After so much trouble and suffering their existence and position must and does have some significance.
4. One of the Characteristics of the Armenian People is very strong attachment to the family life and "fatherland." The type of the family is patriarchal. The old father and mother, with their grown sons and their families, sometimes numbering altogether forty to sixty, live in the same house, the grandfather being the ruler and the grandmother the manager. Young and modest brides, being taught from their early childhood, are always obedient and diligent, too modest to speak aloud before the grandfather and elder brothers-in-law. When the old father eats, the brides are eager to wait on him. When he wants to go out they bring his out-door shoes and help him to put them on and take them off when he comes in, and get his good words of blessing for all these services. When the morning work is done and the men leave the house for their field or shop the young mother sits beside the cradle and sings softly as she sews, knits or spins:
Awake, and open thy beauteous eyes, my child, my little one!
Thy mother sees therein her life, her glory and her sun.
Thou shalt grow up, grow tall and strong, as rises in the air a stately palm tree; how I love thy stature tall and fair!
The heroes of Mount Ararat, their ghosts shall strengthen thee with power and might that thou as brave as Vartan's self mayst be.
Awake and ope thy beauteous eyes, my child, my little one!
Thy mother sees therein her life, her glory and her sun.
And no wonder if these first impressions pressed upon the mind of the baby and make him attached to his "good mother," the "dear home" and "sacred
