Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/212

 1 96 The Romance of M^lusine.

father is forbidden to be present, and he is only allowed to visit the mother when the birth is over.^^ Among the Albanians, after the birth, when the baby has been wrapt in its swaddling clothes and laid in the cradle, the relatives are admitted to offer their congratulations and admire the little stranger. But the father is obliged to keep away, and to refrain from seeing his child until it is eight days old.^^ I have elsewhere suggested that a requirement thus com- mon (but not universal) may be a relic of earlier social conditions, when the wife dwelt in her mother's house, and descent was reckoned only through women.^-"^ Whatever may be the value of this conjecture, — and it is only a con- jecture, — it is plain that Pressine laid no undue burden on her husband : in fact, she simply demanded his compliance with a custom probably well known and generally followed throughout Europe. The same rule may also be suspected in ancient Japan, though in the authorities to which I have access I cannot find it definitely stated. When Toyo-tama- hime, the daughter of the Sea-King, was near her time, she caused her husband, Hiko-hoho-demi, to build her a separate parturition-house, in accordance with Japanese custom, and requested him : — " Thy handmaid is about to be delivered ; I pray thee do not look upon her." But he peeped in secretly, and saw that Toyo-tama-hime, in the act of child- birth, had changed into a dragon or sea-monster of eight fathoms in length. She was greatly ashamed because he had disgraced her ; she forthwith abandoned the child on the sea-shore and returned to the sea.^*

"^^ Revue des Traditions Populaires, vol. vi., p. 36. If we may judge from the old ballad literature, the custom was the same throughout the Dorth-west of Europe. See L. Pineau, Les Vieiix Chants Populaires Scandijiaves (Paris, 1898), vol. i., pp. iioet seq.

^^L. M. J. Garnett, The Women of Turkey etc. (1891), vol. ii. , p. 243.

^'J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. ii., p. 637.

^* Aston, Nihongi (1896), vol. i., pp. 94-5, 103-4, 107; id., Shinto (1905), p. 114. The ancient Chinese practice is detailed in the Li Ki, and presumably it is still followed. There the exclusion of the husband from the wife's room is complete. See Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxvii., pp. 471, 475, 476.