Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/297

Rh To begin with examples of the taboo which the act of baptism washes away. In Bohemia and Silesia, if an unbaptized child is brought into a strange house, it is sure to bring bad luck with it.

In Upper Egypt the mother and child are isolated until the latter is 40 days old, then, after a ceremonial bath, the child is permitted to be brought into contact with the rest of the community.

It will be remembered in this connection how highly the finger, fat, etc., of an unbaptized child were valued in the middle ages by those who sought to indulge in the gruesome practices of witchcraft.

The following instances of the baptismal ceremony are only a few of the many examples on record.

Among the ancient Mexicans, long before the Spaniards introduced Christianity, the second bath of the child, on the fifth day after birth, was made the occasion of a great ceremony. After all the neighbours and friends had assembled, the baby was laid on leaves beside a new earthen vessel filled with pure water, and the midwife, who acted the part of priestess for the nonce, addressing the child, recited an incantation which ended: "Thou art the gift of our son Quetzalcoatl, the omnipresent. Be purified by thy Mother Chalchihuitlicue, the goddess of water." So saying she moistened the lips and breast of the child with water from the vessel. Next, pouring the water over the child's head, she chanted: "Take this, my son, the water of the Lord of the World; this is our life, and by this we wash and become clean. May this heavenly water, clear as light, pass into thy body and there remain; may it expel from thee every evil and wicked thing, thy legacy from the beginning of the world! For, behold, we are all in the hands of our Mother, Chalchihuitlicue." Then she harangued the powers of darkness, adjuring them to depart, for "this