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Rh will cause a woman to suffer severely in childbed (7)." And in England women are often warned not to step over brooms or broom-handles, and are threatened with an undesired conception as a penalty if they step over one of the latter. It thus seems manifest that the Japanese beliefs associating brooms with childbirth are founded upon something broader than purely Japanese (or Sino-Japanese) conceptions or combinations of ideas. We are therefore enabled to put aside, as probably of minor importance, if of any, in determining this association, the broom's use as a representative of a human being, or reasons directly underlying that use. So, too, we may safely disregard, excepting as perhaps a minor factor, the play on words (suggested to me, by a Japanese friend, as possibly being the basis of the association of brooms with parturition) whereby the word "hahaki," "a broom," may be taken as "haha-ki," equivalent to "mother-tree."