And love each other like sister and brother,
And now kneel down and kiss each other.[72]
In place of "sister and brother," the malicious wit of little girls
substituted "cats and dogs."[73]
In the early part of the century the essential stanza went thus in New
Hampshire:
Thus my father sows his seed,
Stands erect and takes his ease,
Stamps his foot, and claps his hands,
Whirls about, and thus he stands.
The Swedish quatrain is nearly the same:
I had a father, he sowed this way,
And when he had done, he stood this way;
He stamped with his foot, he clapped with his hand,
He turned about, he was so glad.
The French rhyme, by its exact correspondence, proves the great
antiquity of the formula.[74]
The German game, as is often the case with German children's games and
ballads in general, is more modernized than in the other tongues, and
has become a coarse jest. It is represented how the farmer sows his
oats, cuts it, binds it, carries it home, stores it, threshes it, takes
it to market, sells it, spends the money in carousal, comes home drunk,
and quarrels with his wife, because she has cooked him no supper!
Verily, a satire from the lips of children!
Fauriel, in his history of Provençal literature, alludes to this
song, which it seems he had seen danced in Provence, and considers to
be derived from, and to represent, choral dances of Greek rustics.
"The words of the song," he says, speaking of these ancient dances,
"described an action, a succession of different situations, which the
dancers reproduced by their gestures. The song was divided into many
stanzas, and terminated by a refrain alike for all. The dancers acted
or gesticulated only to imitate the action or situation described in
each stanza; at the refrain they took each other by the hand and danced
a round, with a movement more or less lively. There are everywhere
popular dances derived from these, which more or less resemble
them.... I remember to have seen in Provence some of these dances,
of which the theme seems to be very ancient--one, among the rest,
imitating successively the habitual actions of a poor laborer, working
in his field, sowing his wheat or oats, mowing, and so on to the end.
Each of the numerous couplets of the song was sung with a slow and
dragging motion, as if to imitate the fatigue and the sullen air of
the poor laborer; and the refrain was of a very lively movement, the
dancers then giving way to all their gayety."[75]
The French, Italian, and Spanish versions of this game also represent
a series of actions, sowing, reaping, etc., of which our own rhyme has
retained only one stanza. There is a whole class of similar rounds,
which describe the labors of the farmer, vine-dresser, etc. That such
a song, danced in sowing-time, and representing the progress and
abundance of the crop, should be supposed to bring a blessing on the
labors of the year, is quite in conformity with what we know of popular
belief, ancient and modern. When a French savant asked the peasants of
La Châtre why they performed the dance of "Threading the Needle" (see
No. 29), the answer was, "To make the hemp grow." It is not in the
least unlikely that the original of the present chant was sung, with a
like object, by Italian rustics in the days of Virgil.
No. 22.
_Who'll Be the Binder?_