PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 147 



awhile she goes back to the cave, puts the doll under 

 her girdle, and shortly afterwards is supposed to be 

 pregnant." 1 About Behring Strait a barren Eskimo 



v woman consults a shaman who makes or gets the 

 husband to make a small doll, over which he performs 

 certain secret rites, and the woman is directed to sleep 



-with it under her pillow. 2 On the other side of the 

 strait Chukchi girls play with dolls. Some of these 

 dolls are charms to procure fertility for their owners. 

 They "pass from mother to daughter, and are kept 



.carefully patched and mended so as to last for an 



.indefinite time. The bride brings this doll to her new 

 house and keeps it in her bag. In due time she gives 

 it to her oldest daughter to play with and to keep. 

 When other daughters are born a little stuffing is 

 taken out of the hereditary doll and put into a new one, 

 which is then supposed to possess all the qualities of 

 the first doll. Dolls of this kind are usually shaped 

 like new-born babies. Incantations are recited over 

 them by each generation, so that their force is supposed 

 to increase continually. 7 ' 3 In Japan when a marriage 

 is unfruitful a ceremony called kasedori is performed. 

 The old women of the neighbourhood come to the 

 house on the festival of Sahe no Kami, the phallic 

 god, which is held on the first full moon of the year, 

 and there go through the form of delivering the wife 

 of a child. The infant is represented by a doll. 4 

 A Chinese woman goes further : she adopts a little 

 girl to produce conception a practice for which an 



1 Lumholtz, Mem. Am. Mus. N. H. Anthrop. ii. 52. 



2 Rep. Bur. Ethn. xviii. 435. There is said to be a similar 

 practice in New Caledonia (Saintyves, Les Vierges Meres, 61). 



3 Bogoras, Jesup Exped. vii. 367. 4 Aston, Shinto, 331. 



