This Author, Or At
Least The Author (See Barbier, Ouvrages Anonymes) Of The Histoire
Naturelle ...
Des Iles Antilles, which was published for the first time
at Rotterdam, in 1658, 4to., writes:
"C'est qu'au meme tems que la femme
est delivree le mary se met au lit, pour s'y plaindre et y faire
l'acouchee: coutume, qui bien que Sauvage et ridicule, se trouve
neantmoins a ce que l'on dit, parmy les paysans d'vne certaine Province de
France. Et ils appellent cela faire la couvade. Mais ce qui est de
facheus pour le pauvre Caraibe, qui s'est mis au lit au lieu de
l'acouchee, c'est qu'on luy fait faire diete dix on douze jours de suite,
ne luy donnant rien par jour qu'vn petit morceau de Cassave, et un peu
d'eau dans la quelle on a aussi fait boueillir un peu de ce pain de
racine.... Mais ils ne font ce grand jeusne qu'a la naissance de leur
premier enfant ..." (II. pp. 607-608).
Lafitau (Maeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, I. pp. 49-50) says on the
authority of Rochefort: "Je la trouve chez les Iberiens ou les premiers
Peuples d'Espagne ... elle est aujourd'hui dans quelques unes de nos
Provinces d'Espagne."
The word couvade, forgotten in the sense of lying-in bed, recalled by
Sacombe, has been renovated in a happy manner by Dr. Tylor.
As to the custom itself, there can be no doubt of its existence, in spite
of some denials. Dr. Tylor, in the third edition of his valuable Early
History of Mankind, published in 1878 (Murray), since the last edition of
The Book of Ser Marco Polo, has added (pp. 291 seqq.) many more proofs
to support what he had already said on the subject.
There may be some strong doubts as to the couvade in the south of
France, and the authors who speak of it in Bearn and the Basque Countries
seem to have copied one another, but there is not the slightest doubt of
its having been and of its being actually practised in South America.
There is a very curious account of it in the Voyage dans le Nord du
Bresil made by Father Yves d'Evreux in 1613 and 1614 (see pp. 88-89 of
the reprint, Paris, 1864, and the note of the learned Ferdinand Denis, pp.
411-412). Compare with Durch Central-Brasilien ... im Jahre 1884 von
K.v. den Steinen. But the following extract from Among the Indians of
Guiana.... By Everard im Thurn (1883), will settle, I think, the
question:
"Turning from the story of the day to the story of the life, we may begin
at the beginning, that is, at the birth of the children. And here, at
once, we meet with, perhaps, the most curious point in the habits of the
Indians; the couvade or male child-bed. This custom, which is common to
the uncivilized people of many parts of the world, is probably among the
strangest ever invented by the human brain. Even before the child is born,
the father abstains for a time from certain kinds of animal food. The
woman works as usual up to a few hours before the birth of the child. At
last she retires alone, or accompanied only by some other women, to the
forest, where she ties up her hammock; and then the child is born. Then in
a few hours - often less than a day - the woman, who, like all women living
in a very unartificial condition, suffers but little, gets up and resumes
her ordinary work. According to Schomburgk, the mother, at any rate among
the Macusis, remains in her hammock for some time, and the father hangs
his hammock, and lies in it, by her side; but in all cases where the
matter came under my notice, the mother left her hammock almost at once.
In any case, no sooner is the child born than the father takes to his
hammock and, abstaining from every sort of work, from meat and all other
food, except weak gruel of cassava meal, from smoking, from washing
himself, and, above all, from touching weapons of any sort, is nursed and
cared for by all the women of the place. One other regulation, mentioned
by Schomburgk, is certainly quaint; the interesting father may not scratch
himself with his finger-nails, but he may use for this purpose a splinter,
specially provided, from the mid-rib of a cokerite palm. This continues
for many days, and sometimes even weeks. Couvade is such a wide-spread
institution, that I had often read and wondered at it; but it was not
until I saw it practised around me, and found that I was often suddenly
deprived of the services of my best hunters or boat-hands, by the
necessity which they felt, and which nothing could persuade them to
disregard, of observing couvade, that I realized its full strangeness.
No satisfactory explanation of its origin seems attainable. It appears
based on a belief in the existence of a mysterious connection between the
child and its father-far closer than that which exists between the child
and its mother, - and of such a nature that if the father infringes any of
the rules of the couvade, for a time after the birth of the child, the
latter suffers. For instance, if he eats the flesh of a water-haas
(Capybara), a large rodent with very protruding teeth, the teeth of the
child will grow as those of the animal; or if he eats the flesh of the
spotted-skinned labba, the child's skin will become spotted. Apparently
there is also some idea that for the father to eat strong food, to wash,
to smoke, or to handle weapons, would have the same result as if the
new-born babe ate such food, washed, smoked, or played with edged tools"
(pp. 217-219.)
I have to thank Dr. Edward B. Tylor for the valuable notes he kindly sent
me. - H.C.]
NOTE 5. - "The abundance of gold in Yun-nan is proverbial in China, so
that if a man lives very extravagantly they ask if his father is governor
of Yun-nan." (Martini, p. 140.)
Polo has told us that in Eastern Yun-nan the exchange was 8 of silver for
one of gold (ch.
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