mUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 791 



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 some time. He therefore exclaimed, " I don't 

 think it's 7ieixralgia, I call it old ralgia." A child called his doll 

 "Shakespeare," because its spearlike legs could be shaken. An- 

 other child explained the " master " which he prefixed to his name 

 by saying 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), 

 seeming to take pleasure in imparting some familiar element into 

 the strange jumble of word-sound that beset her ear. 



This quasi-punning transformation of words is curiously like 

 what may be called folk-derivation, when a word is altered so as 

 to be made to appear significant and suitable for its purpose, as in 

 the oft-quoted form "beef -eater" (corruption of huffetier, from 

 buffet, sideboard), and in the form " crayfish " (from French 

 ecrevisse or 0. H. German Krehiz), where the attempt to suit the 

 form to the thing is still more apparent.* When, for example, a 

 boy calls a holiday a " hoUorday," because it is a day " to hollo 

 in," we may say that he is reflecting the process by which peoples 

 alter the forms of words, giving them a perfectly fanciful etymol- 

 ogy, so as to make them seem to fit their objects. Some children 

 carry out such transformation and invention of derivation on a 

 large scale, often resorting to pretty myth, 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, f 



A child will even go further, and, prying into the forms of 

 gender, create an explanatory myth which may dimly reflect the 

 ancient myths of peoples which lay at the root of these distinc- 

 tions of gender. Thus a little boy, aged 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 J think 

 the sun is the husband, the moon is the wife, and all the stars the 

 little children, and Jupiter the maid." 



One other characteristic feature in the child's attitude toward 

 words must be touched on, because it is, in a manner, the opposite 

 of the impulse to tamper with words just dealt with. A child is 



* The other form of the word, " crawfish," seems a still more ingenious example of 

 folk etymology. 



f These last are taken from a good list of children's punnings in Dr. Stanley Hall's 

 article, The Workings of Children's Minds. 



X This is, I take it, the majority viz., Italians and English. 



