ORIGIN OF DRUIDISM- — POKORNY. 591 



The couvacle, certainly a non-Indo-European custom, is also found 

 in the British Isles. In Ulster the couvade (men's childbed) was 

 customary in hoary antiquity, for the Book of Leinster relates that 

 when Queen Medb of Connaught marched with an army against 

 Ulster all the men were lying in bed incapable of fighting, with the ex- 

 ception of Cuchulains and his father. A pregnant woman had cursed 

 them so that once a year they should experience the pains of labor of 

 the women. 



In England, too, the custom of the couvade once existed-, for in 

 Yorkshire a the mother of a girl who has borne an illegitimate child 

 used to go out in search of its father, and the first man she finds in 

 bed is the one sought after. 



Even for the Iberians is the custom of men's childbed attested, and 

 it is still found among their descendants ( ?), the Basks. This makes 

 it probable that there was a connection between the aborigines of the 

 British Isles and the Iberians. This custom is also found in south- 

 ern India, China, Borneo, Kamchatka, Greenland, and among many 

 tribes of North and South America. Irish women before the birth of 

 a child often wear the coat of the husband in order that he share in 

 the pains of labor and thus relieve the wife. 



It has been seen that the race of the aborigines of the British Isles 

 was not exterminated by the conquering Celts. It is also certain that 

 it was not completely suppressed, but that the conquerors to a large 

 extent amalgamated with the subjugated. For even in the earliest 

 times there is not found in Ireland a servile plebe as in other coun- 

 tries conquered by the Indo-Europeans. There were there no castes, 

 only different social strata and a family could easily, by the acquisi- 

 tion of riches, rise from the lowest rank to the highest. There was 

 perhaps rather an infiltration of the Celts than a real conquest, 

 but the reason for it may perhaps be justly looked for in the great 

 beauty and the extraordinary charm of the women of the aborigines. 

 The beauty of the Celtic women is well known, also the fact that most 

 of them had black hair and dark eyes, which evidently points to a 

 non-Indo-European descent. 



Among no other people does woman play such a great role as among 

 the Celts. Their literature is the cult of women. No literature is so 

 rich in love stories as the Irish. 



It was pointed out that in the oldest hero songs of most nations women play 

 but a small part, excepting among the Germans with whom women always held 

 an important position. But the position of women in the Celtic tradition is 

 incomparably more important. The love of a man for an immortal or, at least, 

 semidivine maiden regularly recurs in the hero tales. Germans and Celts have 

 treated this subject but in a very different manner. In the tales of the Ger- 

 mans the man plays the chief part ; he woos the goddess and sometimes even 



x The Academy, vol. 25, p. 112. 



