Further illustrations are hardly needed. The custom may be summed up in the words of Professor Hickson, describing what he observed in Minahassa, Celebes, where women enjoy an exceptionally high position: “It might seem also that the harta which is paid by the bridegroom for his bride is of a similar nature to the price paid for a slave, a beast of burden, or any other piece of property. The harta, however, should not be considered as a ‘price,’ it has rather the nature of a ‘compensation’ paid to the bride’s family for the loss of one of its working and child-producing members.”[397.3]
The subject of the ceremonies and institutions of marriage is one of profound interest. It has engrossed the attention of many anthropologists and filled many volumes. The sketch, therefore, that I have here attempted of only one aspect of the subject is obviously meagre and imperfect. Yet I venture to hope that I have succeeded in throwing some further light upon the savage conception of a kindred as an undivided entity—a conception which has survived in a more or less complete form into high planes of civilisation. Rites analogous to that of the blood-covenant are found not merely to bind together the individual husband and wife, but to unite the incoming member to the whole kindred. And although in the most archaic period whose remains are accessible to us it does not appear that these rites meant actual admission into the kin, their analogy easily lent itself to that construction as the organisation of society into clans drew closer and closer together, and especially as the patriarchal clan developed; and marriage at length came in many cases to operate as an actual severance from one kin and an entrance into another. The reason for the rights and privileges acquired by the whole kindred, alike whether marriage operated as a blood-covenant or not, is founded on, and springs directly from, the conception of the kin as one body whereof all the brethren were as literally members as the hand and the foot are members of the physical body of each man. To graft a new member upon such a body, or even to introduce a stranger into a special relation with a member of such a body, is to introduce him or her to a corresponding relation with all. Their rights may for the time be overridden by the paramount claim of the member for whose special behoof the stranger is introduced—a claim enforced often by strength, more often, perhaps, by custom; yet the moment the claim paramount is withdrawn, or suspended, the rights of the remaining members of the kindred arise and are capable of enforcement. They are sometimes also asserted on special occasions even against the claim paramount.
Society has developed, among almost all the higher races, into and through the patriarchal clan. Among many of the lower races who have not, when brought into contact with European culture, already thrown off their original social constitution, a marked tendency to develop in the same direction has been found. Consequently most of our illustrations have been drawn from a condition of things where the bride has been transferred to the bridegroom’s home and has entered into special relations with the bridegroom’s kin. Of the converse case many examples which might have been adduced are complicated by the developing patriarchalism. Inquiry into these complications would have necessitated a volume rather than a chapter. Hence I have been compelled to pass over many a problem not only interesting but important to solve. But wherever I have found it possible to deal within the limits at my command with the case of a bridegroom entering into special relations with the bride’s kin, the same general principles have been observed to govern it.
CHAPTER XV.
THE COUVADE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE STRENGTH OF THE BLOOD-TIE—CONCLUSION OF THE INQUIRY INTO THE THEORY OF THE LIFE-TOKEN.
In the last three chapters we have discussed some savage customs founded on the belief that the members of a kin are parts of an entire body and connected with one another by an indissoluble tie, so long as they remain members of that body and are not cut off by formal expulsion or renunciation, either with or without union to another similar body. Many other practices are derived from the same notion. I select a few of them for notice in the present chapter.
Prominent among them is the custom to which the name of the Couvade has been given: a name too deeply rooted now to be changed, albeit one founded on a mistake as to the use of the word and a limitation, untenable on scientific grounds, though inevitable in the then state of our knowledge, to certain remarkable developments of the usage. Dr. Tylor was the first to examine the custom in a critical manner. Since the publication of his Researches into the Early History of Mankind, it has been considered by numerous anthropologists, notably by Dr. Ploss, Dr. Wilken, Mr. im Thurn, and more recently by Dr. von Dargun and Mr. Ling Roth; while Dr. J. A. H. Murray in his letters to The Academy has once for all disposed of the evidence for its existence in modern Europe and for the use of the word by the Béarnese, or by any French writers of authority, as a technical term in describing the alleged Béarnese custom. Mr. Ling Roth’s comprehensive paper on the subject happily relieves me from the necessity of dealing with it at length here.[401.1]
The Couvade as generally explained is the custom which requires the father of a child, immediately after its birth, to lie-in as if he were a woman in childbed, while his wife, who has actually given birth to the babe, goes about her ordinary work, and of course waits upon her husband in his feigned sickness. But this definition is inadequate and misleading. In order to attain a true conception of the custom it is not enough to limit our observation to a small number of cases and in those cases to regard only the most prominent phenomena, because they strike us as the most ridiculous. We must clear our minds of the notion that the father takes the mother’s place, in the sense, at all events, that he is made to undergo the treatment she is entitled to, and at her expense. Whether from living a more active and open-air life than her more civilised sisters, or from physical causes more deeply seated, the ease with which a savage woman gives birth is much more like that of a wild beast. She will often deliver herself without aid; and, subject to the ceremonial rules of the tribe concerning uncleanness, in a very little time she is ready to return to her usual occupations. Simulation of her sufferings, not to say disregard of them, by the husband is therefore in most cases out of the question.
Moreover, the lying-in of the husband, so far as it can be so termed, is only part of a large number of observances, by which he is bound, in the more fully developed forms of the custom, from the moment his wife conceives, or occasionally before, until the child is able to speak, or to digest the usual food of the tribe; and in many of these observances both before and after childbirth the wife is included; while she on her part is bound by other observances of a similar character. Thus, Signor Modigliani, sojourning with a native of Nias whose wife was in “an interesting condition,” was the innocent cause of an amusing domestic squabble. For his host in leaving his room one day stepped across the traveller’s outspread legs. This was a serious matter, because it was apt to cause misfortune to the unborn child. The wife did not fail to remind her imprudent husband of his folly, and carried her anger to such a height that he was glad to flee from the blows administered by means of the firewood intended for the domestic hearth. Nor was the quarrel made up without a gift from the traveller of one of his bags of rice. While staying at the house Signor Modigliani frequently obtained from the natives by barter serpents for his collection; and this was a continual cause of difficulties to his host, who was divided between his curiosity and desire to assist at the transaction on the one side, and on the other his dread of the consequences of seeing a dead snake—consequences only to be averted by running away at once to find and burn a living one. At length, however, Signor Modigliani convinced him that it would be enough, when he found a snake, to seize it and simulate burning by passing it over a fire kindled for the purpose, and then to kill it in some other manner, as by suffocating it in alcohol for scientific purposes. Other acts too the Niasese father-expectant must avoid, as talking with Malays or Chinese, lest the child be unable to speak his own tongue, splitting a piece of wood or the atap-leaves wherewith the houses are roofed, lest the infant be born with harelip, eating of a pig found dead, lest the fœtus be born without attaining proper development, killing or cutting up chickens or pigs, lest the babe feel the wounds, eating of the great beetles of which the natives are very fond, lest the little one catch a cough. As reported by other travellers, both parents must abstain before the birth from some of these acts, as well as from passing over a spot where a man has been murdered, or a buffalo slain, or where a dog has been burnt for the purpose of giving effect to certain imprecations, else the child will be affected by the contortions of the dying man or beast. Nor dare they build a house, or thatch it, nor drive nails; and before breaking tobacco or siri it must be drawn out of the bag which contains it, or the babe cannot be born. They look in no mirror or bamboo-tube, lest the child squint. They eat no bujuwu (a kind of bird) or owl, lest he croak or whoop instead of speaking. They touch no monkey, lest the infant get eyes and forehead like a monkey’s. They enter no house where a corpse lies, else he will die. They eat of no pig killed for a funeral feast, lest he get the itch. They plant no pisang-trees, lest he suffer from ulcers. The consequence of eating a certain fish or striking a snake is indigestion to the child, of expressing or boiling-out oil is headache to him, of passing over a place struck by lightning is to make his body black, of firing a field for agricultural purposes, or throwing salt into the pig’s food, or of swearing, is sickness to him; and to eat out of the vessel in which the food is cooked is to cause the babe to adhere to the after-birth.[404.1]
This long list exhausts not the prohibitions in force on the island of Nias; but we may treat it as a sample not merely for that one island but for many other places, and pass on to a few instances of rules imposed at and after the time of delivery. On the Melanesian island of Saa, both before and after the birth, the father “will not eat pig’s flesh, and he abstains from movements which are believed to do harm, upon the principle that the father’s movements affect those of the child. A man will not do hard work; he keeps quiet lest the child should start, should overstrain itself, or should throw itself about as he paddles.” In the Banks’ Islands when the child is born both parents eat only what it could digest. “After the birth of the first child, the father does no heavy work for a month; after the birth of any of his children he takes care not to go into those sacred places into which the child could not go without risk.” In the New Hebrides “he does work in looking after his wife and child, but he must not eat shell-fish and other produce of the beach, for the infant would suffer from ulcers if he did. In Lepers’ Island the father is very careful for ten days; he does no work, will not climb a tree, or go far into the sea to bathe, for if he exert himself the child will suffer.”[404.2] Turning to the American continent, we will take the report of the latest traveller in the interior of Brazil, Dr. Karl von den Steinen. Here let it be noted that the father is so far from imitating childbed, that the mother is, all over South America, usually delivered on the ground, whereas the father lies in his hammock. So it is among the Schingù Indians visited by Dr. von den Steinen. Their opinion was that the father lay in the hammock because he was obliged to fast, and that he took care of the child because he was obliged to remain at home, while the mother went out to her work, rather than from any intention to simulate the natural conduct of the mother. The father it is who cuts the navel-string; and he is not a free man until the string falls off the child. By these and other American peoples fish, flesh and fruit are tabooed to the father expressly on the ground that for him to eat them is all one as if the babe itself ate them. Among the Ipurina he is forbidden to taste tapir-flesh or pork for a whole year. On the other hand, what very much astonished the worthy apothecary of the Brazilian military colony, the Bororó father, when his child is sick, is in the habit of himself taking the medicine provided for the patient. The Bororó father and mother eat nothing for two days after the birth; and on the third day they may only take warm water: if the father ate anything both he and the infant would sicken. The mother, though she attends to her work, must not bathe until her menstruation has returned. The Paressí parents remain in the hut for five days, until the navel-string falls off; and the father is only allowed to taste water mingled with beijú, otherwise the baby would die.[405.1] The humorous accounts of the practice among the Tamanacs and Abipones, quoted at length by Dr. Tylor from the Abate Gilij and the Jesuit missionary Dobrizhoffer, need only be referred to here to emphasise the reason given in both cases, namely, that the abstinence described is for the benefit of the offspring. To partake of certain food, to kill any animal, to sneeze, or to commit some other act, would injure the little one.
Readers who have followed the facts and arguments in the earlier chapters of this volume set forth will have no difficulty in arriving at the true interpretation of the usage. It is founded on the belief that the child is a part of the parent; and, just as even after apparent severance of hair or nails from the remainder of the body, the bulk is affected by anything which happens to the severed portion, so as well after as before the infant has been severed from the parent’s body, and in our eyes has acquired a distinct existence, he will be affected by whatever operates on the parent; and, conversely, the parent will feel whatever happens to him, as in some parts of England a mother absent for a while from her child is believed to feel her breasts painful when he cries.[406.1] The separation is only in appearance; the connection is preserved in spite of it. Hence whatever the parent ought for the child’s sake to do or avoid before severance it is equally necessary to do or avoid after. Gradually, however, as the infant grows and strengthens he becomes able to digest the same food as his parents, and to take part in the ordinary avocations of their lives. Precaution then may be relaxed, and ultimately remitted altogether. But the observance is attended with inconveniences. The parents’ labour is required in hunting, in agriculture, in warfare, in all the various ways in which the life of a household or of a tribe is maintained. The custom therefore is liable to gradual diminution. It is worn away slowly, and compressed into a shorter period. With the tardy and half-unconscious recognition of natural laws it loses bit by bit its importance, until it fades away into little more than a ceremony. In spite of decay, however, and indeed in consequence of it, it may acquire another significance; and among a few tribes, as, for example, the Mundurucus, it becomes “the legal form by which the father recognises the child as his.” This result would have the effect of renewing its vitality. The change of intention is rare, and where the custom is found in its fullest development it is unknown. Accordingly, I venture with all respect to think it is a mistake to see in this legal form the origin of the Couvade, as Dr. Tylor has done, plausible though the explanation seems. Its origin really lies deeper; it lies in the widely pervasive conception of life I have endeavoured to exhibit in these chapters on the Life-token.