Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1872-12-30

MOTHER GOOSE.

If the American novelists be yet un-
christened, and the American dramatist
still linger in the Lethean mansions OF
souls unborn, our national Homer has
lived and died, and the long lino OF de-
considering the changed conditions Of the
age, this Yankee Melesigenes was swo-
man. The Greek, heir of long ages Of
national existence, caught up and made
immortal the legends and ballads which
grew out Of the childhood Of his nation.
The Puritan, born of a people without
national childhood, wove together the he
roic poems of the actual children. And
the one record bids fair to be immortal as
the other.
Out of life stern and grim and color.
less sprang these deep-hued growths OF
mother love. In an age Of grown-up lev
ity they would have been impossible, or
even in an age of fancy like our own,
when Shakespeare and Bunyan are cut
down to infantile stature, and incontinent-
ly rejected, It is pleasure to say. by the
small critics who maintain healthy pref
erence for Mother Goose. 1t Is easy to
see how the legends who could not sit
alone were hauledto meeting, andpropped
up in little wooden cages at the mothers
|
often to catechize children at home. It
was upon the statute books that children
might be put to death who ''cursed their
orderly parents" after the age Of l6. Toll
and godliness were all of fife. Children
were reared on the sincere milk Of the
Word. Fiction savored of hell. Folk
lore and church legend were alike rejec-
ted as impious or papistical, and the stern
Puritans substituted for the saints names
which smacked of idolatry the titles OF
Sir Peter, Sir Paul, or Sir Thomas. The
bay Psalm Book held all the versesper-
mitted to be sung and the ten tunes where
in all psalmody was set.
When the wide-eyed baby would not be
hushed to sleep with those dismal caden-
ces, when the toddlers turned, hungry,
from the catechism to the brooding mother
hood that was all the tenderer because 1t
dared not deny the doctrine OF infant dam
nation, then what befell? Why, this.
., That as the grave father went his rounds
sufehe twilight. gun in hand TO, see~AMt :
in tshe American and numhsr ef 0sxes sthal
all was we'll within the stockade, the grave
mother forebore little while to Groom,
Let children hear the mighty deeds,
Which God performed Of o-o-od"
and sang instead, half out of her house.
man, and half idly.
Little Betty Pringle had little pi-lg,
Little Betty Pringie ha-ad little pig"
1t would be only in answer to the prosaic
questionings of the audience, who, child
fashion, must be resolved as to the cubic
contents of this delightfully."- unexpected
animal, that the second line would sing
itself, not as necessary rhyme, but as
rrr0y,ipor a.
exact enough to satisfy the infant Grad
grinds. And 10, one canto of an immor-
ial poem had enriched the world
Little Betty Pringle had little pig;
1t wasn't very little, and 1t wasn't very big.'
Conjecture is idle as to how many
fines. bv how many mothers, in how
many twilights, 10 how many spellbound
children, the tale was told before it grew
into this perfect and pathetic history:
Little Betty Pringle had little pig,
1t WASN'T very little and 1t wasn't very big.
When 1t was alive
It lived in the clover,
But now ips dead,
And that's all over.
johnny Pringle, he
Sat down and cried.
Betty Prlngle, she
Lay down and died.
"And there's an end
Johnny Pringle, he,
Betty Pringe, she,
And Piggy wig-gee.n
Here is the parallel, quite sufficiently
close, to the Homeric literature; the sim
plicity, the reality, the slow actions, the
elagiac quality of the strain. And as the
earlier myths were the poetic statement
of natural phenomena, accepted literally
by the hearers, these modern tales of en-
chantment may have been allegories full
Of significance to the domestic bards who
sang them, though plainest fact to the ua-
developed minds for which they were
made. When the scientific method OF
inquiry shall be applied to Mother Goose.
as it has been to Homer and Shakespeare
there is little doubt that subtle meanings
will inhere in the Three Wise Men OF
Gotham, in Mistress Mary. and in the
Cow that Jumped Over the Moon
| ScYibner's for December