PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 41 



ceremony is evidently an attempt to obtain by magical 

 means the productive virtue of the tree, and probably 

 was originally independent of the medicament. In 

 Friuli, when a bride is introduced into the nuptial 

 chamber her husband causes her to eat a slice of 

 quince. 1 In ancient Greece the bride and bridegroom 

 used to eat of a quince together. 2 



It is not irrelevant here to recall that European 

 children who are curious to know whence their little 

 brothers and sisters have come are often told that 

 they come from a tree or a plant. Thus, in England 

 they are said to come out of the parsley-bed or the 

 cabbage-bed ; in Belgium and in France they are 



not to lose her children the mother about to give birth puts an apple 

 on her head. According to a Midrash the Israelite mothers in 

 Egypt, before Moses, used to be delivered under the apple-trees to 

 avoid the persecutions of the infanticide King (Mel. viii. 267). This 

 practice is alluded to as still rife in the Song of Solomon, viii. 5. 

 The last sentence in the Magyar spell above makes allusion to the 

 reciprocal influence of the woman and the tree, when thus united. 

 This of course logically results from the union. In Swabia a 

 woman who is "in an interesting condition " for the first time 

 ought to eat of a tree which bears for the first time ; then both of 

 them will become very fruitful. To this, however, there is one 

 exception : if an apple be grafted on a whitethorn, and some of the 

 fruit be given to a pregnant woman to eat, she cannot bear (Meier, 

 Sagen, 476, 474). It is a saying at Pforzheim, "To make a nut- 

 tree bear, let a pregnant woman pick the first nuts " (Grimm, Teut. 

 Myth. 1802). The idea of reciprocal influence is very common in 

 folklore, and is the foundation of many magical practices (see ii. Leg. 

 Pers. passim). 



1 Ostermann, 348. 



* Plutarch, Solon, xx. Among the Manchus the bride and 

 bridegroom sit on a bed face to face. An offspring dumpling is then 

 brought in and handed to the bridegroom, who eats a mouthful. It 

 is next handed to the bride, who takes a small piece into her mouth 

 and afterwards spits it out, as an omen that the marriage will be 

 productive of a numerous offspring (F. L. i. 488). 



