The Chinese Boy and Girl | Page 3

thought they take into their minds. Thus so many of their rhymes have suffered.
Some have an undertone of reviling. Some speak familiarly of subjects which we are not accustomed to mention, and others are impure in the extreme.
A third difficulty in making a collection of Chinese nursery lore is greater than either the first or the second,--I refer to the difficulty of a metrical rendition of the rhymes. I have no doubt my readers can easily find flaws in my translations of Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes published during the past year. It is much easier for me to find the flaws than the remedies. Many of the words used in the original have no written character or hieroglyphic to represent them, while many others, though having a written form, are, like our own slang expressions, not found in the dictionary.
Now let us turn to a more pleasant feature of this unwritten nursery literature. The language is full of good rhymes, and all objectionable features can be cut out without injury to the rhyme, as it was not a part of the original, but added by some more unscrupulous hand.
Among the nursery rhymes of all countries many refer to insects, birds, animals, persons, actions, trades, food or children. In Chinese rhymes we have the cricket, cicada, spider, snail, firefly, ladybug and butterfly and others. Among fowls we have the bat, crow, magpie, cock, hen, duck and goose. Of animals, the dog, cow, horse, mule, donkey, camel, and mouse, are the favorites. There are also rhymes on the snake and frog, and others without number on places, things and persons,--men, women and children.
Those who hold that the Chinese do not love their children have never consulted their nursery lore. There is no language in the world, I venture to believe, which contains children's songs expressive of more keen and tender affection than some of those sung to children in China.
When we hear a parent say that his child
"Is as sweet as sugar and cinnamon too,"
or that
"Baby is a sweet pill, That fills my soul with joy"
or when we see a father, mother or nurse--for nurses sometimes become almost as fond of their little charge as the parents themselves,--hugging the child to their bosoms as they say that he is so sweet that "he makes you love him till it kills you," we begin to appreciate the affection that prompts the utterance.
Another feature of these rhymes is the same as that found in the nursery songs of all nations, namely, the food element. "Jack Sprat," "Little Jacky Horner," "Four and Twenty Black-birds," "When Good King Arthur Ruled the Land," and a host of others will indicate what I mean. A little child is a highly developed stomach, and anything which tells about something that ministers to the appetite and tends to satisfy that aching void, commends itself to his literary taste, and hence the popularity of many of our nursery rhymes, the only thought of which is about something good to eat. Notice the following:
Look at the white breasted crows overhead. My father shot once and ten crows tumbled dead. When boiled or when fried they taste very good, But skin them, I tell you, there's no better food.
In imagination I can see the reader raise his eyebrows and mutter, "Do the Chinese eat crows?" while at the same time he has been singing all his life about what a "dainty dish" "four and twenty blackbirds" would make for the "king," without ever raising the question as to whether blackbirds are good eating or not.
We note another feature of all nursery rhymes in the additions made by the various persons through whose hands, --or should we say, through whose mouths they pass.
When an American or English child hears how a certain benevolent dame found no bone in her cupboard to satisfy the cravings of her hungry dog, its feelings of compassion are stirred up to ask: "And then what? Didn't she get any meat? Did the dog die?" and the nurse is compelled to make another verse to satisfy the curiosity of the child and bring both the dame and the dog out of the dilemma in which they have been left. This is what happened in the case of "Old Mother Hubbard" as will readily be seen by examining the meter of the various verses. The original "Mother Hubbard" consisted of nothing more than the first six lines which contain three rhymes. All the other verses have but four lines and one rhyme.
We find the same thing in Chinese Mother Goose. Take the following as an example:
He ate too much, That second brother, And when he had eaten his fill
He beat his mother.
This was the original rhyme. Two verses have been added without rhyme, reason, rhythm, sense or good taste. They are