Читать книгу Hatches, Matches and Despatches - Jenny Paschall - Страница 17

UP until the late Victorian period, people believed that a suckling baby absorbed the moral character of the woman nursing. So, if a mother could not breast-feed her own child, the wet nurse was subject to a rigorous cross-examination on her morality. If the parents suspected she was a drunkard, or a half-wit, they believed the child would be one too.

THE Chinook Indian tribe considered a flat skull to be a sign of beauty – so they strapped babies head to toe between boards until the end of their first year.

THE significance of storks in connection with babies seems to emanate from beliefs spanning many centuries and cultures. In Roman mythology, the stork was sacred to Venus, the goddess of love, so the ancients considered it a sign of good luck if storks nested near their home. The stork has long been considered a good luck omen in Norse, German and Dutch folklore.

IN nineteenth-century Wales, the bone from a shoulder of mutton was used to predict the sex of an unborn child. After being charred in a fire, the bone was hung over the door of the house. It was believed that the child would be the same sex as the next person to come through the door.

IN Germany it was once believed that a wife who carried one of her husband’s socks would never give birth prematurely.

A baby born into the Akha tribe of Thailand cannot be touched until it has cried three times.

THE Asmat people of New Guinea believe that, in order to have a baby, a woman must be impregnated by the spirit of an ancestor and the spirit is always of the same sex as the new-born child.

IN some African tribes, the men will take to their beds for the entire duration of their wife’s pregnancy. The women continue to work as usual until a few hours before giving birth. They believe that men are cleverer as well as physically stronger than women and are therefore better able to defend unborn children against malign and evil spirits.

THE Punan tribe of Borneo believe that women are born without a soul, and do not acquire one until they marry. There are certain advantages to this – as she has no soul, she cannot sin, so Punan girls can have a very active sex life until they marry. There is, however, a drawback to this belief. In order to gain a soul, the Punan girl’s husband has to find her one. He goes off into the jungle, and returns some days later with a severed human head. This is tied to the head of the bride, and the medicine man performs various rites lasting several days until everyone is satisfied that the soul has transferred from the head to the girl.

IN medieval Europe a woman would put on her husband’s clothes when labour started, hoping to transfer the birth pains to him.

The medieval belief that all fathers felt sympathetic pains when their children were born could get men in hot water. Villagers in the north of England would seek out the father of an illegitimate child simply by waiting for the mother to go into labour, and then scouring the village for any man lying ill in bed.

THERE is a strange myth that a premature baby of seven months has a better chance of survival than one of eight months. While it is now obvious that the longer the baby is in the uterus, the stronger it will be, this myth survives. It is believed that the idea originated with astrologers, to whom seven was a magic number.