It lulls him into the
long spells of sleep so necessary for his first growth. By and
by, when he has found his legs, he begins to skip, and even
before he has found articulate speech, to croon for himself. Pass
a stage, and you find him importing speech, drama, dance,
incantation, into his games with his playmates. Watch a cluster
of children as they enact "Here we go gathering nuts in May"--
eloquent line: it is just what they are doing!--or "Here come
three Dukes a-riding," or "Fetch a pail of water," or "Sally,
Sally Waters":
Sally, Sally Waters,
Sitting in the sand,
Rise, Sally--rise, Sally,
For a young man.
Suitor presented, accepted [I have noted, by the way, that this
game is more popular with girls than with boys]; wedding ceremony
hastily performed--so hastily, it were more descriptive to say
'taken for granted'--within the circle; the dancers, who join
hands and resume the measure, chanting
Now you are married, we wish you joy--
First a girl and then a boy
--the order, I suspect, dictated by exigencies of rhyme rather
than of Eugenics, as Dryden confessed that a rhyme had often
helped him to a thought.
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