68 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



until her stomach is so full that it will not hold 

 another drop. 1 



Masur women in the province of West Prussia make 

 use of the water which drips from a stallion's mouth after 

 he has drunk. Worse is said to be done in Algiers. 

 There when a woman has already had a child, but has 

 ceased for a long period to conceive, she must drink 

 sheep's urine, or water wherein wax from a donkey's 

 ear has been macerated. 2 Mr. Thomson, the traveller 

 among the Masai of Eastern Africa, had the reputation 

 of being a great lybon or medicine-man. He was 

 applied to by a wealthy old Masai and his wife for a 

 medicine to obtain children. He was requested to 

 spit on them, which, he says, " I did most vigorously 

 and liberally, my saliva being supposed to have 

 sovereign virtues/* 3 



A Transylvanian Gipsy woman is said to drink 

 water wherein her husband has cast hot coals, or, 

 better still, has spit, saying as she does so : " Where 

 I am flame, be thou the coals ! Where I am rain be 

 thou the water ! " * A South Slavonic woman holds a 

 wooden bowl of water near the fire on the hearth. 

 Her husband then strikes two firebrands together until 

 the sparks fly. Some of them fall into the bowl, and 

 she then drinks the water. 5 For Arab women the 

 third chapter of the Koran (which, among other things 



1 Mondain, 44. In South-eastern Africa a potion is given 

 instead of water to a childless Ronga woman. It is drunk mixed 

 with native beer, and she is required to take it for months. In 

 this case, however, the husband shares it (Junod, Baronga, 63). 



2 Ploss, Weib. i. 443, 431. 



3 Thomson, Masai Land, 287. 



4 Ploss, Weib, i. 443, citing von Wlislocki in general terms. 



5 Krauss, Sitte utid Branch, 531. 



