Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/314

304 escaped their persecutors by putting out to sea, and settling in their mountainous island.

When we find such a custom as the couvade lying isolated in several districts of a continent, it is useful thus to suggest its perhaps serving as a clue to some past connexion between tribes who practise it. But this is very different from rashly assuming that it must necessarily be proof of such historical connexion, that for instance the ancient Corsicans and Tibareni and the modern Bearnese and Miau-Tsze must somehow have borrowed or inherited the habit from a common source. Again, it has been seen that most various races of mankind, black, brown, yellow, white, have among them peoples who practise the couvade in one or other of its forms. It would be most unreasonable to attempt to give an acquired custom like this any direct bearing on the argument as to a common descent of these races from one original stock, a problem which has to be worked out on more deep-lying and primitive characters of man's bodily and mental structure. Like other magical fancies, the couvade seems to belong to certain low stages of the reasoning process in the human mind, and may for all we know have sprung up at different times and places.

Since the first publication of this work, the curious fact has been noticed that in Germany a group of peasant superstitions have made their appearance, closely analogous in principle to the couvade, though relating not to the actual parents of the child but to the godparents. It is believed that the habits and proceedings of the godfather and godmother affect the child's life and character. Particularly, the godfather at the christening must not think of disease or madness lest this come upon the child; he must not look round on the way to the church lest the child should grow up an idle stare-about; nor must he carry a knife about him, for fear of making the child a suicide; the godmother must put on a clean shift to go to the baptism, or the baby will grow up untidy, &c. &c. It does not seem impossible for us to enter into the train of thought that set these notions going, they are what might arise from exaggerating into magical sympathy the reasonable thought that such as the godfather is, such the godchild is likely to be. Popular magic