nightfall to the Holy Family, and
to this fact the Mohammedans are reported to attribute the great
longevity and verdure of the sycamore (448. 558).
A widespread tradition makes the "Rose of Jericho," called also "St.
Mary's Rose," spring up on every spot where the Holy Family rested on
their way to Egypt. The juniper owes the extraordinary powers with which
it is credited in the popular mind to the fact that it once saved the
life of the Virgin and the infant Christ. The same kind offices have
been attributed to the hazel-tree, the fig, the rosemary, the date-palm,
etc. Among the many legends accounting for the peculiarity of the aspen
there is one, preserved in Germany, which attributes it to the action of
this tree when the Holy Family entered the dense forest in which it
stood (448. 230):--
"As they entered this wilderness, all the trees bowed themselves down in
reverence to the infant God; only the Aspen, in her exceeding pride and
arrogance, refused to acknowledge Him, and stood upright." In
consequence of this "the Holy Child pronounced a curse against her; ...
and, at the sound of His words, the Aspen began to tremble through all
her leaves, and has not ceased to tremble to this day." According to a
Sicilian legend, "the form of a hand is to be seen in the interior of
the fruit of the pine," representing "the hand of Jesus blessing the
tree which had saved Him during the flight into Egypt by screening Him
and His mother from Herod's soldiers" (448. 496).
We have from Rome the following tradition (415. 173):--
"One day the Madonna was carrying the Bambino through a lupine-field,
and the stalks of the lupines rustled so, that she thought it was a
robber coming to kill the Santo Bambino. She turned, and sent a
malediction over the lupine-field, and immediately the lupines all
withered away, and fell flat and dry on the ground, so that she could
see there was no one hidden there. When she saw there was no one hidden
there, she sent a blessing over the lupine-field, and the lupines all
stood straight up again, fair and flourishing, and with ten-fold greater
produce than they had at first." In a Bolognese legend the lupines are
cursed by the Virgin, because, "by the clatter and noise they made,
certain plants of this species drew the attentions of Herod's minions to
the spot where the tired and exhausted travellers had made a brief halt"
(448. 473). Another tradition, found over almost all Italy, says that
when the Holy Family were fleeing from the soldiers of King Herod:--
"The brooms and the chick-peas began to rustle and crackle, and by this
noise betrayed the fugitives. The flax bristled up. Happily for her,
Mary was near a juniper; the hospitable tree opened its branches as arms
and enclosed the Virgin and Child within their folds, affording them a
secure hiding-place. Then the Virgin uttered a malediction against the
brooms and the chick-peas, and ever since that day they have always
rustled and crackled." The story goes on to tell us that the Virgin
"pardoned the flax its weakness, and gave the juniper her blessing,"
which accounts for the use of the latter for Christmas decorations,
--like the holly in England and France (448. 395).
_Birds of the Christ-Child._
Several birds are associated with the infant Christ in the folk-lore of
Europe and the East. In Normandy, the wren is called _Poulette de
Dieu, Oiseau de Dieu,_ "God's Chicken," "God's Bird,"--corresponding
to the old Scotch "Our Lady's Hen,"--because, according to legend, "she
was present at the birth of the Infant Saviour, made her nest in his
cradle, and brought moss and feathers to form a coverlet for the Holy
Child" (539. 35).
A Tyrolian folk-tale informs us that in days of yore the ravens were
"beautiful birds with plumage white as snow, which they kept clean by
constant washing in a certain stream." It happened, once upon a time,
that "the Holy Child, desiring to drink, came to this stream, but the
ravens prevented him by splashing about and befouling the water.
Whereupon he said: 'Ungrateful birds! Proud you may be of your beauty,
but your feathers, now so snowy white, shall become black and remain so
till the judgment day!'" In consequence of their uncharitable action
have the ravens continued black ever since (539. 92).
In his childhood Christ is often represented as playing with the other
little Jewish children. One Sabbath day He and His playmates amused
themselves by making birds out of clay, and after the children had been
playing a while, a Sadducee chanced to pass that way. The story goes on
to tell that "He was very old and very zealous, and he rebuked the
children for spending their Sabbath in so profane an employment. And he
let it not rest at chiding alone, but went to the clay birds and broke
them all, to the great grief of the children. Now, when Christ saw this,
He waved His hands over all the birds He had fashioned, and they became
forthwith alive, and soared up into the heavens" (539. 181). From
Swainson we learn that in the Icelandic version of the legend the birds
are thought to have been the golden plover "whose note 'deerin' sounds
like to the Iceland word 'dyrdhin,' namely 'glory,' for these birds sing
praise to their Lord, for in that He mercifully saved them from the
merciless hand of the Sadducee."
A Danish legend, cited by Swainson, accounts for the peculiar cry of the
lapwing, which sounds like "Klyf ved! klyf ved!" i.e. "Cleave wood!
cleave wood!" as follows (539. 185):--"When our Lord was a wee bairn,
He took a walk out One day, and came to an old crone who was busy
baking. She desired Him to go and split her a little wood for the oven,
and she would give Him a new cake for His trouble. He did as He was bid,
and the old woman went on with her occupation, sundering a very small
portion of the dough for the promised recompense. But when the batch was
drawn, this cake was equally large with the rest. So she took a new
morsel of the dough still less than before, and made and baked another
cake, but with the like result. Hereupon she broke out with 'That's a
vast overmuckle cake for the likes o' you; thee's get thy cake anither
time.' When our Lord saw her evil disposition, His wrath was stirred,
and He said to the woman: 'I split your wood as you asked me, and you
would not so much as give me the little cake you promised me. Now you
shall go and cleave wood, and that, too, as long as the world endures!'
With that he changed her into a weep (_vipa_) [lapwing]."
Among the many legends of Isa, as Jesus is called by the Moslems,
current among the Mohammedan peoples is a variant of the story of the
clay-birds, as follows: "When Isa was seven years old, he and his
companions made images in clay of birds and beasts, and Isa, to show his
superiority, caused his images to fly and walk at his command." Clouston
informs us that this story is also found in the Gospel of the
Pseudo-Matthew, and in that of the Infancy (422. II. 408).
In Champagne, France, legend makes the cuckoo to have issued from a
Christmas log (462. I. 113), and in a Latin poem of the Middle Ages we
are told that "the crossbill hatches its eggs at Christmas and the young
birds fly in full plumage at Easter" (539. 67).
_Animals._
At Christmas certain animals become more human, or express their joy at
the birth of Christ in unmistakable fashion.
There was an old Scottish belief that "at the exact hour of the
Saviour's birth bees in their hive emitted a buzzing sound" (246. 147).
According to a Breton folk-tale the ox and the ass can converse for a
single hour, "between eleven and twelve on Christmas night." At the same
hour, in German folk-lore, all cattle stand up; another version,
however, makes them devoutly kneel (462. IV. 1481).
Among the animals which folk-thought has brought into connection with
the Christ-Child is the horse. A Russian legend tells us that the flesh
of the horse is deemed unclean because "when the infant Saviour was
hidden in the manger, the horse kept eating the hay under which the babe
was concealed, whereas the ox not only would not touch it, but brought
back hay on its horns to replace what the horse had eaten" (520. 334).
From a Spanish-American miracle-play, we learn that the oxen and asses
around the manger kept the little babe warm with their breath. In
Ireland the following folk-beliefs obtain regarding the ass and the
cow:--
"Joseph and Mary fled into Egypt with the infant Jesus, on an ass. Since
that date the ass has had a cross on its back. This same ass returned to
Nazareth seven years later with them on its back, travelling in the
night, since which time it has been the wisest of all animals; it was
made sure-footed for Christ to ride on his triumphal entry into
Jerusalem, and it remains the most sure-footed of all beasts. The ass
and cow are looked upon as sacred, because these animals breathed upon
the infant Jesus in the manger and kept the child warm. Old women
sprinkle holy water on these animals to drive away disease" (480 (1893)
264). In _I Henry IV._ (Act II. Sc. 4) Falstaff says: "The lion
will not touch the true Prince," and the divinity which hedged about the
princes of human blood was ever present with the son of Joseph and Mary,
whose divinity sprang from a purer, nobler fount than that of weak
humanity.
_The Holy Family._
We have several word-pictures of the Holy Family from the mouth of the
folk. Among the hymns sung by the Confraternities of the Virgin in
Seville, is one in which occurs the following figure (_Catholic
World,_ XXIV. 19):--
"Es Maria la nave de gracia,
San Jose la vela, el Nino el timon;
Y los remos son las buenas almas
Que van al Rosario con gran devocion."
_i.e._
["Mary is the ship of grace,
St. Joseph is the sail,
The Child (Jesus) is the helm,
And the oars are the pious souls who devoutly pray."]
One of the little Italian songs called _razzi neddu,_ recorded by
Mrs. Busk, is even briefer:--
"Maruzza lavava,
Giuseppe stinnia,
Gesu si stricava
Ca minna vulia."
["Sweet Mary was washing,
Joseph was hanging out the clothes to dry,
Jesus was stretching Himself on the ground,
For so His mother willed."]
A popular Spanish lullaby recorded by De Gubernatis in his great study
of birth customs and usages, runs as follows in translation (500. 310):--
"The Baby Child of Mary,
Now cradle He has none;
His father is a carpenter,
And he shall make Him one.
"The Lady, good St. Anna,
The Lord St. Joachim,
They rock the Baby's cradle,
That sleep may come to Him.
"Then sleep, thou too, my baby,
My little heart so dear;
The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near."
Among the many versions and variants of the familiar child's prayer,
"Now I lay me down to sleep," cited by the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco
(500. 202-213), is to be included the following, found among the Greeks
of the Terra d'Otranto, in Italy:--
"I lay me down to sleep in my little bed; I lay me down to sleep with my
Mamma Mary; the Mamma Mary goes hence and leaves me Christ to keep me
company."
Some of the most naïve legends are those which deal with the Child and
His mother in the early years of life. "Our Lady's Thistle" (_Carduus
Marianus_) receives its name "because its green leaves have been
spotted white ever since the milk of the Virgin fell upon it, when she
was nursing Jesus, and endowed it with miraculous virtues." A German
tradition tells the same story of the _Polypodium vulgare_
(Marienmilch), based upon an older legend of the goddess Freia, many of
whose attributes, with the lapse of heathendom, passed over to the
central female figure of Christianity (448. 499). A similar origin of
the white lily from the milk of Juno is given in Greek mythology (462.
IV. 1671).
In Devonshire, the custom of burning a faggot of ash at Christmas, is
traced back to the fact that "the Divine Infant at Bethlehem was first
washed and dressed by a fire of ash-wood" (448. 235).
In Spain the rosemary is believed to blossom on the day of Christ's
passion, and the legend accounting for this tells us that "the Virgin
Mary spread on a shrub of rosemary the underlinen and little frocks of
the infant Jesus." The peasantry believe that rosemary "brings happiness
on those families who employ it in perfuming the house on Christmas
night" (448. 526).
_Joseph and Mary._
The suspicions entertained by Joseph (as indicated in the narrative of
St. Matthew i. 19), when the birth of the child of Mary was first
announced, have found deep expression in folk-thought. According to one
Oriental legend, the infant Christ himself spoke, declaring that "God
had created Him by His word, and chosen Him to be His servant and
prophet" (547. 254).
Another tradition, cited by Folkard, states that (448. 279): "Before the
birth of our Saviour, the Virgin Mary longed extremely to taste of some
tempting cherries which hung upon a tree high above her head; so she
requested Joseph to pluck them. Joseph, however, not caring to take the
trouble, refused to gather the cherries, saying sullenly, 'Let the
father of thy child present thee with the cherries if he will!' No
sooner had these words escaped his lips, than, as if in reproof, the
branch of the cherry-tree bowed spontaneously to the Virgin's hand, and
she gathered its fruit and ate it. Hence the cherry is dedicated to the
Virgin Mary."
In Finland the white side of the flounder "is said to have been caused
by the Virgin Mary's laying her hand upon it," and an Eastern legend
states that "the Angel Gabriel restored a sole to life, to assure the
Virgin Mary of the truth of the miraculous conception." Ralston cites
from the Kherson Government in Russia the following:--
"At the time of the Angelic Salutation, the Blessed Virgin told the
Archangel Gabriel that she would give credit to his words, if a fish,
one side of which had already been eaten, were to come to life again.
That moment the fish came to life, and was put back into the water."
This legend, accounting for the shape of the sole, finds perhaps its
origin in "the old Lithuanian tradition that the Queen of the Baltic Sea
once ate half of it and threw the other half into the sea
again"--another example of the transference of older stories to the
cycle of the Virgin Mary (520. 334).
De Gubernatis records from Andalusia, in Spain, a legend which tells how
the Holy Family, journeying one day, came to an orange-tree guarded by
an eagle. The Virgin "begged of it one of the oranges for the Holy
Child. The eagle miraculously fell asleep, and the Virgin thereupon
plucked not one but three oranges, one of which she gave to the infant
Jesus, another to Joseph, and the third she kept for herself. Then, and
not till then, the eagle that guarded the orange-tree awoke" (448. 478).
A beautiful pendant to this Spanish tale is found in the Roumanian story
cited by Folkard:--
"The infant Jesus, in the arms of the Blessed Virgin, becomes restless,
will not go to sleep, and begins to cry. The Virgin, to calm the Holy
Child, gives Him two apples. The infant throws one upwards and it
becomes the Moon; He then throws the second, and it becomes the Sun.
After this exploit, the Virgin Mary addresses Him and foretells that He
will become the Lord of Heaven" (448.222).
In his recent book on _Childhood in Literature and Art,_ Mr.
Scudder treats of the Christ-Child and the Holy Family in mediaeval and
early Christian art and literature (350. 57-65, 83-99), calling special
attention to a series of twelve prints executed in the Netherlands,
known as _The Infancy of our Lord God and Saviour, Jesus Christ,_
in which we have "a reproduction of the childhood of the Saviour in the
terms of a homely Netherland family life, the naturalistic treatment
diversified by the use of angelic machinery" (350.91).
_Moslem Lore of the Christ._
In the _Toldoth Jesú,_ which Clouston terms "a scurrilous Jewish
'Life of Christ,'"--the Hebrew text with a Latin translation and
explanatory notes, appeared at Leyden in 1705, under the title
_Historiæ Jeschuce Nazareni,_--the many wonders admitted to have
been performed by Christ are ascribed to his "having abstracted from the
Temple the Ineffable Name and concealed it in his thigh,"--an idea
thought to be of Indian origin. Clouston goes so far as to say: "Legends
of the miracles of Isa, son of Maryam, found in the works of Muslim
writers, seem to have been derived from the Kurán, and also from early
Christian, or rather _quasi_-Christian traditions, such as those in
the apocryphal gospels, which are now for the most part traceable to
Buddhist sources." One belief of the Mohammedans was that "the breath of
the Messiah had the virtue of restoring the dead to life" (422. II. 395,
408, 409).
In the first volume of the _Orientalist,_ Muhammed Casim Siddi
Lebbe gives an account of the views of Arabian writers regarding the
Virgin Mary and Jesus. Weil has also devoted a section of his work on
Mussulman legends to "John, Mary, and Christ." When the child Jesus was
born, we are told, the withered trunk of a date tree against which the
Virgin leaned, "blossomed, and its withered branches were covered with
fresh dates," while "a fountain of fresh water gushed forth from the
earth at her feet" (547. 249-264).
_The Christ-Child To-day._
Folk-stories and churchly legends tell us that the Christ-Child still
walks the earth, and appears unto the saints and sinners of this world.
Folkard reports a tradition from the Havel country in North Germany:--
"One Christmas Eve a peasant felt a great desire to eat cabbage and,
having none himself, he slipped into a neighbour's garden to cut some.
Just as he had filled his basket, the Christ-Child rode past on his
white horse, and said: 'Because thou hast stolen on the holy night, thou
shalt immediately sit in the moon with thy basket of cabbage.'" And so,
we are told, "the culprit was immediately wafted up to the moon," and
there he can still be seen as "the man in the moon" (448. 265).
Brewer gives many of the churchly legends in which the Christ-Child
appears to men and women upon earth, either in the arms of the Virgin,
as he came to St. Agnes of Monte Pulciano and to Jeanne Marie de Maille,
or as a glorious child, in which form he appeared alone to St. Alexander
and Quirinus the tribune, in the reign of Hadrian; to St. Andrew
Corsini, to call him to the bishopric of Fiesole; to St. Anthony of
Padua, many times; to St. Cuthbert, to rebuke him (a child of eight
years) for wasting his time in play; to St. Emiliana of Florence, with
the same purpose; to St. Oxanna, and to St. Veronica of Milan (191. 59,
60). Among the rude peasantry of Catholic Europe belief in the
visitations of the Christ-Child lingers, especially at the season of His
birth. With them, as Milton thought,--"Millions of spiritual creatures
walk the earth." Yet not unseen, but seen often of the good and wise,
the simple and innocent, and greatest of these visitants of earth is the
Child Jesus, ever occupied about His Father's business.