Note 152.1 — Chapter VI · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN PRACTICAL SUPERSTITIONS.

It would seem like a relic of the same thought that in Swabia a woman who is “in an interesting condition” for the first time should eat of a tree which bears for the first time; then both of them will become very fruitful. To this there is one exception: if an apple be grafted on a whitethorn, and some of the fruit be given to a pregnant woman to eat, she cannot bear.152.1 In contrast to this is a Bosnian custom in which the childless woman seeks for a plant called apijun, cuts its roots small and steeps them in foam she has caught from a millwheel, afterwards drinking of the liquid. She then winds her wedding-girdle round a newly grafted fruit-tree, when, if the graft prosper, she also will bear. Another curious magical custom in Bosnia, still more instructive, is employed when a woman has been married for upwards of eleven years without having issue. A lady friend who is so fortunate as to be in that state in which “women wish to be who love their lords” must endeavour to find a stone lying in a pear-tree, as sometimes happens when it is thrown at the ripening fruit and caught by one of the branches. She must then shake the tree until the stone fall. This she must catch in her hands ere it reach the ground, carry it in the left skirt of her dress to the brook, put it into a pitcher, fill the pitcher from the brook so far as to cover the stone, and carry it home. Next, she gathers dewy grass (it is not stated what she does with it), and speaks into the pitcher and into the water the conjuring formula: “So-and-so shall conceive.” After that, she brings the pitcher with the water to the barren woman to drink, and, winding the wedding-garment (it does not appear what portion of the dress is meant) of the latter about her own body, wears it for three months, or longer, until the woman for whom the ceremony is performed shall feel that her desire has been accomplished. The friend, however, must neither eat anything in the patient’s house, nor according to one account speak during the ceremony.153.1 Now I am not prepared to explain every detail of this performance, though I may revert to some of the items hereafter. The important matter for the moment is the meaning of the stone shaken down from the tree. This can hardly be understood to represent anything but a pear; and inasmuch as the patient cannot eat the stone, its virtues as fruit are transmitted to the water which is given her to drink, the intention being made clear by the utterance of the command, “So-and-so shall conceive.”