Following up the inquiry of Dr. Chervin in France, M. Hofler of Tolz has begun a similar investigation for Germany (263). He approves of the suggestion of Dr. Chervin, that the practice of cutting the _frenum_ of the tongue has been induced by the inept name _frenulwm, frein, Bändchen,_ given by anatomists to the object in question. According to H. Carstens the _frenulum_ is called in Low German _keekel-reem_ or _kikkel-reem,_ which seems to be derived from _käkeln,_ "to cry, shriek," and _reem,_ "band, cord," so that the word really signifies "speech-band." If it is cut in children who have difficulty in speaking before the first year of life, or soon after, they will be cured of stuttering and made to speak well. To a man or woman who does a good deal of talking, who has "the gift of the gab," the expression _Em (ehr) is de keekelreem gut snaden_ = "His (her) _frenum_ has been well cut," is applied. In some parts of Low Germany the operation is performed for quite a different reason, viz., when the child's tongue cannot take hold of the mother's breast, but always slips off. Hofler mentions the old custom of placing beneath the child's tongue a piece of ash-bark (called _Schwindholz_), so that the organ of speech may not vanish (schwinden); this is done in the case of children who are hard of speech (263.191, 281).
Ploss states that in Konigsberg (Prussia) tickling the soles of the feet of a little child is thought to occasion stuttering; in Italy the child will learn to stutter, unless, after it has been weaned, it is given to drink for the first time out of a hand-bell (326. II. 286).
Among the numerous practices in vogue to hasten the child's acquisition of speech, or to make him ready and easy of tongue, are the following: some one returned from the communion breathes into the child's mouth (Austrian Silesia); the mother, when, after supper on Good Friday, she suckles the child for the last time, breathes into its mouth (Bohemia); the, child is given to drink water out of a cow-bell (Servia); when the child, on the arm of its mother, pays the first visit to neighbours or friends, it is presented with three eggs, which are pressed three times to his mouth, with the words, "as the hens cackle, the child learns to prattle" (Thuringia, the Erzgebirge, Bavaria, Franconia, and the Harz); when a child is brought to be baptized, one of the relatives must make a christening-letter (_Pathenbrief_), and, with the poem or the money contained in it, draw three crosses through the mouth of the child (Konigsberg) (326. II. 205).
