The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1888-09-20
CRADLES AND ROCKING.
Ways Of Quieting Babies That Are Probs
bly, Older Thai History.

ways OF Qufet1ng Babies That Are Proba-
bly, Older Thai History.
The practice of rocking seems to be al
most as universal as the use of cradles,
though modern intelligence seems to be in
clined to abandon 1t. Till the past few
years no English mother would ever have
thought of adopting cradle without rock
ers, and pretty much the same may be said
OF mothers all over the world. Almost all
forms of the thing are designed either for
swinging from point or suspension or
oscillating on rockers. Swedish cradles
are often designed to give double motion
They are suspended from the end of flexi-
BILE pole projecting from the wall of the
room, or they hang from q strong spiral
spring. Thus the infant may be swung to
and fro or jog up and down. Probably baby
Sweds like it, but there are a good many
adults in whom either motion continued for
tive minute would engender a horrible SEN
sation as of sea-sickness. The Russians
hang their cradles from fixed hooks, and
loop beneath the sleeping infant permits
of the rocking being done by the mothers
foot. Archdeacon Gray, in his work on
China, speaks of cradles there being sus.
pended from the ceiling. This, he says, is
to protect the children from the attacks of
most Chinese houses. Possibly that may
afford a clue to the origin of the practice
of rocking. The hanging up of child's
cot to the ceiling of room or the branch
of tree would safeguard it from many
insects and animals, and when thus sus-
pended it would be apt to swing to and fro
when touched or blown by the wind. Prob
ably this motion would be found to have
somewhat dazing, soothing influence
on the brain of the child, and hence
may have originated the idea of lulling
the child to sleep by motion Cradles sus-
pended from the boughs Of trees would of
course be likely to have the double move
ment provided for in the Swedish cradles,
and it seems not altogether improbable
that we have in this form of the thing the
suggestion of aboriginal times when
European cradles swung under forest
boushs just as to this day they swing in
the breezes sweeping through the Ieafy
giades Of the far West Of America Among
the Turkish peasantry may be met with
two forms of the cradle which seem to sug-
gest the transition from the merely
pendent bed swinging from single point
OF suspension to the cradle upon rockers
We have here horizontal form of the
hanging cradle-a kind of hammock-and
then the cradle on the ground designed to
give as nearly as nay be the same motion.
However rocking may have originated. it
is probably much older than history, and
in medieval England the official rocker in
the aristocratic nursery was as well estab-
lished functionary as q turnspit in the
kitchen. Royal nurseries had their stats
Of rockers, who were deemed indispensable
to the dignity and we'll being of budding
royalty. The infant son of James III. had
not been born four and twenty hours be-
fore four rockers were appointed to his
service, and the household of her Majesty
Queen Victoria used formerly to comprise
. similar staff, II it does not to this day
London STANDARD,