PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 113 



tread on a piece of the fruit she will become pregnant, 

 and the pregnancy will be repeated so frequently that 

 she will die of it. 1 



Among the Kara Kirghiz a solitary apple-tree is 

 often regarded as sacred. Rolling or wallowing 

 beneath it in prayer seems a method approved among 

 the women for obtaining pregnancy. 2 In Japan it is 

 enough to squat down on the spot where a birth has 

 just taken place. 3 A Kwakiutl woman in British 

 Columbia is delivered sitting on the lap of a friend 

 over a pit or hole in the ground, into which the child 

 falls. When twins are thus born all the young women 

 go to the pit " and squat over it leaning on their 

 knuckles, because it is believed that after doing so 

 they will be sure to bear children." 4 In Saxony 

 about Chemnitz a table-cloth acquires prolific virtue by 

 serving at a first-christening-dinner ; and it is some- 

 times cast over a barren wife. 6 In the same way in 

 Italy a childless woman will borrow from a friend her 

 shift and wear it at the moment of coition. Dr. 



1 Father Rascher, Arch. Anthrop. N.S. i. 219. In a variant 

 ceremony when a girl who is undergoing her seclusion previous to 

 marriage is concerned, the man waits by the house in the first 

 quarter of the moon until she comes out of doors for recreation in 

 the moonlight. He then takes some lime, steps up to her and 

 blows it against her mouth. The result will be that after her 

 marriage she will bring forth monstrous births or become so often 

 pregnant that at last she will die. 



2 Radloff, v. 2. The apple-tree is a well-known symbol and 

 therefore cause of fecundity. Among the Southern Slavs the bride 

 is unveiled beneath an apple-tree and the veil is sometimes hung on 

 the tree (Krauss, Sitte und Branch, 450). In some parts of 

 England a fretful child is said to have come from under a crab-tree 

 (Addy, 144). 3 H. ten Kate, Globus, xv. 129. 



4 Boas, B. A. Rep. 1896, 575. 

 6 Grimm, Teut. Myth. 1795. 



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