Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/347

 Ceremonial Customs of the British Gipsies. ^''

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allowed to take place inside the living waggon, or it and all its contents would have to be destroyed, or sold \.o gdjos. It is usually arranged that they take place on a makeshift straw bed under the waggon, for the bed on which a child is born becomes inokhadi, of course, and must be destroyed or sold. No cooking vessels, crockery, knives, forks, or spoons used by the mother must ever be used again, whilst between the birth and the christening of the child male Gipsies must not eat or drink in the waggon, nor eat anything cooked in it. If any of these prohibitions are disregarded, the offender is bale tshido. Liebich, Mr. Gilliat-Smith, and Mrs. Miln all mention the prevalence of childbirth taboos amongst the German Gipsies. The first-named states that they last for one month, and adds that during that time even the breath of the woman is considered to be niok/iadi?^ The period mentioned by Mrs. Miln 21 is from the time that the birth is expected until five months after the event, whilst among the Gipsies of the Rhine Province, according to Mr. Gilliat-Sniith,^^ a woman who is found to be with child is separated from the rest of the tribe, and tended and well cared for by women alone, which system is prolonged until two months after the birth. It is not only in England and Germany that the Gipsies regard a woman as inokhadi for a certain period following, and in some cases preceding, childbirth. Dr. Sampson observed childbirth taboos amongst the Eastern European Gipsies who visited Liverpool in i886.-^ Their existence has not, however, been recorded by any of the continental students of the Gipsies of that part of the world.

The English Gipsies do not, as we have seen, consider a woman to be mokhadi before the birth takes place, but that

-^ Die Zigeuner, p. 51.

-^ Wooings and Weddings in Many Climes (London, 1900), p. 383.

^Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. i., p. 129.

"■^ Ibid., O.S., vol. iii., p. 58.