ii2 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



We have seen that in the stories a woman is some- 

 times said to conceive by the foot. An Asturian 

 ballad ascribes to the borage the power to affect any 

 woman treading on it as it affected the unfortunate 

 Princess Alexandra. 1 In Brunswick a maiden who 

 treads on an egg-shell will become pregnant in 

 the same year. 2 This is a case in which magic has 

 weathered down to augury : originally we may presume 

 the maiden was believed to become pregnant at once 

 by the act of treading on an egg-shell. In Auvergne 

 a woman or girl becomes pregnant by setting foot on 

 a hedgehog in the fields, and at the end of nine months 

 gives birth to a large litter of hedgehogs. The village 

 gossips even yet speak of girls who have suffered from 

 this misfortune. In the Haute-Loire it is enough for 

 a woman at her monthly period to pass over a hedge- 

 hog hidden under the leaves to cause her to litter six 

 weeks later a whole basketful of young hedgehogs. 

 Probably, as M. S^billot observes, to this superstition 

 must be traced the term of abuse Jane d'eurson 

 (hedgehog brat) applied to children in the neighbour- 

 hood of Metz. 3 The mode of revenge adopted by a 

 rejected lover among the Sulka of new Pomerania is 

 to take a certain fruit and cut it open or bore a hole in 

 it and insert some lime over which an incantation has 

 been pronounced. Then he throws the fruit on a path 

 over which the woman will pass, generally dashing it 

 upon a hard object so that it will fall to pieces. If the 

 woman thereafter walking along the path happen to 



1 De Charencey, 230. 



2 Andree, Braunschw. Volksk. 291. On the other hand in Japan 

 women must not tread on egg-shells, otherwise child-birth will be 

 difficult, or they will get leucorrhoea (H. ten Kate, Globus, xc. 129). 



3 Rev. Trad. Pop. xii. 547 ; Sebillot, F. L. France, iii. 15. 



