130 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



in Bede's chair, still preserved in the church. 1 Near 

 Verdun in Luxemburg Saint Lucia's armchair is to be 

 seen in the living rock. There also childless women 

 sit and pray, afterwards awaiting with confidence the 

 fulfilment of their petitions. At Athens there is a rock 

 near the Callirrhoe whereon women who wish to be 

 made fruitful rub themselves, calling on the Moirai to 

 be gracious to them. And Bernhardt Schmidt writing 

 on the subject recalls that not far from that very spot the 

 heavenly Aphrodite was honoured in ancient times as 

 the Eldest of the Fates. 2 At the foot of another hill 

 is a seat cut in the rock on the banks of a stream. 

 There the Athenian women were wont to sit and let 

 themselves slip on the back into the brook, calling on 

 Apollo for an easy delivery. The stone is black and 

 polished with the constant repetition of these invoca- 

 tions ; for still on a clear moonlight night young 

 women steal silently to the spot to indulge in the same 

 exercise, though we may presume their invocations 

 are nominally addressed to some other divinity. 3 



At Tunis the Marabout of Sidi Fathallah is the scene 

 of similar or even more complex performances. For 

 it is necessary for a woman who desires children to 

 slide no fewer than twenty-five times down a stone five 

 or six metres long which is held to be the saint's grave, 

 namely, five times on her face, five times on her back, 



1 Denham Tracts^ i. 109, no. Cf. the chair of Saint Fiacre and 

 the stone of Saint Nicholas mentioned by M. Sebillot, F. L. France, 

 iv. 159. Ploss, Weib, i. 436. 



3 Berenger-Feraud, Trad. 201, quoting Yemenier in the Revue du 

 Lyonnais, 1842. Some of the exercises at stones and other sacred 

 objects in France are said to have for object an easy delivery. The 

 connection between this and the prayer for children is too obvious 

 to be insisted on. As to the rites practised on the island of Cyprus, 

 sec Hogarih,^4 Wandering Scholar in the Levant ( London, 1896), 179. 



