the couvade, its prevalence in savage and civilized lands.—pregnant women excluded from kitchens.—the deities of the lying-in chamber.
dr. tylor113 gives the following account of the carib couvade in the west indies from the work of du tertre:114—
“when a child is born, the mother goes presently to her work, but the father begins to complain, and takes to his hammock, and there he is visited as though he were sick, and undergoes a course of dieting which would cure of the gout the most replete of frenchmen. how they can fast so much and not die of it,” continues the narrator,52 “is amazing to me, for they sometimes pass the five first days without eating or drinking anything, then up to the tenth they drink oüycou, which has about as much nourishment in it as beer. these ten days passed, they begin to eat cassava only, drinking oüycou, and abstaining from everything else for the space of a whole month. during this time, however, they only eat the inside of the cassava, so that what is left is like the rim of a hat when the block has been taken out, and all the cassava rims they keep for the feast at the end of forty days, hanging them up in the house with the cord. when the forty days are up they invite their relations and best friends, who being arrived, before they set to eating, hack the skin of this poor wretch with agouti-teeth, and draw blood from all parts of his body in such sort that from being sick by pure imagination they often make a real patient of him. this is, however, so to speak, only the fish, for now comes the sauce they prepare for him; they take sixty or eighty large grains of pimento or indian pepper, the strongest they can get, and after well washing it in water they wash with this peppery infusion the wounds and scars of the poor fellow, who i believe suffers no less than if he were burnt alive; however, he must not utter a single word if he will not pass for a coward and a wretch. this ceremony finished, they bring him back to his bed, where he remains some days more, and the rest go and make good cheer in the house at his expense. nor is this all; for through the space of six whole months he eats neither birds nor fish, firmly believing that this would injure the child’s stomach, and that it would participate in the natural faults of the animals on which its father had fed; for example, if the father ate turtle, the child would be deaf and have no brains like this animal, if he ate manati, the child would have little round eyes like this creature, and so on with the rest. it seems that this very severe fasting is only for the first child, that for the others being slight.”
among the arawaks of surinam a father must kill no large game for some time after his child is born. when a wife has borne a child, amongst the abipones, the husband is put to bed and well wrapped up and kept as though he had had the child. among the land dayaks of borneo, after the birth of his child the father is kept in seclusion indoors for several days and dieted on rice and salt to prevent the child’s stomach from swelling. all this is due to a belief in a bodily union between father and child; different persons with these savages are not necessarily separate beings.
tylor says115 that venegas mentions the couvade among the indians of california; zuccheli in west africa; captain van der hart in bouro, in the eastern archipelago; and marco polo in eastern asia in the thirteenth century. in europe even in modern times it existed in the neighbourhood of the pyrenees. strabo said,116 that among the iberians of the north of spain, the women, after the birth of a child, tend their husbands, putting them to bed instead of going themselves. among the basques, says michel, “in valleys whose population recalls in its usages the infancy of society, the women rise immediately after childbirth and attend to the duties of the household, while the husband goes to bed, taking the baby with him, and thus receives the neighbours’ compliments.” diodorus siculus mentions the same thing of the corsicans (v. 14). hudibras says,117—
“for though chineses go to bed
and lie in, in their ladies’ stead,
and, for the pains they took before,
are nurs’d and pamper’d to do more.”
on this remarks dr. zachary grey118:—
“the chinese men of quality, when their wives are brought to bed, are nursed and tended with as much care as women here, and are supplied with the best strengthening and nourishing diet in order to qualify them for future services.” this is the custom of the brazilians, if we53 may believe masseus, who observes, “that women in travail are delivered without great difficulty, and presently go about their household business: the husband in her stead keepeth his bed, is visited by his neighbours, hath his broths made him, and junkets sent to comfort him.”
“among the iroquois, a mother who shrieks during her labour is forbidden to bear other children, and some of the south american indians killed the children of the mothers who shrieked, from the belief that they will grow up to be cowards.”119
the origin of the couvade is not to be traced to the father and mother, says starcke; it has to do simply with the well-being of the child. the father’s powers of endurance, tested so severely as we have seen, are believed to be assured to the child.120
max müller traces the origin of the couvade to the derision of friends of both sexes.
dobrizhoffen says of the abipones:121 “they comply with this custom with the greater care and readiness because they believe that the father’s rest and abstinence have an extraordinary effect on the well-being of new-born infants, and is, indeed, absolutely necessary for them. for they are quite convinced that any unseemly act on the father’s part would injuriously affect the child on account of the sympathetic tie which naturally subsists between them, so that in the event of the child’s death the women all blame the self-indulgence of the father, and find fault with this or that act.”
badaga nursing-women physic themselves with ashes and pieces of sweet-flag (acorus calamus), an aromatic plant, with the idea of communicating medicinal properties to the milk. they also administer to the baby assaf?tida and a certain sacred confection taken from the entrails of a bull and similar to the bezoar stones so celebrated in the middle ages.122
the badaga folk do not permit a pregnant woman to enter the room where the provisions are kept and the fireplace stands; it would be feared that her condition, her supposed uncleanness, might lessen the virtues of the fire or diminish the nutritious value of the food.123
pliny says, “there is no limit to the marvellous powers attributed to females.”124 at certain times, according to him, a woman can scare away hailstorms, whirlwinds, and lightnings, by going about in scanty costume. if she walk round a field of wheat at such times, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin will fall from the ears of corn.54 if she touch “young vines, they are irremediably injured, and both rue and ivy, plants possessed of highly medicinal virtues, will die instantly upon being touched by her.” bees, he says, will forsake their hives if she touches them, linen boiling in a cauldron will turn black, and the edge of a razor will become blunted. the bitumen that is found in jud?a will yield to nothing but this, and tacitus says the same thing. marvellous to say, poisonous and injurious as pliny and other writers, and even popular belief at the present day, consider the catamenial fluid to be, a host of writers on medical and magical subjects have attributed certain remedial properties to it. pliny says it is useful, as a topical application, for gout, the bite of a mad dog (what has not been recommended for this!), for tertian or quartan fevers and for epilepsy. reduced to ashes and mixed with soot and wax, it is a cure for ulcers upon all kinds of beasts of burden; mixed in the same way with oil of roses and applied to the forehead, it cured the migraine of roman ladies. applied to the doorposts, it neutralises all the spells of the magicians—a set of men which even the credulous pliny characterizes as the most lying in existence.
both savages and classical peoples had the same curious notions about the touch of catamenial women. there may possibly be some foundation in bacteriology to account for them.
st. augustine says:125 “the woman in child-bed must have three gods to look to her after her deliverance, lest sylvanus come in the night and torment her: in signification whereof, three men must go about the house in the night, and first strike the thresholds with an hatchet, then with a pestle, and then sweep them with besoms, that by these signs of worship they may keep sylvanus out.”
lying-in women in germany in the seventeenth century were simply crammed with food about every two hours, and they seem to have taken no harm from the practice.
