Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/300

264 taboo is removed, and the mother and child set free. The child is named at this ceremony. A somewhat different ritual is followed in the case of a chief. The father, mother, and head of the tribe go with the priest, who wades out into the middle of a stream with the baby. There the child is sprinkled with water, while certain incantations are recited.

Among the Jews in olden times infant baptism was to some extent practised, although it is not mentioned in the Bible, for the Talmud provides the details to be observed in the ceremony performed when heathen infants were received into Jewry.

In ancient Rome the baptismal rite was a domestic rather than an ecclesiastical function, but some kind of ceremony was probably observed, which took place on the 8th-9th day after birth, and for which a special vessel, the Baptisterium, was provided.

In addition to the foregoing, a ritual washing of the new-born or young infant was and is performed in the following countries and races:

The ancient Goths and Scandinavians; the Lapps, since long before Christian times; the natives of Upper Egypt; the Fiote tribe of the Loango coast of Africa; the natives of South Guinea; the Basutos, whose witch-doctors soap the child's head; the Ovahereroes of South Africa; the Guanchos (the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Isles); the Jessids, an old heathen sect still surviving in Armenia; the ancient Hindoos, and perhaps the Persians; the Battas and other tribes of modern India; in Sumatra (the name being given at a brook); in Java; among the Negritoes of the Philippines; on Uvea Island (South Seas); on Rotuma Island; among the Noeforese of Papua; among the Pampas Indians of South America; among the North