228 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



hut. 1 In Russia the peasants bury a still-born child 

 under the floor. 2 The Chinese of the province of 

 Kan-su cut it in pieces and bury it, in the belief that 

 a boy will be born in a month afterwards. 3 The 

 Southern Slavs in burying a babe lift the little coffin 

 thrice out of the grave and lay it down again. The 

 cover of the coffin is never fastened at the head and 

 feet of the corpse, because it is believed that if it were 

 the mother would never bear again, or if she did the 

 next birth would be very difficult. 4 This alternative is 

 probably late ; and both the former alternative and the 

 ceremony of lifting the coffin thrice from the grave 

 point to a belief in the child's return. The ancient 

 Italians like the peoples of India forbore to burn the 

 dead bodies of young children. They were buried 

 under the eaves of the house. 5 Recent excavations in 

 Palestine have discovered beneath the floors of temples 

 numerous remains of newborn children buried in large 

 jars. Dr. Frazer has probably with justice interpreted 

 these not as the remains of sacrifice, but as deposits in 

 the precincts of a god regarded as above all the source 

 of fertility, laid there " in the hope that quickened by 

 divine power they might enter again into the mother's 

 womb and again be born into the world." 6 Among 

 the northern Maidu of California a stillborn child must 

 not be buried face downwards, else the mother will 



i Census of India, 1901, iii. 65. 2 Ralston, Songs, 136. 



a Anthropos, iii. 764. 



4 Krauss, Sitte und Branch, 545. 



6 Pliny, vii. 15. See also Dieterich's observations, Mutter 

 Erde, 21. 



6 Frazer, Adonis, 82. A similar custom to that under discussion 

 probably accounts for the absence of children's remains in prehistoric 

 burial-places that has puzzled the veteran antiquary Canon Greenwell 

 (Archceologia, Ix. 306). 



