Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/97

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correspondent who formerly furnished me with material for notes on the folklore of the Province of Ontario now informs me of a belief which seems to come under the head of couvade. It is held by some that a pregnant woman may be free from "morning-sickness" and other forms of nausea, while the husband suffers from these discomforts instead. The belief is clearly a faded one; no means are employed to transfer the symptoms from wife to husband—it merely "happens so"; but it would appear to have been strengthened by cases in which a husband did actually have some stomachic trouble before his wife's confinement; my correspondent cites two such cases from his own experience.

theory that primitive society was organised on the patriarchal model, popularised by Sir H. Maine in his Ancient Law, was generally accepted until writers like Bachofen and M'Lennan urged the priority of matrilineal kinship. Their view was supported by the investigations into the sociology of the Australian tribes by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. At present the priority of matrilineal kinship is recognised by most anthropologists. But two eminent American anthropologists. Dr. Lowrie and Dr. Swanson, have questioned its existence among the North American Indians. Their conclusions have been criticised in an elaborate paper by Dr. E. Sidney Hartland (Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, vol. iv. no. i.), in which he proves that in most of these tribes there is evidence of a previous stage of matrilineal organisation, and that where it is wanting, its absence is due to vicissitudes or other influences to which these tribes have been subjected.