Page 421 - Chinese Art, Vol II By Stephen W. Bushell

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PICTORIAL ART. 145

side China is the description ol the pecuhar manners and customs
of the aboriginal hill tribes of the interior known as Miaotzu.
These interest the Chinese from the light they have thrown upon
their own ancient ballads, and they are profusely illustrated in
manuscript albums, which lind their way occasionally to our
ethnological museums. Two of the coloured illustrations, rough
as they are, are reproduced in Figs. 133, 134. The first shows a
group singing part-songs, with three men playing stringed instru-
ments and a mouth-organ of bamboo pipes, beside two girls clapping
their hands, while an old woman looks on benevolently standing
behind. These meetings are described as customary in spring
for making marriages ; in another picture a party in gala dress is
dancing round a maypole hung with banners and branches of
flowers. The second (Fig. 134) shows one of their most peculiar
customs, which was noted by Marco Polo, and has been described
by Professor Tylor under the name of " couvade." The father is
seen through the window of the cottage lying on the couch, nursing
the new-born babe, and the mother outside coming with his food
he must be treated as an invalid in this way, we are told, for a
month, or disaster will result. Butler must surely have been
thinking of Marco Polo's story of the natives of Zardandan when
he wrote in " Hudibras "
' Chineses go to bed
Anil lie in, in their ladies' stead."
One branch of art in which the Chinese artist of to-day has not
altogether forgotten his cunning is that of birds and flowers. The
fan in Fig. 135 would prove this, had it been possible to reproduce
the warm colouring of the gay kingfisher and the soft tints of the
rose-mallow blossom, relieved by the sober shaded greens of the
leaves. It is headed Fu jung ts'ui ytt, " Hibiscus and kingfisher,"
and is inscribed " Painted at the ancient Yen Fu (Peking) in the
first summer month of the cyclical year hsin mao (a.d. 1831)," with
the artist's signature and seal attached.
S941. 3