The Chinese Boy and Girl

Excerpt

THE NURSERY AND ITS RHYMES

It is a mistake to suppose that any one nation or people has exclusive right to Mother Goose. She is an omnipresent old lady. She is Asiatic as well as European or American. Wherever there are mothers, grandmothers, and nurses there are Mother Gooses,—or; shall we say, Mother Geese—for I am at a loss as to how to pluralize this old dame. She is in India, whence I have rhymes from her, of which the following is a sample:

Heh, my baby! Ho, my baby!
See the wild, ripe plum,
And if you'd like to eat a few,
I'll buy my baby some.

She is in Japan. She has taught the children there to put their fingers together as we do for "This is the church, this is the steeple," when she says:

A bamboo road,
       With a floor-mat siding,
Children are quarrelling,
       And parents chiding,

the "children" being represented by the fingers and the "parents" by the thumbs. She is in China. I have more than 600 rhymes from her Chinese collection. Let me tell you how I got them.

One hot day during my summer vacation, while sitting on the veranda of a house among the hills, fifteen miles west of Peking, my friend, Mrs. C. H. Fenn, said to me:

"Have you noticed those rhymes, Mr. Headland?"

"What rhymes?" I inquired.

"The rhymes Mrs. Yin is repeating to Henry."

"No, I have not noticed them. Ask her to repeat that one again."

Mrs. Fenn did so, and the old nurse repeated the following rhyme, very much in the tone of, "The goblins 'll git you if you don't look out."

He climbed up the candlestick,
       The little mousey brown,
To steal and eat tallow,
       And he couldn't get down.
He called for his grandma,
       But his grandma was in town,
So he doubled up into a wheel,
       And rolled himself down.

I asked the nurse to repeat it again, more slowly, and I wrote it down together with the translation.

Now, I think it must be admitted that there is more in this rhyme to commend it to the public than there is in "Jack and Jill." If when that remarkable young couple went for the pail of water, Master Jack had carried it himself, he would have been entitled to some credit for gallantry, or if in cracking his crown he had fallen so as to prevent Miss Jill from "tumbling," or even in such a way as to break her fall and make it easier for her, there would have been some reason for the popularity of such a record. As it is, there is no way to account for it except the fact that it is simple and rhythmic and children like it. This rhyme, however, in the original, is equal to "Jack and Jill" in rhythm and rhyme, has as good a story, exhibits a more scientific tumble, with a less tragic result, and contains as good a moral as that found in "Jack Sprat."

It is as popular all over North China as "Jack and Jill" is throughout Great Britain and America. Ask any Chinese child if he knows the "Little Mouse," and he reels it off to you as readily as an English-speaking child does "Jack and Jill." Does he like it? It is a part of his life. Repeat it to him, giving one word incorrectly, and he will resent it as strenuously as your little boy or girl would if you said,

Jack and Jill
Went DOWN the hill

Suppose you repeat some familiar rhyme to a child differently from the way he learned it and see what the result will be....