

PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 125 



In various parts of France contact is practised both 

 with statues and with unshapen stones. A few cases 

 may be mentioned out of a large number. I have 

 already referred to the rites of Saint Guerlichon. 1 

 Formerly in a chapel near Pleubian, on the day of the 

 annual celebration commonly called in Brittany the 

 Pardon, a worm-eaten figure of Saint Nicholas hung 

 at the end of a cord from a beam. The peasant 

 women in turn used to take up their skirts and rub 

 their bare abdomens against the fertilising fetish. 2 In 

 the Pyrenees near Bourg d'Oueil is a rough stone 

 figure of a man about five feet high on which barren 

 women rub themselves, embracing and kissing it. 3 

 At Brignolles in Provence is a sacred well on the 

 northern wall of which is a stele with a coarsely carven 

 figure of a man, now half-effaced by time and wear. 

 This figure is known by the name of Saint Sumian ; 

 and a small circular cup-marking two centimetres in 

 diameter near the appropriate position is called the 

 saint's navel. Sterile women who desire children and 

 young people who want to be married embrace the 

 saint's navel, and thereby attain their wishes. 4 In 

 order to become mothers women ceremonially go three 

 times round a pillar in the chapel of Orcival in Puy de 

 Dome and then rub themselves against it. 5 At the 

 Cathedral of Mende is the clapper of a bell 2.30 metres 

 in height and i.io in circumference. It was formerly 



which if a Hupa woman sits she will be cured of barrenness 

 (Goddard, Hupa Texts, 280). Here nothing is said of the shape of 

 the stone. 



1 Supra, p. 63. 2 Sebillot, F. L. France, iv. 169. 



3 Ploss, Weib, i. 444 ; Cuzacq, in. 



4 Berenger-Feraud, Superst. i. 413. 

 6 Sebillot, F. L. France, iv. 158. 



