PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 75 



father and mother of the present race of mankind. 1 

 Portions of corpses are, in the opinion of many people, 

 as valuable for unfruitful women as the blood and 

 secretions of living persons. The Magyars not merely 

 use a dead man's bone as a magical phial : they also 

 hold that such a bone shaved into drink and given to a 

 woman will promote conception ; or if given to a man 

 they will enhance his potency. 2 Danubian Gipsies 

 are said to make, for protection from witchcraft, little 

 figures of men and brutes out of a sort of dough of 

 grafting wax taken from the trees in a graveyard, 

 mixed with the powdered hair and nails of a dead 

 child or maiden, and with ashes left after burning the 

 clothes of one who has died. The figures are dried in 

 the sun, and when required for use are ground into 

 powder. Taken in millet-pap in the increase of the 

 moon this powder accelerates conception. 3 Mr. Lane 

 records disgusting practices on the part of barren women 

 at Cairo. Near the place of execution there was a 

 table of stone where the body of every person who 

 was, in accordance with the usual mode of punishment, 

 beheaded is washed before burial. By the table was a 

 trough to receive the water. This trough was never 

 emptied ; and its contents were tainted with blood and 

 fetid. A woman who desired issue silently passed 

 under the stone table with the left foot foremost, and 

 then over it. After repeating this process seven 

 times she washed her face in the trough, and giving a 

 trifling sum of money to the old man and his wife who 

 kept the place, went silently away. Others, with like 



1 Southey, Commonpl. Bk. iv. 142 ; Featherman, Chiapo-Mar. 

 136. 2 von Wlislocki, Volkdeb. Mag. 77. 



von Wlislocki, Volksgl. Zig. 103. 



