"IsaacTaylorHeadland-TheChineseBoyAndGirl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Headland Isaac Taylor)

Went DOWN the hill

Suppose you repeat some familiar rhyme to a child differently
from the way he learned it and see what the result will be.

Having obtained this rhyme, I asked Mrs. Yin if she
knew any more. She smiled and said she knew "lots of
them." I induced her to tell them to me, promising her
five hundred cash (about three cents) for every rhyme she
could give me, good, bad, or indifferent, for I wanted to
secure all kinds. And I did. Before I was through I had
rhymes which ranged from the two extremes of the keenest
parental affection to those of unrefined filthiness. The
latter class however came not from the nurses but from
the children themselves.

When I had finished with her I had a dozen or more. I
soon learned these so that I could repeat them in the original,
which gave me an entering wedge to the heart of every
man, woman or child I met.

One day, as I rode through a broom-corn field on the
back of a little donkey, my feet almost dragging on the
ground, I was repeating some of these rhymes, when the
driver running at my side said:

"Ha, you know those children's songs, do you?"

"Yes do you know any?"

"Lots of them," he answered.

"Lots of them" is a favorite expression with the Chinese.

"Tell me some."

"Did you ever hear this one?"

"Fire-fly, fire-fly,
Come from the hill,
Your father and mother
Are waiting here still.
They've brought you some sugar,
Some candy, and meat,
For baby to eat."


I at once dismounted and wrote it down, and promised
him five hundred cash apiece for every new one he could
give me. In this way, going to and from the city, in