Note 3 — II.—BIRTH, MARRIAGE AND DEATH.

Shortly before the birth of the child in Fuhkien a ceremony is performed by a priest, with the intention of frightening away the demons who are supposed to haunt the mother for the purpose of destroying her life in childbirth. “The priest recites the classics proper to the occasion. Ten or twenty pieces of a kind of grass cut up about an inch long, and several likenesses of the crab cut out of common paper, are put in a censer and burned. Or sometimes several live crabs, after being used in the ceremony are taken and turned into the street—by way of frightening or propitiating the spirits. The reason why crabs are used is that the name of one of these demons sounds like that of crab, in the local dialect.”3