54 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



put to bed, a dish of buck's, bull's, or bear's sweetbreads 

 was served to the wedded pair. 1 The corresponding 

 portion of a hare was prescribed in wine by our 

 Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the woman who desired 

 a son. "In order that a woman may kindle a male 

 child," a hare's intestines dried and sliced and rubbed 

 into a drink is also recommended in the leech-book to 

 be taken by both husband and wife. If the wife alone 

 drank it, she would produce an hermaphrodite. The 

 hare's magical reputation is well known ; nor are the 

 foregoing the only remedies from its flesh directed 

 in the same work for the same purpose. Four 

 drachms of female hare's rennet to the woman, and 

 the like quantity of male hare's to the man were to be 

 given in wine ; and after directing that the wife should 

 be dieted on mushrooms and forego her bath we are 

 told : "wonderfully she will bring forth " which we 

 shall not be inclined to dispute. In Fezzan a woman's 

 fruitfulness is said to be increased by the plentiful 

 enjoyment of the dried intestines of a young hare 

 that has never been suckled. The flesh of the 

 kangaroo, like the hare a swift animal, is held by the 

 Australian aborigines to cause fertility. 3 Hare's flesh, 

 especially the testicles, is esteemed a specific against 

 impotence and childlessness in Saxon Transylvania, 

 where also a fox's genital organs dried and rubbed to 



1 Schroder, 171, citing Hartknoch ; Ploss, Weib.'i. 445. Mele- 

 tius, arch-presbyter of the Ecclesia Liccensis in Prussia, however, 

 writing in the sixteenth century states that the sweetbreads are those 

 of a goat or a bear (F. L. xii. 300). Among the Istrian Slavs an 

 hour after the married pair retire a roast hen is served to them in 

 bed (Dr. F. Tetzner, Globus, xcii. 88). 



2 Sextus Placitus, Sax. Leechd. i. 347, 345. 



3 Ploss, Weib. i. 431, 432, citing Nachtigall and Junk. 



