RIDDLE-MAKING.
Riddle-making is not left alone by the purveyors of nursery yarns,
though belonging to the mythologic state of thought. The Hindu calls the
sun seven-horsed; so the German riddle asks--
"What is the chariot drawn by?"
"Seven white and seven black horses."
The Greek riddle of the two sisters--Day and Night. Another one given by
_Diog. Lært._ i. 91, _Athenagoras_ x. 451, runs--
"One is father, twelve the children, and born to each other
Maidens thirty, whose twain form is parted asunder,
White to behold on the one side, black to behold on the other,
All immortal in being, all doomed to dwindle and perish."[H]
"The year, months, and days."
* * * * *
An interesting English rhyme says--
"Old mother needle had but one eye,
A very long tail which she let fly,
Every time she went through a gap
She left a bit of her tail in the trap."
"Needle and sewing cotton."
* * * * *
"Purple, yellow, red, and green,
The king cannot reach, nor yet the queen,
Nor can Old Noll, whose power's so great,
Tell me this riddle while I count eight."
"A rainbow."
This nursery rhyme's date is fixed by the reference to Old Noll, the
Lord Protector.
* * * * *
"As round as an apple, as deep as a cup,
And all the king's horses can't pull it up."
"A well."
* * * * *
"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
Three score men, and three score more,
Cannot make Humpty Dumpty as before again."
"An egg."
Or--
"And all the king's horses, and all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again."
Plutarch says of Homer that he died of chagrin, being unable to solve a
riddle.
The Ph[oe]nix myth, once believed in by the Egyptian priests, is now,
and had even so long ago as in Herodotus' time, degenerated into a mere
child-story of a bird, who lived, and died, and rose again from its own
ashes. As a relic of a mysterious faith, this fabulous bird has come
down to us with diminished glory each century. Old Herodotus, the father
of history, tells us that he saw it once--not the bird itself, but a
painting of it--at Heliopolis, the City of the Sun, in Egypt. Even this
old Greek historian could not quite believe the current story in his day
concerning this bird; that it was supposed to revisit the earth after a
five-hundred-year sojourn in the land of gods was to him, at least, a
little strange. Pliny, the Roman, likewise gives a description of it. "I
have been told," he writes, "it was as big as an eagle, yellow in
colour, glittering as gold about the neck, with a body-plumage of deep
red-purple. Its tail is sky-blue, with some of the pennæ of a light
rose colour. The head is adorned with a crest and pinnacle beautiful to
the sight."
Another ancient retells the story somewhat different to both the Greek
and Roman historians. Thus runs the Indian version. Bear in mind,
however, before reading it, that, like the Second Stone Age people, it
was the habit of many races in India to cremate their dead:--
"A high funeral pyre is erected of dry wood, on which the body of the
dead is laid, and in course of time after igniting the faggots the
corpse is consumed. While this cineration is going on vultures and
carrion fowl not infrequently pounce down upon the body, and tear away
pieces of flesh from the ghastly, smoking corpse. These charred parts of
the body they carry away to their nests to feast upon at leisure. But
oftentimes dire results follow; the home of sun-dried sticks and litter
ignites, and the bird is seen by some of the superstitious peasantry to
rise up out of fire and smoke and disappear."
Then the Ph[oe]nix fable comes to mind, "It is the sun-god; he has
thrown fire and consumed the nest, and the old bird," and they hastily
conclude that the bird they just now beheld flying away is a new one,
and has, in fact, arisen out of the ashes they witnessed falling from
the branches of the tall tree. The Ph[oe]nix in truth!
The German child's rhyme, given by Grimm brothers, of
"Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home,"
is not out of place here. It evidences a state of mythologic thought.
"Ladybird! ladybird! pretty one, stay!
Come, sit on my finger, so happy and gay.
Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home,
Thy house is a-fire, thy children will roam.
Then ladybird! ladybird! fly away home.
Hark! hark! to thy children bewailing."
Yearly, as these harvest bugs, with their crimson or golden-coloured
shields, appear in our country lanes, the village youngsters delight in
capturing them, and play a game similar to the German child's. They
sing--
"Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home,
Your house is on fire, your children will roam,
Excepting the youngest, and her name is Ann,
And she has crept under the dripping-pan."
FOOTNOTES:
[H] "{heis ho patêr, paides de dyôdeka; tôn de g' hekastô
paides easi triêkont' andicha eidos echousai;
Hêi men leukai easin idein; hê d' aute melainai
Athanatoi de t' eousai apophthinousin hapasai.}"