Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/211

 The Romance of Mdliisine. 195

life. Though among some tribes he is required to be present and act as midwife, he of all men is more usually required to be absent. In the Loyalty Islands, indeed, where birth takes place (contrary to the general rule) in public, every- body may be present to witness it except the husband, whose absence is enforced ; nor may he pay his wife a visit until the child is big enough to crawl.^ But we need not go to these far-off lands, and to peoples alien to ourselves in blood and traditions, for examples of the exclusion of the father from his wife's bedside on such occasions. In our own social conditions his absence is a matter of course, and does not suggest to us any special taboo. But if ue take into account the practices in the more backward parts of Europe and among the peasantry and working-classes, it would seem to be founded on sometiiing more than con- venience. It used to be a general Slav custom, still fol- lowed in out-of-the-way places in Servia and Jiulgaria, that a woman must not give birth in the house, for that would be to pollute it.'^ Among the Votiaks, where possibly climatic conditions are frequently adverse to birth out of doors, the midwife hangs up a curtain before the bed, that no one may witness the birth, since to do so would be an evil omen." In neither of these cases is there, on the surface at least, a special prohibition to the husband. Among the Ossetes, however, an expectant mother used to be sent home to her own people for the birth.^ It is very rarely that the Abruzzian husband is allowed to be present; indeed it would seem to be a purely local exception.^ In Ireland "the father is carefully kept out of the way on these occasions." 10 Near Cracow and in Ukrainia the

" ^ The Journal of the Anthropological InstititU\ vol. .six., p. 504.


 * F. S. Krauss, Sitte unci Brunch der Siidslavcn (\'ienna, 1S85), p. 537.

'' A'ez'uc des Traditions Populaires, vol. xiii., p. 254.

'Schiefner, Melanges Asiatiques tiris dn BulUtin de I' Acad. Imp. des Sciences de St. Petersbourg, vol. v., p. 698.

•Finaniore, Tradizioni Populari Abruzzesi {T\ii\n, 1S94), p. 64.

"Dr. C. R. Browne, Folk-Lore, vol. iv., p. 359.