We might linger long on the supernatural might of Indian kings and rishis, as well as the equally chaste and pious saints and reavers of Irish legend; but we must tear ourselves away from their edifying and veracious histories to seek the magical potation and the magical food elsewhere. The most illustrious birth by the former means was that of Zoroaster. A Parsee tradition preserved in the Selections of Zâd-sparam, who wrote shortly before the year A.D. 881, ascribes the conception of the great Iranian teacher to his mother’s drinking of homa-juice and cow’s milk infused with his guardian spirit and glory.121.1 The lark, it is said in Roumania, was a maiden born of Gheorghina, the consort of an emperor named Titus. The imperial pair were childless; but an old woman in a dream directed the emperor that his wife should drink of the brook which watered a certain forest. She did so, and gave birth to a lovely daughter, who fell in love with the sun, but was cursed by his mother and changed into a bird.121.2 Two divinities worshipped in a country temple in Annam are thus accounted for. A childless man and wife dwelt in the village. One rainy autumnal night the woman put an earthen vessel to receive the drippings of the roof, and she saw a star fall into the vessel. Astounded at the occurrence, she called her husband and told him what had happened. They resolved to say nothing about it, but to drink the water. The woman became pregnant, and after going three years in that state she was at length delivered of three blue eggs. The storyteller considered it necessary at this point to observe that the husband was very much surprised, and carefully kept the adventure to himself. However, they hatched the eggs, and three serpents crawled out, which followed their father about whithersoever he went. One day he had the ill-luck to cut off the tail of one of them. The wounded serpent forthwith was transformed into a fair youth, who said: “My brothers and I are heavenly genii who committed a sin, and were sent upon earth to succour the kingdom. They will stay, but I reascend to heaven in a tempest which will be a sign of the truth of my words.” The two other serpents remained. Sometimes they were changed into men of extraordinary powers; they rendered signal service against China, and ultimately were deified.122.1 According to a Finnish song, the lovely maiden Kasaritar was also three years in a state of pregnancy. An ogress had spat upon the waves, and Kasaritar had swallowed the bubble of froth. When at length she brought forth, it was an evil brood, the lizard.122.2 The Kotons are a Mongolian tribe. They say that the daughter of one of their khans went with forty of her maidens to a field to gather djemuis to eat. Becoming thirsty, the girls all went to the water and drank. In the midst of the water was a drop of blood, which was imbibed by the khan’s daughter and caused her to conceive. Her father drove her away; but her son afterwards became khan.122.3
We are not told here whether the blood was human. The analogy of some other sagas, and of several märchen, would lead to the supposition that it must be understood to be a man’s blood. Almost any portion of a man may be possessed of fructifying power. One of the märchen already passed in review attributes it to a man’s heart, and another to the ashes of a burnt skull. A story current among the Serbs is parallel to the latter. The emperor, hunting, finds a skull and causes his horse to step on it. The death’s-head cries out: “Why dost thou tread upon me? I am able to injure thee yet.” The emperor, hearing this, picks it up, burns it and collects the ashes in a casket. His daughter opens the casket and discovers the ashes. To ascertain what the contents of the box are, she wets her finger, dips it in the ashes and licks it. A boy is the result, who after a variety of adventures becomes the founder of Constantinople. This saga is found also in Ukrainia attached to the name of a national hero, Paliq.123.1 As M. Dragomanov, who has brought these Serbian and Ukrainian legends under the notice of Western students, remarks, the tale is found as a märchen in the Turkish Tuti-Nameh, where it appears under the name of “The story of the skull through which eighty persons lost their lives.” There the man who picked up the skull was a merchant; instead of burning it, he ground it to powder; his daughter’s son had a reputation for wisdom, and was called in to say why a fish laughed when the vizier’s over-modest slave-girl refused to look at it, lest it should be a male. The youth, thus called on, reveals to the vizier the presence in his harem of forty men disguised as women, the lovers of his forty slave-girls; and the slaves and their lovers are all put to death, to the number of eighty.124.1 I mentioned in the last chapter a Lithuanian story of a hermit who was burned, all but his heart, which was afterwards eaten by a maiden and caused her to give birth to a son. In a Sicilian legend this holy man is identified with Saint Oniria, or Neria. The maiden’s son is a new birth of the saint, who proves his sanctity when a child of only five years by convincing his grandfather and his mother’s godfather of the salvation of a poor, despised, dead beggar, and the damnation of a wealthy sinner, though borne to his grave upon a costly bier and accompanied by monks with burning tapers, and by revealing the existence of a hoard of gold beneath a dunghill. He is then taken up to heaven, and only appears again to save his grandfather’s life when accused of murder.124.2
A Gipsy tradition from Transylvania derives the origin of the Leïla tribe from a king’s daughter who was thrust out by her brother and his wicked wife, because the latter envied her that she was the fairer. In her wanderings she was pitied by three Keshalyi, or Fates; and one of them dropped some of her hairs, which the lovely maiden ate and brought into the world a son. From this child sprang the tribe, and he gave his descendants the name of his mother.124.3
But the Supernatural Birth comes about in märchen by other means than eating or drinking. It is the same in sagas. The sense of smell has been known to possess this marvellous virtue. The spirit of the pole-star, if we may credit a Chinese tale, visited a girl and gave her a fragrant herb called Hêng-wei, which caused her to become the mother of Chang, who was appointed about the year 25 of our era to the office of Master of Heaven.125.1 The Gurû Gorakhnâth, whom we have already found performing wonders, once gave a queen desirous of offspring two flowers. Two sons were born to her; but because she had deceived him she was doomed to die at their birth.125.2 According to a poem written in Old French by a priest at Valenciennes about the middle of the thirteenth century, Abraham planted in his garden the Tree of Knowledge, flung by God out of Paradise after the Fall. His daughter became pregnant by the scent of a blossom broken off from it, and bore Phanuel, from whom the Virgin Mary descended.125.3
Or it is enough for the magical article to be placed in the predestined maiden’s bosom. When from the blood of the mutilated Agdestis a pomegranate-tree sprang up, Nana the nymph gathered and laid in her bosom some of the fruit wherewith it was laden, and from hence, in classical belief, Attis was born.125.4 In a Latin myth, Cæculus, the son of Vulcan and Præneste, was conceived by means of a spark which leaped into his mother’s bosom. The forty companions of the khan’s daughter, in the Koton legend already cited, were quickened by laying stones on their bosoms; and in this way from them multiplied the Sarabash tribes of the Altai mountains. On the western continent, one of the great Aztec deities, Huitzilopochtli, the brother and rival of Quetzalcoatl, had a similar origin. Coatlicue, the Serpent-skirted, was already the mother of many children. She dwelt on the mountain of the Snake, near the city of Tulla, and, being very devout, she occupied herself in sweeping and cleansing the sacred places of the mountain. One day, while engaged in these duties, a little ball of feathers floated down to her through the air. She caught it and hid it in her bosom; nor was it long before she found herself pregnant. Thereupon her children conspired to put her to death; but Huitzilopochtli, issuing from her womb all armed, like Pallas from the head of Zeus, speedily destroyed his brethren and sister and enriched his mother with their spoils.126.1
The Dorahs of New Guinea trace their parentage to a solitary old man, who caught the Morning Star in the act of stealing his palm-wine. As ransom he obtained from the felon a magical wand. This wand possessed the property of making a virgin a mother, by simply touching her bosom. The old man put its virtue to proof at once upon the loveliest girl of his island-home. She gave birth to a son called Konori, who proved his miraculous descent, as these children alone know how to do, by pointing out his father.127.1 This calls to mind a well-known passage of the Mabinogion of which Lady Charlotte Guest’s modesty made nonsense. I venture to quote her charming English, with the needful correction. Math, the son of Mathonwy, is taking counsel with Gwydion and Gilvaethwy, the sons of Don, what maiden he shall seek for a wife. “ ‘Lord,’ said Gwydion, the son of Don, ‘it is easy to give thee counsel; seek Arianrod, the daughter of Don, thy niece, thy sister’s daughter.’ And they brought her unto him, and the maiden came in. ‘Ha, damsel,’ said he, ‘art thou a maiden?’ ‘I know not, lord, other than that I am.’ Then he took up his magic wand and bent it. ‘Step over this,’ said he, ‘and I shall know if thou art a maiden.’ Then stepped she over the magic wand, and there appeared forthwith a fine chubby yellow-haired boy. And thereupon some small form was seen; but before any one could get a second glimpse of it Gwydion had taken it and flung a scarf of velvet around it and hidden it. Now the place where he hid it was the bottom of a chest at the foot of his bed.” The yellow-haired boy was baptized by the name of Dylan. “As Gwydion lay one morning on his bed awake, he heard a cry in the chest at his feet; and though it was not loud, it was such that he could hear it. Then he arose in haste, and opened the chest: and when he opened it, he beheld an infant boy stretching out his arms from the folds of the scarf, and casting it aside. And he took up the boy in his arms, and carried him to a place where he knew there was a woman that could nurse him. And he agreed with the woman that she should take charge of the boy. And that year he was nursed. And at the end of the year he seemed by his size as though he were two years old. And the second year he was a big child and able to go to the Court by himself.” This second boy was afterwards named Llew Llaw Gyffes, and the rest of the story deals with his adventures.128.1 It is clear that the wand is credited with phallic power. A saga of the Warraus of British Guiana is unambiguous in the ascription of such power to the stump of a tree. This stump was half-submerged in a pool where two Indian women were bathing, when one of them touched it and it promptly made her its wife. To her brothers’ indignation, a child was born; and after it died, a second interview with the stump resulted in a second child. This child, a boy, was slain by his mother’s brothers, who cut his body into small pieces. But from the grave arose a man stronger and fiercer than any Warrau. He was the first Carib; and hence there has always been enmity between the Caribs and the Warraus.128.2
We have found several cases, both of märchen and of sagas, where the masculine saliva and other secretions, if swallowed, produced pregnancy. The same consequence is believed to result from the spittle’s being received into the woman’s hand. The twin divinities, Hun Ahpu and Xbalanque, honoured by the Quiché of Central America, were thus begotten. Hunhun Ahpu and Vukub Hun Ahpu having been put to death by the two kings of Xibalba, a mysterious subterranean realm, the head of the former was placed between the withered branches of a calabash-tree of the kind afterwards called Hunhun Ahpu’s head; and immediately the tree became laden with fruit; the head turned into a calabash, and was indistinguishable from the rest. Thereupon the kings tabooed the tree as sacred. Xquiq, the daughter of a prince named Cuchumaquiq, broke the taboo. As she approached to pluck the fruit, Hunhun Ahpu’s head spat into her hand, and she thereby conceived. Her father, perceiving her condition, condemned her to death; but she persuaded the executioners to deceive him, and gave birth in due time to twins of extraordinary power, who avenged themselves on the rulers of Xibalba after the manner of Medea upon Pelias.129.1
A similar incident is told in the Far East by the people of Annam concerning an historical personage who was put to death in the year 1443 of our era. He was, according to one account, the parent of the king’s wife. According to another account, this lady was a serpent who had taken the form of a young girl and been adopted by the hero of the legend, and given by him in marriage to the king. At all events, she slew the king by biting off his tongue; and she, with her father (or guardian) and all his family, was put to death. Her father was buried alive with one of his soldiers. The soldier’s wife succeeded in penetrating the grave, but only to find her husband already dead. His chief, however, was still living, and, protesting his innocence, he spat in the woman’s hand, wherefrom she became pregnant and bore a son who founded a new dynasty.130.1
Conception has taken place in legend not only by the hand but by the foot, as in some of the märchen reviewed in the preceding chapter. The Shih King relates of Hâu-ki, the ancestor of the kings of Kâu, that Kiang Yüan, his mother, was childless until she trod on a toe-print made by God. The instant she did so she felt moved; she conceived, and at length gave birth to a son.130.2
Impregnation, however, by an unusual part of the body is often attended by the inconvenience of birth by other than the natural exit. In the Sanskrit books kings are mentioned as born from hand, or right arm, or from the thigh or the top of the head, just as Bacchus was born from the thigh, and Athene from the head, of Zeus. The divine Parvati herself was conceived by a look and spit forth upon the world. The old French poem already referred to represents Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, as born from her father Phanuel’s thigh, which he touched with a knife after cutting an apple, and thus caused it to conceive.130.3 Buddha, in the form of a white elephant, entered his mother’s right side, and from her right side he was born.131.1 Cases like these are frequent in cosmogonic myths which we need not discuss.
But, before we leave the subject of impregnation by an unusual part of the body, it is not unimportant to observe that, during the Middle Ages, a similar idea was current respecting the conception of Jesus Christ. Sometimes painters represented the Holy Ghost as entering his mother at her ear in the shape of a dove. In the Church of the Magdalen at Aix, in Provence, is a picture of the Annunciation attributed to Albert Dürer, wherein waves of glory descend from God the Father, and in the midst of them a microscopic babe floats down upon the Virgin. During the fifteenth century the opinion seems to have been common that Our Lord entered already completely formed into the Virgin’s womb—an opinion which orthodox theologians, in their perfect acquaintance with the divine arrangements, were able summarily to pronounce heretical. But a remarkable parallel to the story of Buddha’s conception is presented by a picture of Fra Filippo Lippi, painted for Cosmo de’ Medici and now in the National Gallery. The Virgin is seated in a chair with her Book of Hours in her hand, and the angel Gabriel bows before her. Above is a right hand surrounded with clouds. A dove, cast from the hand amid circling floods of glory, is making for the Virgin’s navel, which it is about to enter; while she, bending forward, curiously surveys it. The picture is well worth studying, not merely for its exquisite grace, colouring and finish, as one of the masterpieces of Tuscan art in the earlier half of the fifteenth century, but also as an exposition of the ideas which were prevalent at that time under the sanction of the Church, and for the purpose of comparing them with Buddhist legends and other stories of supernatural birth, such as we are now considering. Mohammedan tradition ascribes the miraculous conception by the Virgin to Gabriel’s having opened the bosom of her shift and breathed upon her womb.132.1 Parallel with this is a legend concerning Quetzalcoatl. Tradition varied much as to his life. This probably means that his worship and story were ancient and widespread among folk of the Mexican stock. One version, as we know, records his birth from a precious stone swallowed by his mother Chimalma. In a variant the Lord of Existence, Tonacatecutli, appears to Chimalma and her two sisters. The sisters were both struck dead by fright; but he breathed upon Chimalma, and by his breath quickened life within her, so that she bore Quetzalcoatl. Her son cost her her life. Having thus perished on earth, she was translated to heaven, like the Virgin Mary in the traditions of the Church, and was thenceforward honoured under the name of Chalchihuitzli, the Precious Stone of Sacrifice.132.2 But there is a world of difference between this apotheosis and that of the Virgin Mary. The latter is true, being guaranteed by the authority of the Church; while the former rested only on the testimony of heathen priests and peoples, deceived of course by the Tempter of Mankind.
It will be remembered that Mughain, before she bore Aedh Sláine, did more than drink of the consecrated water: she washed in it. Stories of conception by bathing have been seriously believed alike in the Old and New Worlds. A Zulu saga represents a king’s daughters as bathing in a pool in the river. The youngest, a mere child, comes out with breasts swollen as large as a woman’s. By the advice of the council of old men she is driven away. After wandering from place to place she gives birth to a boy who grows up a wise doctor. From what is said of his beneficent deeds it has been conjectured that we have here a corrupted account of Our Lord’s birth, derived possibly from the Portuguese.133.1 If this be so (which is quite uncertain) it is important to note that the story has coalesced with native tradition as completely as the fiftieth rune of the Kalevala with the adventures of Väinämöinen. The main incident was apparently in harmony with native thought, and therefore easily attracted to itself the details of native life and discarded its own proper details, which would be incomprehensible. In the Hindu mythology Parvati, the spouse of Siva, justified her own irregular entrance upon the world by conception through bathing, without intercourse, and thus brought forth Ganesa.133.2 A story is told, in a work attributed to Plutarch, of Bacchus in the shape of the river Tigris carrying away the nymph Alphesiboea and begetting on her a son, Medus. If Aristonymus, who seems to have been originally responsible for it, was reporting a genuine tradition, it must, so far as we can penetrate its Greek disguise, have referred to a similar adventure on the part of Alphesiboea. Medus was the eponym of the Medes.134.1 Some of the Algonkins of North America traced the lineage of mankind from two young squaws who, swimming in the sea, were impregnated by the foam and produced a boy and girl.134.2 So the black Kirghiz pretended to have for their great foremother a princess who became pregnant by bathing in a foam-covered lake.134.3
The ancient Persians held a curious belief anent Saoshyant, the future hero who was to come from the region of the dawn to free the world from death and corruption before the Resurrection. Three drops of the seed of Zoroaster, we are told in the sacred books, fell from him. What was bright and strong in it has been preserved by the agency of angels. At the appointed time a maid, bathing in the lake Kâsava, will come in contact with it, and will conceive by it and bring forth the Saviour. Indeed, the orthodox view appears to be that she will triple the miracle, by thrice conceiving in this way and bringing forth three sons, of whom the two elder will be forerunners of the third. He will come with authority to reduce all peoples under the yoke of the true religion; and the general Resurrection will follow his conquest of the world.134.4 The Middle Ages, which believed that Antichrist, in rivalry with Christ, would declare himself born of a virgin,134.5 would have seen nothing impossible in the kind of birth foretold for Saoshyant. Averrhoes, in fact, put forward as having actually occurred a case of a woman who became pregnant in a bath, by attracting the semen of a man bathing near. The admirable common sense of Sir Thomas Browne rejected this, with many more absurdities current in his day.135.1 But he failed to convince those who stood by tradition. A singular little book, refuting “Doctor Brown’s Vulgar Errors, the Lord Bacon’s Natural History and Doctor Harvey’s Book De Generatione, Comenius and Others,” was published in the year 1652. The writer, conscious no doubt of powers commensurate to the task he had undertaken, too modestly concealed his name, and has left the world baffled at the mystery of his identity. Admitting Averrhoes’ story to be a strange one, he reproves Sir Thomas Browne’s incredulity by saying: “Hee that denyeth a matter of fact, must bring good witnesses to the contrary, or else shew the impossibility of the fact.” This, he declares, had not been done. Then, after arguing in favour of the “fact,” he goes on to uphold the belief in Incubi, “for to deny this, saith Augustine, doth argue impudence;” and moreover it is “to accuse the ancient Doctors of the Church and the Ecclesiastick Histories of falshood,” and “to contradict the common consent of all Nations, and experience.”135.2 This is crushing, though assuredly an appeal to “the ancient Doctors of the Church” has always been successful in putting to shame the wisdom of the world; and Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne and the rest will for ever lie under the stigma of impudence, impiety and egregious folly.
Not only water but wind has been deemed sufficient to cause the birth of gods and heroes. The examples most familiar to us are those of Hera, who conceived Hephaistos without male concurrence by simply inhaling the wind, and of the maiden (in Longfellow’s poem, called Wenonah) who was quickened by the west wind and bore Michabo, the Algonkin hero better known as Hiawatha.136.1 To these we may add the blind Loujatar, source of all evils, ugliest and most hateful of Mana’s daughters, fructified by the east wind and bearing at a birth nine sons—nine several diseases to decimate mankind. Nor was she the first in the Finnish mythology to conceive in this manner, for Väinämöinen himself was the son of the virgin Ilmatar, who in the beginning, while as yet there was neither earth nor sun, moon nor stars, lay down upon the waters and was fecundated by the east wind. She bore her child for seven hundred years before she could bring him to the birth.136.2
Montezuma, the culture-hero of the Pueblos of New Mexico, was the son of a maiden of exquisite beauty, but fastidious and coy. When the drought fell on her people she opened her granaries and fed them out of her abundance. “At last, with rain, fertility returned to the earth; and on the chaste Artemis of the Pueblos its touch fell too. She bore a son to the thick summer shower, and that son was Montezuma.”136.3 The Chinese and the Tartars appear able as usual to match all these traditions of parthenogenesis. The historian Ma-twan-lin has recorded that the king of the So-li, or northern barbarians, having been absent on a journey, found one of his concubines pregnant at his return. He would have put her to death, had she not asserted that a vapour about the size of an egg descended on her from the sky and caused her interesting condition. He shut her up, however, and she bore a son, who was thrown by the king’s orders into the pigsty. The pigs warmed the babe with their breath. He was thrown into a stable, and the horses did the same, reminding us of the birth of Marjatta’s child. The king then was persuaded of his slave-girl’s truth. He brought up the boy; but he feared him as he grew and became a skilful archer, and sought therefore to destroy him. The youth fled southward until he reached a certain river. There was no way over; so he struck the water with his bow, and the fishes and turtles, gathering together, formed a compact mass, that served as a bridge for the hero. He crossed dryshod, and, reaching a land to the north of Corea, founded there the nation and kingdom of the Fou-yu.137.1
The following seems a Corean variant of this legend. A king held captive in his palace a daughter of the river Ho. She was fertilised by the rays of the sun and laid an enormous egg, which the king caused to be thrown successively to the swine and to the dogs, to the horses and to the cattle. None of these would touch it; and it was flung out into the desert. There the birds of the air flocked to it and covered it with their wings. The king then tried to break it, but failed; and it was restored to the captive maiden. She wrapped it up and warmed it for some time, until it burst and a boy came forth. The people became attached to him; but the king’s ill-will was excited, and, warned by his mother, the youth deemed it prudent to flee. Announcing himself as the sun’s son and the grandson of the river Ho, he was assisted to cross that river by the turtles and fishes as above; and he at length arrived at the town of Ke-ching-ko, which he called Kao-kin-li, and became the founder of the kingdom of that name.138.1 As late as the latter years of the sixteenth century, Hideyoshi, the Taiko of Japan, was not too civilised to make similar pretensions. They were, however, veiled, after the manner of the Irish saints we have already mentioned, as a vision. He told the ambassador of the king of Corea: “I am the only remaining scion of a humble stock; but my mother once had a dream in which she saw the sun enter her bosom; after which she gave birth to me. There was then a soothsayer, who said, ‘Wherever the sun shines, there will be no place which shall not be subject to him. It may not be doubted that one day his power will overspread the empire.’ ”138.2 A Jesuit father who visited Siam in the seventeenth century reports concerning Sommonocodon, the Siamese deity, that he was born of a virgin who had retired to the depths of a certain forest, there to live in holiness and austerity pending the advent of God, then speedily expected. One day while she prayed she conceived by the prolific rays of the sun. The innocent maiden, ashamed to find herself with child, flew to a solitary desert, in order to hide herself from the eyes of mankind. Upon the banks of a lake, and without any sense of pain, she was miraculously delivered of the most beautiful babe in the world; but having no milk wherewith to suckle him, and being unable to bear the thought of seeing him die, she jumped into the water, where she set him upon the bud of a flower, which blew of itself for his more commodious reception, and afterwards enclosed him as in a cradle.139.1 With these instances of sun-pregnancy may be compared the Chinese tale of the Emperor Yao’s mother, who was rendered fruitful by the splendour of a star that flashed upon her during a dream.139.2
The Kirghiz Tartar tradition of the birth of the celebrated Genghis Khan is perhaps a refinement of some such legend as these, due to change of religion or other civilising influence. As it has more than one resemblance to that of Danae I venture to give some of the details. A khan named Altyn Bel had an only son. At length his wife became pregnant a second time, and bore a daughter so beautiful that the khan commanded that no man was to see her; and to conceal her from all human eyes she must be brought up hidden beneath the ground. Wherefore her mother gave her in charge to an old woman, who nourished her in the dark. The babe grew to maidenhood; and one day she asked her nurse: “Whither dost thou go from time to time?” The nurse told her in reply that there was a bright world where her father and mother and all sorts of people dwelt; and thither she herself went. The maiden prayed to be shown this bright world; and under promise to tell no one of it the woman took her secretly out into the open air. As soon as the maiden came forth and looked upon the world she staggered and fainted; for at the same moment God’s eye fell upon her, and at His command she became pregnant. When this was known to the khan he ordered her to be put to death; but, being dissuaded from so extreme a course, he allowed his wife to lock the maiden in a golden chest, together with some food, and to fling the chest into the sea, first binding the key on the outside. Two heroes, hunting, see the chest on the water. Agreeing between themselves that the one should take the chest and the other its contents, whatever they were, they capture and drag it ashore. On opening it they find the girl, who tells them her tale, and after her babe’s birth weds one of them. Her son is Genghis. He grew up renowned among the youth for his uprightness and excellence; and when the ruler of the town died childless the people chose Genghis in his place, and swore obedience to him. So Genghis ruled the folk in justice and peace; and theft and lying vanished from among them. But his mother had borne to his stepfather three sons, who envied him and said: “This is a fatherless child; we cannot suffer him as ruler. We have a father; make one of us prince.” When Genghis knew it, he resolved to flee, lest they should put him to death. He told his mother he would go to the source of the waters whereon she had come floating thither; to the place where his father dwelt he would go, and live. “O mother, I will let thee know whether I am alive or dead. I will throw feathers into the water: when you see the feathers floating by, you will know I am well; if the feathers do not float by, I shall be dead.” Then he went upwards along the stream. (It was called the sea just now; but the Tartars are inlanders.) He shot game. Out of the fells of the beasts he made a house; the feathers of the birds floated down to his mother, and she knew that he lived. The people made one of his half-brothers prince. But his rule was corrupt; liars and thieves and all sorts of criminals abounded, and he could not protect his people. Wherefore they resolved to depose him and to seek out Genghis again; and five-and-twenty of their noblest went to find him. They came to the place where he dwelt, and hid themselves, lest he should flee them again. He was absent. When he returned they waited until he had eaten and lain down to rest. Four-and-twenty men then seized him, bowing the head; but he flung them all aside. They spake: “O Prince and Lord, we are thy servants and come to thee as suppliants. Since thou hast left us our yourt has broken up. Come back and take again thy seat as ruler.” He yielded and went back with them. On their return a council was held, and it was determined to submit the claims of Genghis and his three brothers to their mother, who should choose the prince from among them. The mother said to her sons: “You are all my children; do not quarrel, I will decide the affair. Hang all your bows upon this sunbeam: whose bow soever this beam bears, let him be ruler.” All four brought their bows and hung them on the sunbeam. Only Genghis’ bow remained hanging; the bows of the other three brothers fell to the ground. And the woman said to all the folk: “Behold! He became my child by God’s decree; by God’s decree too the sunbeam bears his bow: make him your prince. If these three offer him violence, put them to death. You, O folk, are many: let no harm be done to him.” And again he ruled in peace and justice. He took a noble wife, who bore him three sons and a daughter. So renowned was he that a messenger came from the ruler of the kingdom of Rome and prayed for one of his children to make him ruler of Rome; and he gave one of his sons. From Crim-Tartary came another to ask for another son as ruler; and he gave him his second son. From the Khalif’s people came another on the same errand; and he gave him the third son. Then came an embassy from the Russians and asked for a child. As he had no more sons, he gave the Russians his daughter; and they led her forth to make her their ruler. When he died, as he had sent all his children away to rule other lands, his brothers became forefathers of the evil sultans of his own people.142.1
Phallic power is not infrequently exercised in the legends of the Far East by the glances of divine, or quasi-divine, beings. After the latest cyclic cataclysm, which preceded by about eighteen thousand years the coming of Xacca, as the inhabitants of Laos call Buddha, a genius descended from the highest of the sixteen worlds to repeople the earth. With his scimitar he cut asunder a flower he beheld swimming on the water. From the stem a beautiful maiden sprang, and he grew enamoured of her. But such was her bashfulness that she refused to listen to his suit. Accordingly he placed himself at a certain distance from her, but directly opposite, where he could gaze upon her; and with the ardour of his gaze she became a mother without ceasing to be a maiden. For the numerous issue that he had in this way begotten he furnished the earth with mountains and valleys, fruit-trees and animals fitted for the service of mankind, metals and precious stones and every other convenience.143.1 The Japanese pretend that the ancestors of the present race which possesses their empire were heroes or demi-gods, who in turn derived their origin from celestial spirits, of whom seven ruled the empire. The first three of these spirits had no wives, and three of the others impregnated their wives merely by their looks.143.2 The Marquesan islanders report that Hina, the daughter of the god Taaroa, bore to him a daughter named Apouvaru, who also became wife to her father. Taaroa and Apouvaru looked steadfastly at one another, with the result that Apouvaru became a mother. She brought into the world a son; and the visual intercourse being repeated she brought forth a second son. After repeating it again she brought forth a daughter. This seems to have satisfied these divine beings, for no further experiments are reported.143.3 Taaroa, however, according to the Leeward islanders, begot another son by shaking the shadow of a bread-fruit leaf over his daughter-wife, Hina.143.4 At Rome the birth of Servius Tullius was by tradition imputed to a look. His mother Ocrisia was a slave of Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus. The likeness of a phallos appeared on the hearth; and she, who was sitting before it, arose pregnant of the future king. The household Lar was deemed his father, in confirmation of which a lambent flame was seen about the child’s head as he lay asleep.144.1
We have found a Zulu märchen narrating the birth of a child from a clot of blood placed in a pot and covered down. To similar effect is the Melanesian tradition of Deitari, from Aurora Island. His father Tari went into his garden to work, when he felt something cut him. He put the blood into a bamboo vessel, returned to his house and set it down by the hearth. After many days his wife, going to cook food for him, was surprised to find food already cooked by somebody unknown. When this had recurred several times, the woman told her husband, and he bade her watch. Then she saw Deitari (Tari’s blood) creep out of the bamboo vessel. He was exceeding fair to look upon; and she hid him, and asked her husband what he had put in that bamboo vessel. Tari remembered about his blood, and said: “My blood was in that bamboo.” His wife replied: “I saw him come forth out of that bamboo that you had put there.” And she brought him forth, and her husband rejoiced to see him.144.2 The Mexicans attributed the origin of the present race of mankind to a bone of one of the previous races who had perished in a cataclysm. The goddess Omecihuatl, having had many children in heaven, was at length delivered of a knife of flint. This knife was flung by her elder children to the earth, and where it fell there sprang up sixteen hundred heroes from the ground. By the goddess’ direction, one of these heroes, Xolotl, was sent to Hell to fetch a bone of one of the men who had died. The god of Hell, having given it, repented and pursued the messenger, who fortunately escaped, but in his haste stumbled and broke the bone. He gathered up the pieces and brought them to his brethren, who put them into a vessel and sprinkled them with blood drawn from their own bodies. At the end of four days a boy was formed from the bone, and at the end of three more a girl, who became the ancestors of all nations.145.1
With these cases we may for the present close our long and monotonous list of Supernatural Births. If anybody shall complain that it is not exhaustive, he must be congratulated on his appetite for these marvellous occurrences. Practically the subject is inexhaustible. I have not attempted to deal with every story, nor with every kind of story. I have limited myself so far as possible to narratives analogous to those in the different forms of the Perseus myth, and to little more than specimens of them. In treating of sagas we have been able to show a range extended beyond that of märchen. The Supernatural Birth, in the forms in which we have studied it, is known throughout Europe, Asia, and America, and in large groups of the Pacific Islands. It is repeated again and again in the Chinese and other Mongolian traditions. We have found it among the Zulus in South Africa; and although there may be some doubt as to the native character of a portion of the story, there can be none as to the mode of impregnation. When we know more about the legends and beliefs of the natives of the interior, we shall probably find the myth as thoroughly at home there as it is in an Italian nursery-tale.146.1
The result of the inquiries of the last two chapters has been to show that the incident of the Supernatural Birth, in forms identical with, or at least analogous to, those of the Perseus cycle, is found, broadly speaking, over the whole world,—and that, not merely as a tale whereto no serious belief is attached, but, even more widely, as a saga, or record of what are deemed to have been actual events. But if, amid all differences of race and culture, birth has thus been held to have been caused on various occasions in these marvellous ways, it is natural to ask whether it has also been thought possible still to make effectual use of such means to produce pregnancy in barren women. The answer is, that it has been, and still is, thought possible. In other words, the traditions of past miracles are organically connected in the popular mind with practices expressly calculated to produce repetitions of those miracles. It will be observed, however, that parthenogenesis is often spoken of in the stories; whereas, for the most part, the object of the practices I am about to describe is to promote conception by women who are in the habit of having sexual intercourse. The distinction is often immaterial. In the stage of civilisation wherein the stories are told and the practices obtain, medicine and surgery are not as yet separated from magic. We cannot therefore, speak positively as to the meaning and intention of all. But it is clear that a large number of the practices, as well as of the stories, imply, if we are not told in so many words, that the real origin of the child afterwards born is not the semen received in the act of coition, but the drug, or the magical potency of the incantation.
In discussing the practices I shall ask the reader’s pardon if I do not limit myself to such as are precisely analogous to the means found in the stories, nor even to such as are explicable by reasons already known to be accepted in barbaric life. I desire, beyond these, to call the attention of scholars to some of the problems yet to be solved. We have learned to understand much that used to be mysterious in the ways and the thoughts of savages. But much remains unknown or misunderstood. And even if a solitary student cannot explain, he may render some small service to science in inquiring into, that which needs explanation.
The favourite method of supernatural impregnation in stories is perhaps by eating some fruit or herb. Nor is this method by any means neglected in practice. The maxim attributed to the Druids leaps to the mind, namely, that powder of mistletoe makes women fruitful. As held by the Druids this is doubtless to be understood literally, just as among the ancient Medes, Persians and Bactrians the juice of the sacred Soma was prescribed to procure for unproductive women fair children and a pure succession.148.1 Thus the birth of Zoroaster himself was, as we have seen, believed to have been caused. Among the rules for the performance of the Vedic domestic ceremonies, given in the Grihya-Sûtras, the householder who does not study the Upanishad treating of the rules for securing conception, the male gender of the child, and so forth, is directed in the third month of his wife’s pregnancy to give her, after she has fasted, in curds from a cow which has a calf of the same colour as the dam, two beans and a barleycorn for each handful of curds. Then he is to ask her: “What dost thou drink?” To which she is to reply: “Generation of a male child.” When the curds and the question and response have been thrice repeated, he is to insert into her right nostril the sap of a herb which is not withered.149.1 One can hardly doubt that this is a ceremonial to procure offspring, though not performed, according to the rubric, until after conception has taken place. In the book of medical receipts deemed to be derived from the ancient Physicians of Myddfai, printed in the year 1861 from a Welsh manuscript bearing date in 1801, we find it stated that a decoction of mistletoe causes fruitfulness of body and the getting of children.149.2 Here the magical plant seems to have faded into one of merely natural efficacy. On the other hand, something more than the light of common day still glorifies the rosemary. Among other things we are told that to carry a piece of this plant is to keep every evil spirit at a distance, and that rosemary has all the virtues of the stone called jet. It was because it was obnoxious to evil spirits that it was used at funerals. But it was not only used at funerals. There is a story of a widower who wished to be married again on the day of his former wife’s funeral, because the rosemary employed at the funeral could be used for the wedding also. For its use at weddings there was an additional reason, which is given in the Welsh manuscript; to wit, one of its remarkable powers was that “it was sovran against barrenness.”150.1 Hindu women eat little balls of rice with intent to obtain children. A woman who wishes for a child, especially a son, observes the fourth lunar day of every dark fortnight as a fast, and breaks her fast only after seeing the moon, generally before nine or ten o’clock in the evening. A dish of twenty-one balls of rice having been prepared, in one of which is put some salt, it is then placed before her; and if she first put her hand on the ball containing salt, she will be blessed with a son. In this case no more is eaten; otherwise she goes on until she takes the salted ball.150.2 At the festival of Ráhu, the tribal god of the Dosádhs of Behar and Chota Nagpur, the priest distributes to the crowd tulsi-leaves which heal diseases else incurable, and flowers which have the virtue of causing barren women to conceive;150.3 but whether they are to be eaten or only smelt does not appear. The same omission occurs in a report by Mr. Leland that a Tuscan woman who desires offspring goes to a priest, gets a blessed apple and pronounces over it an invocation to Saint Anna.151.1 Presumably she then eats it. At all events, in Hungary a Gipsy woman in the like circumstances eats at waxing moon grass from the grave of a pregnant woman.151.2 Among the Southern Slavs the woman goes to a pregnant woman’s grave, calls upon her by name, bites some of the grass off the grave, calls upon her again, conjuring her to grant her a child, and then, taking some earth from the grave, binds it in her girdle.151.3 In the Spreewald no Wendish woman dares to eat of two plums grown together on one stalk, or she will bear twins.151.4 About Mentone it is believed that a woman who finds a double fruit will have twins.151.5 The aboriginal inhabitants of Paraguay supposed that a woman who ate a double ear of maize would give birth to twins.151.6 In Saxony, Mecklenburg and Voigtland it would appear that only pregnant women are forbidden to eat double fruit; among the Tangalas the prohibition is extended to the husband; in all cases for the same reason.151.7 These taboos are inexplicable save on the supposition that the fruit causes pregnancy.
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.”
In China and Japan a medicine called Kay-tu-sing, made from the leaves of a tree belonging to the class Ternstromaceæ, is given at full moon with cabalistic formulæ. In the Fiji Islands the woman bathes in a stream, and then both husband and wife take a drink made with the grated root of a kind of bread-fruit tree and the nut of a sort of turmeric, immediately before congress. Siberian brides before the marriage-night eat the cooked fruit of the Iris Sibirica. Asparagus seeds and young hop-buds are given as salad to women in Styria against barrenness. The Czech women of Bohemia drink an infusion of juniper to obtain children; and coffee enjoys a high reputation in Franconia. Serb women get a woman already pregnant to put yeast into their girdles; they sleep with it over night, and eat it in the morning at breakfast.154.1
Before passing from the eating of fruit and vegetables, let me point out that the mandrakes, or love-apples, for which Rachel bargained with Leah, were believed to be possessed of power to put an end to barrenness; and this, as it appears by the record in Genesis, quite independently of sexual intercourse, for Rachel gave up her husband to her sister in exchange for them. Whether it be from the narcotic properties of the fruit, or from the likeness of the root to the human form, or both, the mandrake has been during all history credited with supernatural powers. In particular, it has been held potent as a cause of pregnancy. Henry Maundrell, travelling in Palestine in the spring of 1697—barely two centuries ago—was informed that it was then customary for women who wanted children to lay mandrakes under the bed.154.2 The recipe current during the Middle Ages for gathering mandrakes was very much like that still practised by Danubian Gipsies to obtain a kind of orchid which they call boy-root. The root is half laid bare with a knife never before used, and a black dog is tied by the tail to it. A piece of ass-flesh is then offered to the animal; and when he springs after it he pulls out the plant. The representation of a linga is carved out of the root, wrapped in a piece of hart’s leather, and worn on the naked left arm to promote conception.155.1 The Persians are said still to use the mandrake as an amulet for the same purpose, and to call it man’s root or love-root.155.2
Animal substances of various kinds have been taken with the like intent. An insect in India, called pillai-púchchi, or son-insect, is swallowed in large numbers by women in the hope of bearing sons.155.3 They thus do voluntarily what the mothers of Conchobar and Cuchulainn are reported to have done against their wills. English gallants at one time were said to swallow loaches in wine to become prolific. Farquhar in The Constant Couple, written at the end of the seventeenth century, puts into the mouth of one of his characters the words: “I have toasted your ladyship fifteen bumpers successively, and swallowed Cupids like loaches in every glass.”155.4 On every Christmas Eve unfruitful wives among the Transylvanian Saxons eat fish and throw the bones into flowing water, in the hope of bringing children into the world.155.5 Hungarian Gipsy-women gather the floating threads of cobweb from the fields in autumn, and in the waxing of the moon they with their husbands eat them, murmuring an incantation to the Keshalyi, or Fate, whose sorrow at this season for her lost mortal husband causes her to tear out her hair. These threads are believed to be the Keshalyi’s hair; and the incantation attributes the hoped-for child to them, and invites the Fate to the baptism.156.1 In Kamtchatka, women outdo the Hungarian Gipsies. They eat the spiders themselves to obtain children; and a woman who, on bearing, desires to become pregnant soon again, eats her infant’s navel-string. Among the Southern Slavs the wife places a wooden bowl full of water beneath a beam of the roof where it is worm-eaten and the worm-dust falls. Her husband strikes the beam with something heavy, so as to shake the dust out of the worm-holes; and she drinks the water containing the dust that falls. Many a woman seeks in knots of hazelwood for a worm, and eats it when found. Masur women in the province of West Prussia make use of the water which drips from a stallion’s mouth after he has drunk. Worse is said to be done in Algiers. There, when a woman has already had a child, but has ceased for a long period to conceive, she must drink sheep’s urine, or water wherein wax from a donkey’s ear has been macerated.156.2 The ancient Prussian bride and bridegroom, having been put to bed, but before consummating the marriage, were served with a dish of buck’s, bull’s, or bear’s testicles,156.3 probably with a view to begetting a boy. The corresponding portion of a hare was prescribed in wine by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the woman who desired a son. “In order that a woman may kindle a male child,” a hare’s belly dried and sliced and rubbed with a drink is also recommended in the leechbook to be taken by both husband and wife. If the wife alone drank it, she would produce an hermaphrodite. The hare’s magical reputation is well known, nor are the foregoing the only prescriptions in the same work from its flesh. Four drachms of female hare’s rennet to the woman, and the like quantity of male hare’s to the man, in wine, were to be given; and, after directing that the wife should be dieted on mushrooms and forego her bath, we are told: “Wonderfully she will be pregnant.”157.1 We shall not be inclined to dispute the wonder. In Fezzan a woman’s fruitfulness is said to be increased by the plentiful enjoyment of the dried intestines of a young hare which has never been suckled. The flesh of the kangaroo, like the hare a swift animal, is held by the Australian aborigines to cause fertility.157.2 A fox’s genital organs dried and rubbed to powder are given to women in the Land beyond the Forest against barrenness.157.3
Eggs are naturally supposed to ensure pregnancy. A Gipsy husband will sometimes take an egg and blow the contents into his wife’s mouth, she swallowing them;157.4 or in Transylvania she will give him at full moon the egg of a black hen to eat by himself.157.5 On the island of Keisar in the East Indies, an infertile woman takes a hen’s first egg to an old man with a reputation for knowledge, and asks him for help. He lays the egg on a nunu-leaf, and with it presses her breast, muttering blessings the while. Then he cooks the egg in a koli-leaf, takes a bit of it, lays it again on the nunu-leaf, and gives it to the woman to eat. After that, he presses the leaf on her nose and breasts, and lightly rubs it upon her shoulders, passing it always downwards, wraps another bit of the egg in the nunu-leaf, and causes it to be preserved in the branches of one of the highest trees in the neighbourhood of her dwelling.158.1 On the other hand, in Galicia the last egg laid by a hen is credited with having two yolks. It is said to be no bigger than a pigeon’s egg. A barren woman who swallows its contents will henceforth bear; or it is given to a cow or other animal with a similar object.158.2
The Grihya-Sûtra of Gobhila gives minute directions for the sacrifice offered by the ancient Aryans of India. The object of the Anvashtakya ceremony was the propitiation of the ancestral spirits, to whom three Pindas, or lumps of food, consisting of rice and cow-beef mixed with a certain juice, are offered. After the offering, if the sacrificer’s wife wish for a son, she is to eat the middle Pinda, dedicated among the manes especially to her husband’s grandfather, uttering at the same time the verse from the Mantra-Brâhmana: “Give fruit to the womb, O Fathers!”158.3 No doubt the virtue of this prescription consists in the food’s having been part of the sacrificial offering. But the cow is so intimately connected with the well-being of all tribes in the Old World who have passed beyond the lower stages of savagery, and has consequently become so well-recognised a symbol of fecundity, that we need not be surprised to find it used in charms to produce offspring. An Old English recipe for a woman who miscarries is to let her take milk of a one-coloured cow in her hand and sup it up into her mouth, and then go to running water and spit out the milk therein. Next, she must ladle up with the same hand a mouthful of the water and swallow it down, uttering certain words. Lastly, she must, without looking about her either in her going or coming, return, but not into the same house whence she came out, and there taste of meat.159.1 Among the Kaffirs an amulet to remove the reproach from a childless woman is made by the medicine-man of the clan from the tail-hairs of a heifer. The heifer must be given to the husband by a kinsman for the purpose; and the charm, when made, is hung round the woman’s neck.159.2 In Belgium, women desirous of offspring are advised to drink a mixture of the milk of the goat, ass, and sheep.159.3
Of mineral substances Russian women take saltpetre; and in Styria a woman will grate her wedding-ring and swallow the filings.159.4 It was a classical superstition that mice were impregnated by tasting salt.159.5
The drinking of water under certain conditions has been held to be productive of children. In the first instance I am about to mention, however, reliance is not placed wholly on the draught. Beside the Groesbeeck spring at Spa in the Ardennes is a footprint of Saint Remacle. Barren women pay a nine days’ devotional visit to the shrine of the saint at Spa, and drink every morning a glass of the Groesbeeck water. While drinking, one foot must be placed in the holy footprint.159.6 Maidens, we know, in more than one of the tales, have proved the efficacy of divine footprints. In other cases it is unmistakably the draught which has the virtue. In Thuringia and Transylvania, women who wished to be healed of unfruitfulness drank consecrated water from the baptismal font.160.1 A Transylvanian Gipsy woman is said to drink water wherein her husband has cast hot coals, or, better still, has spit, saying as she does so: “Where I am flame be thou the coals! Where I am rain be thou the water!”160.2 A South Slavonic woman holds a wooden bowl of water near the fire on the hearth. Her husband then strikes two firebrands together until the sparks fly. Some of them fall into the bowl, and she then drinks the water.160.3 The Tusayan, one of the pueblo tribes of North America, have a legend of one of their women who, being pregnant, was left behind on the Little Colorado in their wanderings. Beneath her dwelling is a spring, and any sterile woman who drinks of it will bear children.160.4 For Arab women the third chapter of the Koran (which, among other things, relates the birth of the Virgin Mary) is written out in its whole interminable length with saffron in a copper basin; boiling water is poured upon the writing; and the woman in need drinks a part of the water thus consecrated, and washes her face, breast and womb with the remainder.160.5 At Bombay a barren woman would cut off the end of the robe of a woman who has borne at least one child, when hung up to dry; or would steal a new-born infant’s shirt, steep one end of it in water, drink the water and destroy the shirt. The child to which the clothing belonged would then die and be born again from the womb of the woman performing this ceremony.161.1 Other women in India wash the loin-cloth of a sanyásí, or devotee, and drink the water.161.2 We can only surmise that this filthy practice is followed in the hope of obtaining the benefit experienced by the Princess Chand Ráwati in the Sanskrit romance, or the nymph Adrikâ in the Mahâbhârata, cited above.
Be this how it may, there is a group of practices to which reference must be made, and which almost match the foregoing in nastiness. Unfortunately the dislike of nastiness is an extremely civilised feeling; and when we read of these things we must remember that we ourselves are not very far removed from a date when powder of mummy was one of the least objectionable remedies in our forefathers’ pharmacopœia. We have already found that a Gipsy woman will drink the water wherein her husband has spit. What is the meaning of the expression: “He is the very spit of his father!” current not only in England, but also, according to the learned Liebrecht, in France, Italy, and Portugal, and alluded to by Voltaire and La Fontaine, if it point not back to a similar, perhaps a more repulsive, ceremony formerly practised by the folk all over western Europe? Other Gipsy customs, if Gipsy women are not belied, are quite as bad. A barren woman who succeeds in touching a snake caught in Easter- or Whitsun-week will become fruitful if she spit thrice on it and sprinkle it with her menstruation-blood, repeating the following incantation: “Grow thick, thou snake! that I thereby may get a child. I am lean as thou art now, therefore rest not. Snake, snake, glide hence, and if I become pregnant I will give thee a crest, an old one, that thy tooth may thereby receive much poison!”162.1 Among the Gipsies of Roumania and southern Hungary a sterile woman scratches her husband’s left hand between finger and thumb; and he returns the compliment. The blood of both is received in a new vessel, and buried under a tree for nine days. It is then taken up and ass’ milk poured into it; and husband and wife drink the mixture before going to bed, saying an incantation which reminds us of the Zulu story of the blood in the pot; for its earlier lines run thus: “In the dawn three Fates will come. The first seeks our blood; the second finds our blood; the third makes a child thereout.”162.2 A Polish woman, to get children, procures a small jar of the blood of another woman at her first child-bearing, and drinks it mixed with brandy.162.3 I mentioned just now the practice of the Kamtchatkan women. A Magyar believes he promotes conception by his wife if he mix with his blood white of egg and the white spots in the yolk of a hen’s egg, fill a dead man’s bone with the mixture, and bury it where he is accustomed to make water.162.4 Nay, shavings of a dead man’s bone taken in drink will have the same effect; or if taken by a man, they will enhance his potency.163.1 It was, as we have seen, a dead man’s bone which, according to the Mexican saga, when sprinkled with blood, produced the father and mother of the present race of mankind.