Ch. XX.] THE "COUVADE." 367 



take careful nursing and nourishing food. In Brazil, on 

 the birth of a child, the father Avas put to bed and fed 

 with light food, whilst the mother was unattended to, 

 and went about her work. The practice of the couvade 

 was universal, in some form or other, amongst the Carib 

 races, but was unknown amongst the peoples whom I 

 have called the Nalmatls. 



On the other side of the Atlantic the couvade has 

 been noticed in AVest Africa, and " amongst the moun- 

 tain tribes known as the Miau-tsze, who are supposed to be 

 like the Sontals and Gonds of India, remnants of a race 

 driven into the mountains by the present dwellers of the 

 plains." " Another Asiatic people, recorded to have 

 practised the couvade, are the Tibareni of Pontus, at the 

 south of the Black Sea, among whom, when the child 

 was born, the father lay groaning in bed with his head 

 tied up, while the mother tended him with food and 

 prepared his baths." " In Europe the couvade may be 

 traced up from ancient into modern times in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Pyrenees. Above 1,800 years ago 

 Strabo mentions the story that, among the Iberians of 

 the north of Spain, the women, after the birth of a child, 

 tend their husbands, putting them to bed instead of 

 going themselves ; and this account is confirmed by the 

 evidence of the practice amongst the modern Basques. 

 In Biscay, says Michel, in valleys whose population 

 recalls in its usages the infancy of society, the women 

 rise immediately after childbirth and attend to the duties 

 of the household, while the husband goes to bed, taking 

 the baby with him, and thus receives the neighbours' 

 compliments." " It has been found also in Navarre, and 

 on the French side of the Pyrenees. Legrand d'Aussy 



