yo PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



of nastiness is an extremely civilised feeling ; and 

 when we read of these things we must remember that 

 we ourselves are not very far removed from a date 

 when powder of mummy was one of the least objection- 

 able of the grosser remedies in our forefathers' pharma- 

 copoeia. We have already found that a Gipsy woman 

 will drink the water wherein her husband has spit. 

 What is the meaning of the expression " He is tbe 

 very spit of his father!'" current not only in England, 

 but also, according to the learned Liebrecht, in France, 

 Italy and Portugal, and alluded to by Voltaire and La 

 Fontaine, if it point not back to a similar, perhaps a 

 more repulsive ceremony formerly practised by the folk 

 all over Western Europe ? In Pomerania when a 

 women is barren it is recommended to give her 

 another woman's milk to drink. 1 In Olchowiec 

 (Russia), water containing three drops of blood from 

 the navel of a new-born child is given. Other women, 

 especially Jewesses, are said to suck blood from the 

 child's navel, and in doing so they should swallow 

 three times. 2 Ukrainian women drink water in which 

 a portion of an umbilical cord has been soaked. 3 An 

 immigrant Russian Jewess having given birth to a 

 child in the hospital at Boston, one of her neighbours, 

 a woman, asked to see the after-birth. In answer to 

 inquiries why she wished to see it, she said that she 

 had heard that to eat a placenta is a certain means of 

 curing sterility, and she wanted to try. 4 A Polish 

 woman, to get children, procures a small jar of the 

 blood of another woman at her first child-bearing, and 

 drinks it mixed with brandy. 5 Among some of the 



1 Am Urquell, v. 252. 2 Robert, 92. 3 Mel. viii. 38. 



* UAnthrop. ix. 240. * Am Urqnell, Hi. 147. 



