Part 17

As with words, so with whole expressions and sayings. It was a natural movement of childish thought when a little school-girl answered the question of the Inspector, ‘What is an average?’ by saying ‘What the hen lays eggs on’. She had heard her mother say, “The hen lays so many eggs ‘on the average’ every week,” and had no doubt imagined a little myth about this ‘average’. Again, most of us know what queer renderings the child-mind has given to Scripture language. Mr. James Payn tells us that he knew a boy who for years substituted for the words, ‘Hallowed be thy name,’ ‘Harold be thy name’.[118] In this and similar cases it is not, as might be supposed, defective hearing—children hear words as a rule with great exactness—it is the impulse to give a familiar and significant rendering to what is strange and meaningless.[119] A friend of mine when a boy was accustomed on hearing the passage, ‘If I say peradventure the darkness shall cover me,’ etc., to insert a pause after ‘peradventure,’ apprehending the passage in this wise: "If I say ‘Peradventure!’—the darkness," etc. In this way he turned the mysterious ‘peradventure’ into a mystic ‘open sesame,’ and added a thrilling touch of magic to the passage. My friend’s daughter tells me that on hearing the passage, “I ... visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, ... and show mercy unto thousands,” she construed the strange word ‘generation’ to mean an immense number like ‘billion,’ and was thus led to trouble herself about God’s seeming to be more cruel than kind.[120]

Footnote 118:

In the _Illustrated London News_, 30th June, 1894.

Footnote 119:

Of course defective auditory apprehension may assist in these cases. Goltz gives an example from his own childhood. He took the words “Namen nennen Dich nicht” to be “Namen nenne Dich nicht,” and was sorely puzzled at the idea of bidding a name not to name itself.

Footnote 120:

Psalm cxxxix. and Second Commandment, Prayer-book version.

In some cases, too, where the language is simple enough a child’s brain will find our meaning unsuitable and follow a line of interpretation of its own. Mr. Canton relates that his little heroine, who knew the lines in _Strumpelpeter_—

The doctor came and shook his head, And gave him nasty physic too—

was told that she would catch a cold, and that she at once replied, “And will the doctor come and shook my head?”[121] It was so much more natural to suppose that when the doctor came and did something this was carried out on the person of the patient.

Footnote 121:

_The Invisible Playmate_, p. 35.

There is nothing more instructive in this connexion than the talk of children among themselves about words. They build up quaint speculations about meanings, and try their hand bravely at definitions. Here is an example: A boy of five was instructing his comrade as to the puzzling word ‘home-sick’. He did it in quite a scientific fashion. “It’s like sea-sick, you know: you are sea-sick when you are sick at sea, and so you’re home-sick when you’re sick at home”.

There is something of this same desire to get behind words in children’s word-play, as we call it, their discovery of odd affinities in verbal sounds, and their punning. Though no doubt this contains a genuine element of childish fun, it betokens a more serious trait also, an interest in word-sounds as such, and a curiosity about their origin and purpose. It is difficult for grown-up people to go back in thought to the attitude of the child-mind towards verbal sounds. Just as children show ‘the innocence of the eye’ in seeing the colours of objects as they are and not as our habits of interpretation tend to make them, so they show an innocence of the ear, catching the intrinsic sensuous qualities of a word or a group of words, in a way which has become impossible for us.

This half-playful, half-serious scrutiny of word-sounds leads to the attempt to find by analysis and analogy a familiar meaning in strange words. For example, a little boy about four years old heard his mother speak of nurse’s neuralgia, from which she had been suffering for some time. He thereupon exclaimed, ‘I don’t think it’s _new_ ralgia, I call it _old_ ralgia’. A child called his doll ‘Shakespeare’ because its spear-like legs could be shaken. Another boy of three explained ‘gaiters’ as things ‘to go out of the gate with’. Another said that the ‘Master’ which he prefixed to his name meant that he was master of his dog. A little girl in her third year called ‘anchovies’ ‘ham-chovies’ ‘mermaid’ ‘worm-maid,’ ‘whirlwind’ ‘world-wind,’ ‘gnomes’ ‘no-mans’ (un-menschen), taking pleasure apparently in bringing some familiar element—even when this seems to other ears at least not very explanatory—into the strange jumble of word-sound that surrounded her. A child may know that he is ‘fooling’ in such cases, yet the word-play brings a certain satisfaction, which is at least akin to the pleasure of the older linguist.

This quasi-punning transformation of words is curiously like what may be called folk-etymology, where a foreign word is altered by a people so as to be made to appear significant and suitable for its purpose, as in the oft-quoted forms ‘sparrow grass’ (asparagus) and ‘cray-fish’ (from the French écrevisse, _cf._ the O. H. German Krebiz), where the attempt to suit the form to the thing is still more apparent.[122] When, for example, a boy calls a holiday a ‘hollorday,’ because it is a day ‘to holloa in,’ we may say that he is reflecting the process by which adults try to put meaning into strange words, as when a cabman I overheard a few days ago spoke about putting down _ash_phalt (for ‘asphalt’). Some children carry out such transformation and invention of derivation on a large scale, often resorting to pretty myths, as when the butterflies are said to make butter, or to eat butter, grasshoppers to give grass, honeysuckles to yield all the honey, and so forth.[123]

Footnote 122:

The other form of the word, ‘craw-fish,’ seems a still more ingenious example of folk-etymology.

Footnote 123:

These last are taken from a good list of children’s punnings in Dr. Stanley Hall’s article, “The Contents of Children’s Minds”.

A child will even go further, and, prying into the forms of gender, invent explanatory myths in which words are personified and sexualised. Thus a little boy of five years and three months who had learned German and Italian as well as English was much troubled about the gender of the sun and moon. So he set about myth-making on this wise: “I suppose people[124] think the sun is the husband, the moon is the wife, and all the stars the little children, and Jupiter the maid”. A German girl of six was thus addressed by her teacher: “‘Der’ ist männlich; Was sind ‘Die’ und ‘Das’?” To which she replied prettily: "Die ist dämlich (_i.e._, ‘ladyish’) und das ist kindlich". The tendency to attribute differences of sex and age to names observable in this last is seen in other ways. An Italian child asked why ‘barba’ (beard) was not called ‘barbo’. With this may be compared the pretty myth of another Italian child that ‘barca’ (boat) was the little girl of ‘barcainolo’ (boatman).[125]

Footnote 124:

That is, I take it, the majority, _viz._, Italians and English.

Footnote 125:

Both of these are given by Paola Lombroso in the work already quoted.

One other characteristic feature in the child’s attitude towards words must be touched on, because it looks like the opposite of the impulse to tamper with words just dealt with. A child is a great stickler for accuracy in the repetition of all familiar word-forms. The zeal of a child in correcting others’ language, and the comical errors he will now and again fall into in exercising his pedagogic function, are well known to parents. Sometimes he shows himself the most absurd of pedants. ‘Shall I read to you out of this book, baby?’ asked a mother of her boy, about two and a half years old. ‘No,’ replied the infant, ‘not _out_ of dot book, but somepy inside of it.’ The same little stickler for verbal accuracy, when his nurse asked him, ‘Are you going to build your bricks, baby?’ replied solemnly, ‘We don’t build bricks, we make them and then build _with_ them’. In the notes on the boy C. we find an example of how jealously the child-mind insists on the _ipsissima verba_ in the recounting of his familiar stories.

Are these little sticklers for verbal correctness, who object to everything figurative in our language, who, when they learn that a person or an animal has ‘lost his head,’ take the expression literally, and who love nothing better than tying us down to literal exactness, themselves given to ‘word-play’ and verbal myth-making, or have we here to do with two varieties of childish mind? My observations do not enable me to pronounce on this point.

I have in this essay confined myself to some of the more common and elementary features of the child’s linguistic experience. Others present themselves when the reading stage is reached, and the new strange stupid-looking word-symbol on the printed page has to do duty for the living sound, which for the child, as we have seen, seems to belong to the object and to share in its life. But this subject, tempting as it is, must be left. And the same must be said of those special difficulties and problems which arise for the child-mind when two or more languages are spoken. This is a branch of child-linguistics which, so far as I know, has never been explored.

VI. SUBJECT TO FEAR.

_Children’s Sensibility._

In passing from a study of children’s ideas to an investigation of their feelings, we seem to encounter quite another kind of problem. A child has the germs of ideas long before he can give them clear articulate expression; and, as we have seen, he has at first to tax his ingenuity in order to convey by intelligible signs the thoughts which arise in his mind. For the manifestation of his feelings of pleasure and pain, on the other hand, nature has endowed him with adequate expression. The states of infantile discontent and content, misery and gladness, pronounce themselves with a clearness and an emphasis which leave no room for misunderstanding.

This full frank manifestation of feeling holds good more especially of those states of bodily comfort and discomfort which make up the first rude experiences of life. It is necessary for the child’s preservation that he should be able to announce by clear signals the oncoming of his cravings and of his sufferings, and we all know how well nature has provided for this necessity. Hence the fulness with which infant psychology has dealt with this first chapter of the life of feeling. Preyer, for example, gives a full and almost exhaustive epitome of the various shades of infantile pleasure and pain which grow out of this life of sense and appetite, and has carefully described their physiological accompaniments and their signatures.[126]

Footnote 126:

_Op. cit._, Cap. 6 and 13.

When we pass from these elementary forms of pleasure and pain to the rudiments of emotion proper, as the miseries of fear, the sorrows and joys of the affections, we have still, no doubt, to do with a mode of manifestation which, on the whole, is direct and unreserved to a gratifying extent. A child of three is delightfully incapable of the skilful repressions, and the yet more skilful simulations of emotion which are easy to the adult.[127] Yet frank and transparent as is the first instinctive utterance of feeling, it is apt to get checked at an early date, giving place to a certain reserve. So that, as we know from published reminiscences of childhood, a child of six will have learnt to hide some of his deepest feelings from unsympathetic eyes.

Footnote 127:

This does not apply to older children. As Tolstoi’s book, _Childhood, Boyhood and Youth_, tells us, a boy of twelve may be much given to straining after feelings which he thinks he ought to experience.

This shyness of the young heart, face to face with old and strange ways of feeling, exposed to ridicule if not to something worse, makes the problem of registering the pulsations of its emotions more difficult than it at first seems. As a matter of fact we are still far from knowing the precise range and depth of children’s feelings. This is seen plainly enough in the quite opposite views which are entertained of childish sensibility, some describing it as restricted and obtuse, others as morbidly excessive. Such diversity of view may no doubt arise from differences in the fields of observation, since, as we know, children differ hardly less than adults perhaps in breadth and fineness of emotional susceptibility. Yet I think that this contrariety of view points further to the conclusion that we are still far from sounding with finely measuring scientific apparatus the currents of childish emotion.

It seems, then, to be worth while to look further into the matter in the hope of gaining a deeper and fuller insight, and as a step in this direction I propose to inquire into the various forms and the causes of one of the best marked and most characteristic of children’s feelings—namely, fear.

That fear is one of the characteristic feelings of the child needs no proving. It seems to belong to these wee, weakly things, brought face to face with a new strange world, to tremble. They are naturally timid, as all that is weak and ignorant in nature is apt to be timid.

I have said that fear is well marked in the child. Yet, though it is true that fully developed fear or terror shows itself by unmistakable signs, there are many cases where it is difficult to say whether the child is the subject of this feeling. Thus it is doubtful whether the tremblings and disturbances of respiration which are said to betray fear in the new-born infant are a full expression of this state.[128] Again, the reflex movement of a start on hearing a sound hardly amounts to the full reaction of fear, though it is akin to it.[129] A child may, further, show a sort of æsthetic dislike for an ugly form or sound, turning away in evident aversion, and yet not be afraid in the full sense. Fear proper betrays itself in the stare, the grave look, and in such movements as turning away and hiding the face against the nurse’s or mother’s shoulder, and sometimes in covering it with the hands. In severer forms it leads to trembling and to wild shrieking. Changes of colour also occur. It is commonly said that great fear produces paleness; but according to one of my correspondents who has had considerable experience, a child may show the feeling by his face turning scarlet. Fear, if not very intense, leads to voluntary movements, as turning away, putting the object aside, or moving away. In its more violent forms, however, it paralyses the child. It is desirable that parents should carefully observe and describe the first signs of fear in their children.[130]

Footnote 128:

Perez regards these as signs of fear, and points out that tremulous movements may occur in the fœtus (_L’Education dès le berceau_, p. 94).

Footnote 129:

For an account of this reflex, see Preyer, _op. cit._, Cap. 10, 176.

Footnote 130:

I know of no good account of the manifestations of childish fear. Mosso’s book, _La Peur_, chap. v. and following, will be found most useful here.

_Startling Effect of Sounds._

It may be well to begin our study of fear by a reference to the effect of startling. As is well known, sudden and loud sounds, as that of a door banging, will give a shock to an infant in the first weeks of life, which though not amounting to fear is its progenitor. A clearer manifestation occurs when a new and unfamiliar sound calls forth the grave look, the trembling lip, and possibly the fit of crying. Darwin gives an excellent example of this. He had, he tells us, been accustomed to make all sorts of sudden noises with his boy, aged four and a half months, which were well received; but one day having introduced a new sound, that of a loud snoring, he found that the child was quite upset, bursting out into a fit of crying.[131]

Footnote 131:

_Mind_, vol. ii., p. 288.

As this incident suggests, it is not every new sound which is thus disconcerting to the little stranger. Sudden sharp sounds of any kind seem to be especially disliked, as those of a dog’s bark. The child M. burst out crying on first hearing the sound of a baby rattle; and she did the same two months later on accidentally ringing a hand bell. Louder and more voluminous sounds, too, are apt to have an alarming effect. The big noise of a factory, of a steam-ship, of a passing train, are among the sounds assigned by my correspondents as causes of this early startling and upsetting effect. A little girl when taken into the country at the age of nine months, though she liked the animals she saw on the whole, showed fear by seeking shelter against the nurse’s shoulder, on hearing the bleating of the sheep. So strong is this effect of suddenness and volume of sound that even musical sounds often excite some alarm at first. ‘He (a boy of four months) cried when he first heard the piano,’ writes one lady, and this is but a sample of many observations. A child of five and a half months showed such a horror of a banjo that he would scream if it were played or only touched. Preyer’s boy at sixteen months was apparently alarmed when his father, in order to entertain him, produced what seems to us a particularly pure musical tone by rubbing a drinking-glass. He remarks that this same sound had been produced when the child was four months old without any ill effects.[132]

Footnote 132:

_Op. cit._, p. 131.

This last fact suggests that such shrinkings from sound may be developed at a comparatively late date. This idea is supported by other observations. “From about two years four months (writes a mother) to the present time (two years eleven months), he has shown signs of fear of music. At two years five months he liked some singing of rounds, but when a fresh person with a stronger voice than the rest joined, he begged the singer to stop. Presently he tolerated the singing as long as he might stand at the farthest corner of the room.” This child was also about the same time afraid of the piano, and of the organ, when played by his mother in a church.

It is worth noting that animals show a similar dread of musical sounds. I took a young cat of about eight weeks in my lap and struck some chords not loudly on the piano. It got up, moved uneasily from side to side, then bolted to the corner of the room and seemed to try to get up the walls. Dogs, too, certainly seem to be put out, if not to experience fear, at the music of a brass band.

It is sometimes supposed that this startling effect of loud sounds is wholly an affair of nervous disturbance:[133] but the late development of the repugnance in certain cases seems to show that this is not the only cause at work. Of course a child’s nervous organisation may through ill health become more sensitive to this disturbing effect; and, as the life of Chopin tells us, the delicate organisation of a future musician may be specially subject to these shocks. Yet I suspect that vague alarm at the unexpected and unknown takes part here. There is something uncanny to the child in the very production of sound from a silent thing. A banjo lying now inert, harmless, and then suddenly firing off a whole gamut of sound may well shock a small child’s preconceptions of things. The second time that fear was observed in one child at the age of ten months, it was excited by a new toy which squeaked on being pressed.[134] This seems to be another example of the disconcerting effect of the unexpected. In other cases the alarming effect of the mystery is increased by the absence of all visible cause. One little boy of two years used to get sadly frightened at the sound of the water rushing into the cistern which was near his nursery. The child was afraid at the same time of thunder, calling it ‘water coming’.

Footnote 133:

This seems to be the view of Perez: _The First Three Years of Childhood_ (English translation), p. 64.

Footnote 134:

Observation of F. H. Champneys, _Mind_, vol. vi., p. 106.

I am far from saying that all children manifest this fear of sounds. Miss Shinn points out that her niece was from the first pleased with the piano, and this is no doubt true of many children. Children behave very differently towards thunder, some being greatly disturbed by it, others being rather delighted. Thus Preyer’s boy, who was so ignominiously upset by the tone of the drinking-glass, laughed at the thunderstorm; and we know that the little Walter Scott was once found during a thunderstorm lying on his back in the open air clapping his hands and shouting “Bonnie, bonnie!” at the flashes of lightning. It is possible that in such cases the exhilarating effect of the brightness counteracts the uncanny effect of the thunder. More observations are needed on this point.

A complete explanation of these early vague alarms of the ear may as yet not be possible. Children show in the matter of sound capricious repugnances which it is exceedingly difficult to account for. They seem sometimes to have their pet aversions like older folk. Yet I think that a general explanation is possible.

To begin with, then, it is probable that in many of these cases, especially those occurring in the first six months, we have to do with an organic phenomenon, with a sort of jar to the nervous system. To understand this we have to remember that the ear, in the case of man at least, is the sense-organ through which the nervous system is most powerfully and profoundly acted on. Sounds seem to go through us, to pierce us, to shake us, to pound and crush us. A child of four or six months has a nervous organisation still weak and unstable, and we should naturally expect loud sounds to produce a disturbing effect on it.

To this it is to be added that sounds have a way of taking us by surprise, of seeming to start out of nothing; and this aspect of them, as I have pointed out above, may well excite vague alarm in the small creatures to whom all that is new and unlooked for is apt to seem uncanny. The fact that most children soon lose their fear by getting used to the sounds seems to show how much the new and the mysterious has to do with the effect.

Whether heredity plays any part here, _e.g._, in the fear of the dog’s barking and other sounds of animals, seems to me exceedingly doubtful. This point will, however, come up for closer consideration presently, when we deal with children’s fear of animals.