PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 57 



and grandmother attributed his death partly to 

 bronchitis and partly to the fact that strict secrecy 

 had not been observed about the stolen food. They 

 had afterwards gone before the child's birth to the 

 butcher and paid him for the two sausages, telling him 

 the circumstances. He sympathised with them and 

 Mrs. G. added that he told them a similar story 

 about his own wife, or mother, she did not remember 

 which." l 



Eggs are naturally supposed to ensure pregnancy. 

 Probably it is for this cause that they are forbidden to 

 adolescent Eskimo girls in Baffin's Land. 2 Among 

 the Ruthenians a domestic hen is killed, and the small 

 unripe eggs found in her body are put into the vagina 

 of a barren woman. 3 A Gipsy husband will sometimes 

 take an egg and blow the contents into his wife's 

 mouth, she swallowing them, in order that she may 

 bear ; 4 or in Transylvania she will give him at full 

 moon the egg of a black hen to eat by himself. 5 



As might be expected, eggs like other objects 

 believed to produce fertility are prominent objects in 

 various parts of the world, especially the East, at 



1 My correspondent adds that another woman whom she knew, 

 a fairly well-educated woman whose husband was in business as a 

 trunk-maker, had twins at her first accouchement. " They were the 

 colour of scarlet, just like boiled lobsters." One of these twins 

 died ; the other as she grew up continued to have red marks on 

 her skin. Their mother attributed this condition to the lobsters 

 whereof she and her husband had partaken on their wedding night. 

 This would appear to show a similar belief, but in a somewhat later 

 stage exemplified in the old Prussian and other marriage-rites 

 already mentioned. 



2 Boas, Eskimo of Baffin's Land, in Bull. Am. Mus. xv. 1 6 1 . 



3 Kobert, 116. * Leland, Gip. Sore. 101. 

 5 von Wlislocki, Volksdicht. 314. 



