The Myths and Fables of To-Day. Drake Samuel Adams
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“criss-cross” we believe originally to have been Christ’s Cross.
Children of both sexes count apple seeds by means of the pretty jingling rhymes, so like to the German flower oracle, often employed by children of a larger growth. It has been set to music.
“One I love,
Two I love.
Three I love, I say,
Four I love with all my heart,
Five I cast away;
Six he loves,
Seven she loves,
Eight both love;
Nine he comes,
Ten he tarries,
Eleven he courts,
Twelve he marries.”
Holding the pretty field buttercup under another’s chin, in order to see if he or she loves butter, is a good form of divination. So is the practice of blowing off the fluffy dandelion top, after the flower has gone to seed, to determine the hour, as that flower always opens at about five in the morning, and shuts at about eight in the evening, thus making it stand in the room of a clock for shepherds. This plant has also been called the rustic oracle. To find the time of day, as many puffs as it takes to blow away the downy seed balls gives the answer. The same method of divination is employed by children to find out if their mothers want them; or to waft a message to some loved one; or to know if such or such a person is thinking of them; and whether he or she lives north, east, south, or west.
To the same general purport is the invocation:
“Rain, rain, go away,
Come again another day.”
We understand that the equally familiar form, —
“Snail, snail, put out your horn,”
is repeated in China as well as in this country, though sometimes altered to
“Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I’ll beat you black as a coal.”
One equally familiar form of childish invocation appears in the pretty little lady-bird rhyme, so often repeated by the young: —
“Lady-bird, lady-bird,
Fly away home,
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn.”
A favorite way, with boys, of choosing sides for a game of ball is by measuring the stick. To do this, the leader of one side first heaves the stick in the air, skilfully catching it, as it falls, at a point as near a hand’s-breadth to the end as possible, as his opponent must then measure the stick with him, alternately hand-over-hand, from the point where it is caught. The one securing enough of the last of the stick for a hold, has the first choice. This is determination by lot.
Still another form of invocation, formerly much used to clinch a bargain between boys, when “swapping” jack-knives or marbles, runs to this effect: —
“Chip, chop, chay,
Give a thing, give a thing,
Never take it back again.”
The process of counting a person out in the familiar phrase as being “it,” is fairly traced back to the ancient custom of designating a criminal from among his fellows by lot. The form that we know the best in New England, a sort of barbaric doggerel, according to Mr. Burton, is still current in Cornwall, England, and goes in this wise: —
“Ena, mena, bora, mi:
Kisca, lara, mova, di:
Eggs, butter, cheese, bread,
Stick, stock, stone dead.”
The resemblance between the foregoing, and what is current among playfellows on this side of the water easily suggests that the boys of the “good Old Colony times,” so often referred to with a sigh of regret, brought their games and pastimes along with them. As now remembered, the doggerel charm runs as follows: —
“Eny, meny, mony might,
Huska, lina, bony tight,
Huldy, guldy, boo!”
In getting ready for a game of “tag,” “I spy,” or “hide and seek,” the one to whom this last magic word falls becomes the victim or is said to be “it.” So in like manner the rhymed formula, following, is employed in counting a child “out”: —
“One-ery, two-ery, ickery Ann,
Fillicy, fallicy, Nicholas, John,
Queever, quaver, English knaver,
Stinckelum, stanckelum, Jericho, buck.”
A more simple counting-out rhyme is this:
“One, two, three,
Out goes he (or she).”
“Tit, tat, toe,” is still another form, repeated with variations according to locality.
These few examples may serve to show that what the performers themselves regard only as a simple expedient in the arranging of their games, if they ever give the matter a thought, is really a survival of the belief in the efficacy of certain magical words, turned into rhyme, to propitiate success. If this idea had not been instilled into our children by long custom and habit, it is not believed that they would continue to repeat such unmeaning drivel. Yet, as childish as it may seem, it advances us one step in solving the intricate problem in hand; for here, too, “the child is father to the man.”
III
WEATHER LORE
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” —Shakespeare.
There is a certain class of so-called signs, that from long use have become so embedded in the every-day life of the people as to pass current with some as mere whimsical fancies, with others as possessing a real significance. At any rate, they crop out everywhere in the course of common conversation. Most of them have been handed down from former generations, while not a few exhale the strong aroma of the native soil itself.
Of this class of familiar signs or omens, affecting only the smaller and more casual happenings one may encounter from day to day, or from hour to hour, those only will be noticed which seem based on actual superstition. Many current weather proverbs accord so exactly with the observations of science as to exclude them from any such classification. They are simply the homely records of a simple folk, drawn from long experience of nature in all her moods. As even the prophecies of the Weather Bureau itself often fail of fulfilment, it is not to be wondered at if weather proverbs sometimes prove no better guide, especially when we consider that “all signs fail in a dry time.”
The following are a few examples selected from among some hundreds: —
When a cat races playfully about the house, it is a sign that the wind will rise.
It is a sign of rain if the cat washes her head behind her ears; of bad weather when Puss sits with her tail to the fire.
Spiders crawling on the wall denote rain.
If a dog is seen eating green grass it is a sign of coming wet weather.
Hang up a snake skin for rain.
If the grass should be thickly dotted in the morning with cobwebs of the ground spider, glistening with dew, expect rain. Some say it portends the exact opposite. This puts us in mind of Cato’s quaint saying that “two auguries cannot confront each other without laughing.”
If the kettle should boil dry, it is a sure sign of rain. Very earnestly said a certain respectable, middle-aged housewife to me: “Why, sir, sometimes you put twice as much water in the kettle without its boiling away.”
If the cattle go under