Note 104.1 — PSYCHE’S TASK

Disastrous effects of adultery on adulteress and her child. Similar views as to the disastrous effects of adultery on mother and child seem to be widespread among Bantu tribes. Thus among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, when both mother and child die in childbirth, great horror is expressed by all, who assert that the woman must assuredly have committed adultery with many men to suffer such a fate. They exhort her even with her last breath to name the adulterer; and whoever is mentioned by her is called the “murderer” (musoka) and has afterwards to pay a heavy fine to the injured husband. Similarly if the child is born dead and the mother survives, the Awemba take it for granted that the woman has been unfaithful to her husband, and they ask her to name the murderer of her child, that is, the man whose guilty love has been the death of the babe.104.1 In like manner the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South Africa, about Delagoa Bay, are of opinion that if a woman’s travail pangs are unduly prolonged or she fails to bring her offspring to the birth, she must certainly have committed adultery, and they insist upon her making a clean breast as the only means of ensuring her delivery; should she suppress the name even of one of several lovers with whom she may have gone astray, the child cannot be born. So convinced are the women of the sufferings which adultery, if unacknowledged, entails on the guilty mother in childbed, that a woman who knows her child to be illegitimate will privately confess her sin to the midwife before she is actually brought to bed, in the hope thereby of alleviating and shortening her travail pangs.104.2 Sympathetic relation between an adulterer and the injured husband. Further, the Thonga believe that adultery establishes a physical relationship of mutual sympathy between the adulterer and the injured husband such that the life of the one is in a manner bound up with the life of the other; indeed this relationship is thought to arise between any two men who have had sexual connexion with the same woman. As a native put it to a missionary, “They have met together in one life through the blood of that woman; they have drunk from the same pool.” To express it otherwise, they have formed a blood covenant with each other through the woman as intermediary. “This establishes between them a most curious mutual dependence: should one of them be ill, the other must not visit him; the patient might die. If he runs a thorn into his foot, the other must not help him to extract it. It is taboo. The wound would not heal. If he dies, his rival must not assist at his mourning or he would die himself.” Hence if a man has committed adultery, as sometimes happens, with one of his father’s younger wives, and the father dies, his undutiful son may not take the part which would otherwise fall to him in the funeral rites; indeed should he attempt to attend the burial, his relations would drive him away in pity, lest by this mark of respect and perhaps of remorse he should forfeit his life.105.1 Injurious effects of adultery on the innocent husband, wife, or child. In like manner the Akikuyu of British East Africa believe that if a son has adulterous intercourse with one of his father’s wives, the innocent father, not the guilty young scapegrace, contracts a dangerous pollution (thahu), the effect of which is to make him ill and emaciated or to break out into sores or boils, and even in all probability to die, if the danger is not averted by the timely intervention of a medicine-man.105.2 The Anyanja of British Central Africa believe that if a man commits adultery while his wife is with child, she will die; hence on the death of his wife the widower is often roundly accused of having killed her by his infidelity.105.3 Without going so far as this, the Masai of German East Africa hold that if a father were to touch his infant on the day after he had been guilty of adultery, the child would fall sick.105.4 According to the Akamba of British East Africa, if a woman after giving birth to a child is false to her husband before her first menstruation, the child will surely die.105.5 Injurious effects of incest on the offspring. The Akamba are also of opinion that if a woman is guilty of incest with her brother she will be unable to bring to the birth the seed which she has conceived by him. In that case the man must purge his sin by bringing a big goat to the elders, and the woman is ceremonially smeared with the contents of the animal’s stomach.106.1 Among the Washamba of German East Africa it happened that a married woman lost three children, one after the other, by death. A diviner being called in to ascertain the cause of this calamity, attributed it to incest of which she had been accidentally guilty with her father.106.2