Part 4 (1/2)

They are the best descriptions we have of the customs, ideas, and dress, the homes, habits, and motives, of the ancestral races. Many other sources, as temples, ruins, tombs, coins, etc., help to explain this early history; but this literature calls it again into life and puts meaning into all other sources of knowledge.

The influence which this early literature has had upon later historical growth of the great races is overwhelming, and is plain to the eyes of even unscholarly persons. The root from which the marvellous tree of Greek civilization grew is seen in Homer's poems.

In these myths we find those commanding characters which typify the strength and virtues of the race, as Achilles, Ulysses, Siegfried, Penelope, Thor, Apollo, Theseus, Hiawatha, Orpheus, Diana, Vulcan, Prometheus, and the Muses.

A close acquaintance with these creative ideas of the early world is necessary to an understanding of all subsequent life and literature. And it is not merely the names of Greek divinities and definitions of their character and qualities which put meaning into the numberless allusions of modern writers. One reason why many modern thinkers smile at the triteness and childishness of Greek fable is, that they have not caught the spirit and meaning of the Greek story. The great masters of thought, like Goethe, Shakespeare, Emerson, Tennyson, and Bryant, have seen deeper.

It is, moreover, in childhood, during the early school years especially, that we may best appreciate and enjoy these poetic creations of an early world. It is hardly to be expected that people whose youth has been clamped into the mould of commonplace and sensuous facts, and whose later years have been crusted over with modern materialism and commercialism, should listen with any patience to Orpheus and the Muses, or even to the wood notes of Pan.

We hardly need to dwell upon the idea that the old heroic myths are the delight of boys and girls, and that this sympathy for the myth is the foundation of its educative power. Nor is it the purpose of the school to warp the minds of children into this one channel of growth. The historical and scientific studies run parallel with the myth, and give strength for realities.

It is not difficult to see that music, the drama, and the fine arts spring from these old myths as from their chief source. They furnish motive to many of the greatest works of dramatist, composer, painter, and sculptor, in all the ages since. aeschylus and the Greek dramatists, Goethe and Wagner, Fenelon and Shakespeare, drew abundantly from these sources.

A few of the striking characters of this great age of heroic myths should be treated with such fulness as to stand out clearly to the children and appeal to the heart as well as to the head. Ulysses and Siegfried stand in the centre of two of the chief stories, and exemplify great qualities of character, strength, wisdom, and n.o.bleness of mind.

In the third grade the children have had an oral introduction to some of the old stories, and have had a spirited entrance to Mythland. This oral treatment of the stories is a fitting and necessary prelude to the reading work of the fourth and fifth grades. It is more fully discussed, together with the art of the story-teller, in ”The Special Method in Primary Reading and Story.”

Closely related to the myths, and kindred in spirit, are such choice reading materials as ”The Arabian Nights,” ”King of the Golden River,”

Stockton's ”Fanciful Tales,” ”The Pied Piper,” and a number of shorter poems and stories found in the collections recommended for fourth and fifth grades. Some of Hawthorne's and Irving's stories belong also to this group.

2. Ballads and Traditional Stories.

A somewhat distinct group of the best reading for fourth and fifth grades is found in the historical ballads and national legends from the early history of England, Germany, Italy, and France. They include such selections as ”Sir Patrick Spens,” ”The Ballads of Robin Hood,”

”Horatius,” ”Bannock-burn,” ”The Heart of the Bruce,” ”The Story of Regulus,” of ”Cincinnatus,” ”Alfred the Harper,” and many more. In the list of books recommended for children's reading are several ballad books, Macaulay's ”Lays of Ancient Rome,” ”The Book of Golden Deeds,”

”Tales from English History,” and several others, with great variety of poem and story. Many of these selections are short and spirited and well suited to awaken the strongest enthusiasm of children. They are sometimes in dialogue form, both in prose and verse, have strong dramatic action, and are thus helpful in variety and force of expression. There is also much early history and national spirit involved. The old historical ballads and traditions have great educative value. They are simple, crude, and powerful, and awaken the spirit to receive the message of heroism. In her introduction to the ”Ballad Book,” Katharine Lee Bates says, ”For these primitive folk-songs, which have done so much to educate the poetic sense in the fine peasantry of Scotland--that peasantry which has produced an Ayres.h.i.+re Ploughman and an Ettric Shepherd--are a.s.suredly,

”'Thanks to the human heart by which it lives,'

among the best educators that can be brought into our schoolrooms.”

”The Lays of Ancient Rome,” the ”Ballads,” and the ”Tales from English History” belong to the heroic series. Though far separated in time and place, they breathe the same spirit of personal energy, self-sacrifice, and love of country. They reveal manly resistance to cruelty and tyranny. We may begin this series with a term's work upon Macaulay's ”Lays” and a few other choice stories in prose and verse. Thereafter we may insert other ballads, where needed, in connection with history, and in amplification of longer stories or masterpieces like Scott's ”Tales of a Grandfather,” and ”Marmion.” In the fifth grade, children are of an age when these stories of heroism in olden days strike a responsive chord. They delight in such tales, memorize them, and enter into the full energy of their spirited reproduction. The main purpose at first is to appreciate their thought as an expression of history, tradition, and national life. A complete and absorbing study of a single series of these ballads, as of Macaulay's, supplies also an excellent standard of comparison for other more or less similar episodes in the history of Switzerland, Greece, England, and America.

These historical legends merge almost imperceptibly into the historical tales of early English, Roman, and French or German history. The patriarchal stories of the Old Testament furnish the finest of early history stories and should be included in these materials. ”The Old Stories of the East,” and ”Old Testament Stories in Scripture Language”

are among the best.

3. Stories of Chivalry.

Tales of chivalry, beginning with ”Arthur and his Round Table Knights,”

”Roland and Oliver,” and other mediaeval tales, have a great attraction for poets and children. Such books are included in our lists as ”The Court of King Arthur,” the ”Story of Roland,” ”Tales of Chivalry,” ”The Boys' King Arthur,” the ”Age of Chivalry,” and ”The Coming of Arthur”

and ”Pa.s.sing of Arthur.” There are also many shorter poems touching this spirit of chivalry in the Ballad literature. The character and spirit of King Arthur as revealed in the matchless music of Tennyson should find its way to the hearts of children before they leave the school. Like Sir Galahad, he could say,

”My strength is as the strength of ten Because my heart is pure.”

4. Historical Stories and Poems.

In the fifth and sixth grades children should begin to read some of the best biographical and historical stories of America and of European countries. Of these we have excellent materials from many lands and periods of time, such as Higginson's ”American Explorers,” Morris's ”Historical Tales” (both American and English), ”Stories of American Life and Adventure,” ”Stories of Our Country,” ”Pioneer History Stories,” ”Ten Boys on the Road from Long Ago,” ”The Story of the English,” ”Stories from Herodotus,” ”Pilgrims and Puritans,” Hawthorne's ”Biographical Stories,” ”Stories from American Life,” and others.

In the oral history lessons given on alternate days in fourth grade (see special method in history) we have made a spirited entrance to American history through the pioneer stories of the Mississippi Valley. These should precede and pave the way for cla.s.sic readings in American history. In the fifth grade, the stories of Columbus and of the chief navigators, also the narratives of the Atlantic coast pioneers, are told. The regular history work of the sixth grade should be a study of the growth of the leading colonies during the colonial period and the French and Indian Wars.

In the fifth grade we may begin to read some of the hero narratives of our own pioneer epoch as rendered by the best writers; for instance, Higginson's ”American Explorers,” ”Pilgrims and Puritans,” ”Stories of Our Country,” and ”Grandfather's Chair.” They are lifelike and spirited, and introduce us to the realism of our early history in its rugged exposure and trials, while they bring out those stern but high ideals of life which the Puritan and the Cavalier, the navigator, the pioneer hunter, and explorer ill.u.s.trate. Higginson's collection of letters and reports of the early explorers, with their quaint language and eye-witness descriptions, is strikingly vivid in its portraiture of early scenes upon our sh.o.r.es. Hawthorne, in ”Grandfather's Chair,” has moulded the hardy biography of New England leaders into literary form.