Note 411.1 — Chapter XV · THE COUVADE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE STRENGTH OF THE BLOOD-TIE—CONCLUSION OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF THE LIFE-TOKEN.

We have no need to be surprised that the Couvade is not found in the lowest stage of savagery. The reckoning of kinship through the mother only, and the stories and superstitions which attribute impregnation to other causes than coition, point alike to an imperfect recognition in archaic times of the natural fact of fatherhood. It may further be suggested that where the claim of a father upon his child is still rather that of owner than of begetter, the recognition of the counter-claim of the child upon the father, and the application as between father and child of the belief underlying and directing other magical practices, will not yet have developed. It is probable, indeed, that the customs we include under the generic name of the Couvade would begin with the mother, and that when the fact of paternity was completely recognised, although legal kinship may not yet have come to be reckoned through the father, they would be extended to him. Their disappearance as men advanced in civilisation would, like that of all other customs, be a gradual one; and if they had become at all general we should be likely to discover relics of them among nations in the higher ranks of culture. Accordingly, although there is no authentic record of the existence of the masculine childbed in modern Europe, a number yet lingers of superstitions only referable to the Couvade. For example, just as in the island of Celebes we found the Minahassee father performing a rite intended to secure to his son the qualities of bravery and skill, so among the Esthonians the father runs rapidly round the church during the baptismal service, that his child may be endowed with swiftness of foot.411.1 In Altmark the mother busily reads her Bible and hymn-book while the child is being baptized, so that he may be able to learn easily; and with the same object the godparents must repeat together after the minister the passages from the Bible he brings into his exhortation.411.2 The husband among the mixed population of East Prussia seems to have been limited in his choice of drink while his wife was lying-in.411.3 Over a wide area of the Continent the mother is allowed to do very little work before her churching. In Altmark she must not spin; for in spinning she will wet her finger with her saliva, and that will cause the babe to slaver.411.4 The reason assigned in Switzerland for a similar taboo is that she will spin the material for a rope for her child.411.5 At the baptismal feast in Altmark the mother must taste of all the dishes if she wish the infant to thrive.411.6 Galician Jews permit no member of a household where there is a young child to stay out after sunset, else the little one will be deprived of its rest.411.7 In the last illustration we have an extension of the superstition beyond the immediate parents—an extension of which there are traces among savage peoples, like the Abipones, who are reported to have put other relatives as well as the parents upon restricted diet during a baby’s illness.