imitates character, emotion and action, by rhythmical
movement.
Now, having touched on mud-pies, let me say a few words upon
these aesthetic imitative instincts of acting, dancing, singing
before I follow Aristotle into his explanation of the origin of
Poetry, which I think we may agree to be the highest subject of
our Art of Reading and to hold promise of its highest reward.
Every wise mother sings or croons to her child and dances him on
her knee. She does so by sure instinct, long before the small
body can respond or his eyes--always blue at first and
unfathomably aged--return her any answer. It lulls him into the
long spells of sleep so necessary for his first growth. By and
by, when he has found his legs, he begins to skip, and even
before he has found articulate speech, to croon for himself. Pass
a stage, and you find him importing speech, drama, dance,
incantation, into his games with his playmates. Watch a cluster
of children as they enact "Here we go gathering nuts in May"--
eloquent line: it is just what they are doing!--or "Here come
three Dukes a-riding," or "Fetch a pail of water," or "Sally,
Sally Waters":
Sally, Sally Waters,
Sitting in the sand,
Rise, Sally--rise, Sally,
For a young man.
Suitor presented, accepted [I have noted, by the way, that this
game is more popular with girls than with boys]; wedding ceremony
hastily performed--so hastily, it were more descriptive to say
'taken for granted'--within the circle; the dancers, who join
hands and resume the measure, chanting
Now you are married, we wish you joy--
First a girl and then a boy
--the order, I suspect, dictated by exigencies of rhyme rather
than of Eugenics, as Dryden confessed that a rhyme had often
helped him to a thought. And yet I don't know; for the incantation
goes on to redress the balance in a way that looks scientific:
Ten years after, son and daughter,
And now--
[Practically!]
And now, Miss Sally, come out of the water.
The players end by supplying the applause which, in these days of
division of labour, is commonly left to the audience.