Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On

There are stories and experiences from childhood that we all recall with some fondness.  Even if we do not bring them to mind they are in our hearts, a warm glow that never dies.  It is the things we learn and love in innocence that have the greatest resonance.

I was reminded recently of Heidi, a book for children and those who love children by the Swiss author Johanna Spyri.  I was particularly fond of the story of Heidi and her grandfather because I had a very close relationship with my own grandfather, my father’s father, with whom I used to stay when my parents were away on lengthy business trips.  It was my grandfather who introduced me to the Snowman.

I don’t remember when exactly.  I must have been, oh, about four years old.  It was before I went to school anyway.  It was near Christmas, that much I do remember.  The Snowman in question is a story book, pictures without words by Raymond Briggs, another book for children and those who love children.  Like Heidi it tells of a bond, this time between a little boy and the snowman he builds one wintry afternoon in his garden.  By magic it comes to life; by magic the boy and the snowman fly.

It was made into an animated film by Channel 4, one of our terrestrial television companies, with a sublime score by Howard Blake.  When I was growing up it was broadcast every Christmas; perhaps it still is.  With us watching it became an annual event.  The holiday simply would not have been the same without it, as if there was no Christmas tree, no lights and no watch night service in church. 

By far the best bit is the flying sequence.  In the animation it is accompanied by Walking in the Air, a song that still makes me teary with nostalgia;

We're walking in the air
We're floating in the moonlit sky
The people far below are sleeping as we fly

I'm holding very tight
I'm riding in the midnight blue
I'm finding I can fly so high above with you

Far across the world
The villages go by like dreams
The rivers and the hills, the forests and the streams

Children gaze open mouthed
Taken by surprise
Nobody down below believes their eyes

We're surfing in the air
We're swimming in the frozen sky
We're drifting over icy mountains floating by

Suddenly swooping low
On an ocean deep
Rousing up a mighty monster from his sleep

And walking in the air
We're dancing in the midnight sky
And everyone who sees us greets us as we fly

We're walking in the air
We're walking in the air.

There was one Christmas – I was now about six I think – we spent in our family cottage in the north of Scotland, a really remote spot in Easter Ross.  It snowed, heavily.  I built my own snowman in the garden with a little help from father.  It was as big as me, that I remember clearly, with an old hat on his head and a scarf around his neck. 

I waited and waited for him to come to life.  I so wanted to fly like the boy, to go to the North Pole and dance with Father Christmas and all of the other snowmen.  I didn’t and I did.  My snowman remained frozen in the garden, mute and unmoved.  But he came alive in my dreams that night.  And – who knows? –maybe dreams are just a gate to another reality, a world where everything is possible and nothing denied.  It was for me.  The Snowman was the gateway.  

Thomas, a Really Sexist Little Engine

Thomas the Tank Engine, I confess, was one of my formative influences. I loved the simple little tales of W. V. Awdry about railway folk, tales that helped with my early reading. No pre-school Christmas would have been complete, moreover, without seeing Thomas on video, all voiced by Ringo Starr. But I wasn’t being delighted and entertained, you see, I was being indoctrinated; for, according to Professor Shauna Wilton, these stories are not only sexist but they also present a ‘conservative political ideology.’ Ah, so that’s where my politics come from; I’ve long wondered about this very point, having no other influences on my life!

Wilton, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Alberta, seemingly researched twenty-three episodes of the TV series before reaching her weighty conclusions. Parents are now warned against the malign influence of Thomas and chums, warned that girls, badly underrepresented, or shunted into secondary roles, might be driven off the rails altogether in later life after subconsciously absorbing such a negative message.

The dear Prof puffs on that the show represents an ideology that punishes individual initiative, opposes critique and change and relegates females to supportive roles. It’s clearly not a Thatcherite message then!

Where does this silliness end? Yes, it’s funny, not to be taken seriously by anyone with any capacity at all for critical thought, but what arrogance and condescension this silly woman shows. Children find all sorts of things amusing but they are just little people with the capacity to decide what is useful and what is not, what is real and what is not. The Awdry stories were written for a past age, a gentler age, it might be said, but if we start censoring them for a correct contemporary message we begin a journey with no end. What about The Wind in the Willows, my favourite childhood story, replete with an antiquated class message. After all, what are the weasels but a crowd of stupid chavs! I could add lots of others, I’m sure you could too, including just about everything by Enid Blyton.

If I ever have a little girl she and I will sit down to enjoy the pre-politically correct days of Thomas and Toad and all the rest of these wonderful unregenerate characters from the past that do so much to stimulate the imagination. Oh, and she will wear pink. I loved pink when I was little and it did me no har...excuse me I think I'm about to go off the rails. :-))

Medieval Childhood

People are always people, and there is no reason to suppose that Medieval parents did not treat their little ones with as much love and affection as those today. Of course, there are always exceptions, and people were more subject to the vagaries of circumstances, particularly economic circumstances, in the past than they are in modern societies; at least in the developed world. However, Medieval sources provide plenty of evidence that attitudes towards childhood have varied remarkably little over time, although, of course, there was a much greater emphasis on corporal punishment in the past. Allowing for all due differences in lifestyle and culture, Medieval children grew up in much the same way as children today.

Let's begin by looking at the very first stages of life. Writing in the thirteenth century, Bartholomew of England observed "The mother loves her own child most tenderly, embraces and kisses it, nurses and cares for it most solicitously." About the same time, Philip of Navara said;

God gave children three gifts: to love and recognise the person who nurses him at her breast; to show 'joy and love' to those who play with him; and to inspire love and tenderness in those who rear him, of which the last is the most important, for 'without this, they will be so dirty and annoying in infancy and so naughty and capricious that it is hardly worth nurturing them through childhood

In Montaillou, his seminal study of life in a French village, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie documents the affectionate interplay between parents and babies, including adults enjoying the sensation of a baby’s skin against there own. In the circumstances of the day, given the low level of medical knowledge, and the general problems caused by hygiene and the transmission of disease, a great many babies and young children died, but again there is ample evidence that these losses were felt severely.

Medieval adults, moreover, had a clear concept of childhood as a distinct phase of life. They believed, in other words, that children progressed through a series of stages, the so-called 'ages of man', each with its own specific features. This was recognised also by both the church and the state: children below the 'age of majority', generally reckoned in the high Middle Ages as between 12 and 14, were not expected to undertake the same religious and legal obligations as adults. When they committed sins, or breached the code of law, they were generally treated with greater leniency than adults.

When children took ill there is again ample evidence that parents did everything in their power to deal with the problem. In some cases this involved, often at considerable expense, trips to sacred shrines, to pray for divine intervention. At Canterbury in the late twelfth century we hear, for example, of one Guibert of Thanet bringing his crippled daughter to the shrine of Thomas Becket, the two walking the whole way, the little girl supporting herself on a staff. Another man came from Folkestone on horseback with his seven-year-old daughter, who could not feed herself because of crippled fingers. Many other parents made the same journey, inspired by stories of St. Thomas' miraculous cures.

Children were also expected to have their own society, with codes of conduct developed in interaction with their fellows. In 1398, the English writer John Trevisa observed that the young "love talkings and counsels of such children as they are, and foresake and avoid the company of the old." The important point here is that children were given the liberty to develop their own unique customs and culture, and there is a lot of recorded detail, concerning the games, rhymes and songs of the time. Play is also well-recorded. In the fifteenth century, the poet John Lydgate mentions running, leaping, singing, dancing, wrestling, climbing trees to steal fruit, football, chess and many other such games. The paintings of Brueghel the Elder give depictions of some of these activities. Similar depictions are to be found in marginal illustrations of the fourteenth century Romance of Alexander, which also show children on hobby horses and playing blind man's buff.

There were also toy manufacturers who catered specifically for children. In the London of 1300 boys could buy model knights and other such toys. These, I think it worth stressing, were not hand made, but cast in moulds, and therefore mass produced. Miniature domestic items were also produced for girls; plates, bowls, jugs and the like. Children's literature, moreover, can be traced as far back as the reign of Richard II.

Education was also important for Medieval parents, and there were a great many schools, though these benefited boys more than girls, who trended to receive what education they had at home from their mothers. The curriculum may have been more limited than today, but masters were no less keen for their charges to develop their imaginations, and pupils were encouraged to write about the things that they liked in their notebooks. A number of these survive after 1400, with scraps of songs and riddles.

Yes, life may have been different. Yes, there were risks. But children were still children; subjects, not objects.