PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 117 



for stabbing the demons, and are kept at Pemiongchi 

 monastery. Couples who desire children and can 

 afford the necessary expense, have a preliminary 

 worship conducted in the chapel of the monastery 

 lasting one or two days. " Then the box containing 

 the holy relics is brought forth and ceremoniously 

 opened, and each article is placed on the heads of the 

 suppliant pair, the officiating priest repeating mean- 

 while the charm of his own tutelary deity. Of the 

 marvellous efficacy of this procedure, numerous stories 

 are told." And should two sons result, one of them 

 would certainly be dedicated to the Church. 1 Here 

 the husband shares the rite. The Blackfeet, in 

 common with other North American tribes, attribute a 

 mystic power to the small whirlwinds which frequently 

 arise on the plains ; and with this belief the moth is 

 associated as the depositary or as the origin of the 

 power. "The medicine-men claim to use the power 

 of the moth in making childbirth easy, producing 

 abortion, preventing conception, &c. Sometimes if a 

 medicine-man wishes a woman to have children, he 

 prays to the power of the moth and slyly sits upon the 

 woman's blanket." Thus by his powerful touch he 

 evidently communicates impregnating virtue to her 

 clothing. While I am mentioning the Blackfeet, I 

 may add an example of their practices recalling 

 another mode of causing conception familiar in the 

 stones. "The image of a moth," we are told, <c is 

 sometimes worn on the head of a man in the belief 



1 Waddell, 51. A slipper of one of the goddesses worshipped 

 by Chinese women in the province of Kan-su to obtain children is 

 borrowed by the suppliant from her shrine and returned after 

 delivery. Presumably it is worn as an amulet, but the account I 

 cite is not explicit on this point (Anthropos, Hi. 763). 



