This is an old saying that may not be familiar to you. In the southern United States they had, what they called a Baptist Pallet. This was where they let the babies and small children sleep during the evening church service. It was often said that,
It takes a good preacher to keep the big ones awake, and put the little ones to sleep.
As to my understanding, when I was a small child, my
grandparents were
Southern Baptist and we attended the summer
protracted meetings or
revivals that were held after
"laying-by time" each year. These
meetings were sometimes composed of day and night sessions and some-
time just night sessions, but they were
loooong. The children just
could not stay awake through them so the mothers took
quilts which
they spread on the floor and the children went to sleep on those
pallets while the meeting droned on. This was what I understand
to be the origin of the
Baptist Pallet.
At Grandma 'n Grandpa's this was where the girls slept. Playing on that Baptist pallet at night on the front porch, 'just my age' (there were 28 or so) cousins would whisper, tickle and giggle, then louder snickers and thuds, and finally squeals!! This forbidden activity would bring in a mother or an aunt with admonishments of varying degrees of severity and short-lived success. But sleep was only attained when one of the uncles finally made an appearance and voiced some deep toned threat! That would do the trick and peace would finally prevail until morning when we began the serious business of learning everything we could about the world, or at least the part of it known as Grandma 'n Grandpa's