A Case Is Said To Have
Occurred In Which Ill Effects Were Obviated, Or Rather Obliterated, By The
Red Papers Being Torn Down, After The Birth Of The Infant, And Soaked In
Water, When As The Red Disappeared From The Paper, So The Child's Face
Assumed A Natural Hue.
Lord Avebury also speaks of la couvade as
existing among the Chinese of West Yun-Nan.
(Origin of Civilisation and
Primitive Condition of Man, p. 18)."
Dr. J.A.H. Murray, editor of the New English Dictionary, wrote, in
The Academy, of 29th October, 1892, a letter with the heading of
Couvade, The Genesis of an Anthropological Term, which elicited an
answer from Dr. E.B. Tylor (Academy, 5th November): "Wanting a general
term for such customs," writes Dr. Tylor, "and finding statements in books
that this male lying-in lasted on till modern times, in the south of
France, and was there called couvade, that is brooding or hatching
(couver), I adopted this word for the set of customs, and it has since
become established in English." The discussion was carried on in The
Academy, 12th and 19th November, 10th and 17th December; Mr. A.L. Mayhew
wrote (12th November): "There is no doubt whatever that Dr. Tylor and
Professor Max Mueller (in a review of Dr. Tylor's book) share the glory of
having given a new technical sense to an old provincial French word, and
of seeing it accepted in France, and safely enshrined in the great
Dictionary of Littre."
Now as to the origin of the word; we have seen above that Rochefort was
the first to use the expression faire la couvade. 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.
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