32 Conception, Birth and Infancy in 



a mother makes her first visit to church after her delivery, she 

 should have taken pains to eat a small amount of every sort of 

 food to prevent any of them from ever being harmful to her off- 

 spring and insure for it a robust health. Grapes alone are ex- 

 cluded from her diet, lest eating them should develop in them 

 both a tendency to get drunk. 149 



In pious homes of Italy an oil lamp of small size may be kept 

 near the lying-in woman as a sort of silent invocation to the Mother 

 of God to send her breasts a good supply of milk when the baby 

 comes. Nearby is also I'acqua panata, toast in water, of which she 

 takes a little every time she finds her misery too severe. 150 Then, 

 even in a matter of magic, something sensible may be done, al- 

 though the motive for it be quite foolish. Buttermilk curds, 

 ricotta, would seem to be wholesome food for a woman during her 

 time of lactation, but it is to its milky whiteness that the super- 

 stitious attribute a peculiar potency in bringing a full supply to 

 her breasts. 151 In other words, sympathetic magic should be 

 playing its role here as in so many other operations which may 

 seem to an untutored observer to be quite innocent of any oc- 

 cultism. Eating lettuce (lattuga) brings the milk (latte), not 

 merely because of the etymological connection between the Italian 

 words for the vegetable and the fluid, but because of the milky sap 

 of the plant. 152 If the mother's nipples swell or indurate, the arau- 

 letic cure is a comb of ivory: for is it not as white as milk? 153 



If disease attacks her breasts, a superstitious woman of Valdelsa 

 may turn to her experts in magic for a cure. They anoint them 

 with preparations of herbs and rub them, while they utter the 

 proper words of benediction. Any witch or warlock whom she 

 consults must be recompensed with presents, not paid with mon- 

 ey. 154 In some places we learn that the dung of a mouse, taken 

 in drink, has a good reputation as an agent to bring back milk to 

 breasts that have gone dry, 155 or, in order to achieve the same 

 result, a bit of the afterbirth may be boiled in her soup without 

 her knowing it. When the milk begins to come, it is well to take 

 the placenta to a stream and hide it under a stone, so that, while 

 no animal can find and eat it, the flowing of the water may insure 

 a free flow of the woman's lochia. 156 In some places, the after- 

 birth is buried under a fig tree so as to make certain that she shall 

 have plenty of milk for her infant: an unripe fig is milky. 157 If 



