Ch. XX.] THE COUYADE. 369 



meaning; it had not fallen out of unison with their 

 mental state. Here we find, covering a vast compact 

 area of country, the mental stratum, so to speak, to 

 which the couvade most nearly belongs. But if we look 

 at its appearances across from China to Corsica the state 

 of things is widely different ; no theory of its origin can 

 be drawn from the Asiatic and European accounts to 

 compete for a moment with that which flows naturally 

 from the observations of the missionaries, who found it 

 not a mere dead custom, but a live growth of savage 

 psychology. The peoples, too, who have kept it up in 

 Asia and Europe seem to have been, not the great pro- 

 gressive, spreading, conquering, civilising nations of the 

 Aryan, Semitic, and Chinese stocks. It 'cannot be 



J 



ascribed even to the Tartars, for the Lapps, Finns, and 

 Hungarians appear to know nothing of it. It would 

 seem rather to have belonged to that ruder population, 

 or series of populations, whose fate it has been to be 

 driven by the great races out of the fruitful lands to 

 take refuge in mountains and deserts. The retainers of 

 the couvade in Asia are the Miau-tsze of China and the 

 savage Tibareni of Pontus. In Europe they are the 

 Basque race of the Pyrenees, whose peculiar manners, 

 appearance, and language, coupled with their geographical 

 position, favour the view that they are the remains of a 

 people driven westward and westward, by the pressure of 

 more powerful tribes, till they came to these last moun- 

 tains, with nothing but the Atlantic beyond. Of what 

 stock were the original barbarian inhabitants of Corsica 

 we do not know ; but their position, and the fact that 

 they, too, had the couvade, would suggest their having 

 been a branch of the same family who escaped their 



]J B 



