PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 63 



efficaciously in curing women from sterility. In fact, 1 ' 

 says Dr. De Groot, "as those substances may instil 

 life into such creatures, they cannot fail to intensify 

 also their life-producing power. They lengthen of 

 course the life of whomsoever takes them. They pass 

 for mystic products of mounts which contain jade. 

 The belief in their reality rests merely on some hazy 

 passages " of old authors. 1 It was a classical super- 

 stition that mice were impregnated by tasting salt ; 2 

 and the reader need hardly be reminded of the salted 

 ball of rice in the ceremony already referred to as per- 

 formed by Hindu women. Not long ago, "in the 

 Beaujolais, women afflicted with sterility scraped a 

 stone placed in an isolated chapel in the middle of the 

 prairies. At St. Sernin des Bois (Saone-et-Loire), 

 they scraped the statue of St. Freluchot," and swallowed 

 the scrapings in water from a neighbouring well. 

 This was the practice in divers parts of France with 

 regard to the statues of a saint variously called 

 Foutin, Photin or Foustin. The saint in question is 

 not in the official calendar, though he has doubtless 

 received popular reverence from ancient times. To 

 him were attributed all the prerogatives of the heathen 

 deity Priapus ; and it was from those portions of his 

 statues which indicated his powers that his devotees 

 obtained the necessary powder. At Bourg-Dieu in 

 the diocese of Bourges a similar saint was called 

 Guerlichon or Greluchon. There after nine days' 

 devotions women stretched themselves on the hori- 

 zontal figure of the saint and then scraped the phallus 

 for mixture in water as a drink. Other saints were 

 worshipped elsewhere in France with equivalent rites 

 1 De Groot, Rel. Syst. iv. 330. * Pliny, Nat. Hist. x. 85. 



