"I have demonstrated to my own abundant satisfaction that there is but one right, God-given way to beget and rear children, and I know that I am only one of many who can corroborate this testimony."
The following case of prenatal culture appeared in The Philosophical for October 5, 1895, above the signature of "John Allyn," who says:
"About forty years ago I was a neighbor of a young couple who had been recently married. They were of fair natural abilities, but not highly educated. The wife could play on the piano well and accompany it with her voice. The husband was a house-building contractor. Before their first child was born the wife was provided with instruments for drawing, and interested herself in their use and mathematical calculations connected with them. The child proved to be a boy, who took to architectural drawing as by instinct. With very little effort he became proficient, and is now employed at a high salary by the Southern Pacific Railroad as their architect.
"Some years later, before the second child was born, the mother interested herself with music with reference to the effect it would have on the unborn child. This child proved to be a girl, who is now an expert singer, finding ready employment in opera companies. Though not a star, she has a superior talent for music which enabled her to take advantages of musical training easily."
Beliefs of Primitive Peoples.—Whenever such cases happen, it is under the influence of some very strong emotion, during the period of gestation, arising from the action on the nervous system of the mother by an external object presented to the sight, the organ of which would seem to have an intimate association with the general muscular system. There is nothing to show that primitive peoples recognized the action of prenatal influence through the senses; but there is a very curious custom, which is so widespread at the present time that we may well suppose it to have been formerly almost universal, dependent upon the imagined effect of the eating of animal flesh. All primitive peoples believe that a man acquires physical or mental characteristics from animals of whose flesh he partakes. Cannibalism is closely connected with this notion, as the man who eats part of the body of a foe is thought to become endowed with the victim's courage, strength or other special quality. Probably the Mosaic regulations as to unclean animals, that is, animals unfit for food, was based on such an idea; and certainly the command to abstain from eating blood was thus connected; as we are told the blood is the life, and if so, then it must be the carrier of vital influences.
The custom above referred to, which is known to ethnologists as la couvade, or "hatching," supposes injurious action on the organism of the child of food eaten by its parents, as appears from the facts brought together by Dr. E. B. Tylor in his "Researches into the Early History of Mankind." The couvade usually has reference to the period immediately following the birth of a child; but among the native tribes of South America, where it is more extensively prevalent than elsewhere, it is observed while the child is still unborn. Thus, in Brazil, according to Von Martius, "A strict regimen is preserved before the birth; the man and the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of certain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits." The peculiarity of the couvade custom, and that which gives it its special interest, is the fact that it usually concerns the father and not the mother, as injury to the child is supposed to be due to the conduct of the former rather than of the latter. Thus, among the Land Dyaks of Borneo, "The husband, before the birth of his child, may do no work with a sharp instrument, except what is necessary for the farm; nor may he fire guns, nor strike animals, nor do any violent work, lest bad influences should affect the child; and after it is born the father is kept in seclusion indoors for several days, and dieted on rice and salt, to prevent not his own but his child's stomach from swelling."
Here food abstinence takes place after the birth of the child, but, according to Brett, in Guinea "Some of the Acawois and Caribi nations, when they have reason to expect an increase of their families consider themselves bound to abstain from certain kinds of meat, lest the expected child should, in some mysterious way, be injured by the partaking of it. The acouri (or agouti) is thus tabooed, lest, like that little animal, the child should be meager; the haimara, also, lest it should be blind—the outer coating of the eye of the fish suggesting film or cataract; the labba, lest the infant's mouth should protrude like the labba's, or lest it be spotted like the labba, which spots would ultimately become sores."
Another related case, of more recent observation, is that of the Motumotu of New Guinea, who say that after conception the mother must not eat sweet potato or taro, lest the head of the child grow out of proportion, and the father must not eat crocodile or several kinds of fish, lest the child's legs grow out of proportion. At Suan, a husband shuts himself up for some days after the birth of his first child, and will eat nothing.[65:A]
Various explanations of the custom of couvade have been offered, and probably C. Staniland Wake is right when he states that it is connected with the idea that the father is the real source of the child's life.[66:A] As he points out, on the authority of M. Girard-Teulon, among the European Basques, even at the present day, a husband enters his wife's abode only "for the purpose of reproduction, and to work for the benefit of his wife." Mr. Wake remarks that, "With some of the Brazilian tribes, when a man becomes a father he goes to bed instead of his wife, and all the women of the village come to console him for the pain and suffering he has had in making this child." This agrees with the idea entertained by so many peoples that the child is derived from the father only, the mother being merely its nourisher. When such an idea is held, it is not surprising if, as among the Abipones, the belief is formed that "the father's carelessness influences the new-born offspring, from a natural bond and sympathy of both," or if the father abstains, either before or after the child's birth, from eating any food, or performing any actions which are thought capable of doing it harm. Still more so, if the child is regarded, as is sometimes the case, as the reincarnation of the father, a notion which is supported by the fact, pointed out by Mr. Gerald Massey, that in the couvade the parent identifies himself with the infant child, into which he has been typically transformed.
That conclusion agrees with the opinion expressed by Mr. Tylor, that the couvade "implicitly denies that physical separation of 'individuals' which a civilized man would probably set down as a first principle common by nature to all mankind. . . . It shows us a number of distinct and distant tribes deliberately holding the opinion that the connection between father and child is not only, as we think, a mere relation of parentage, affection, duty, but that their very bodies are joined by a physical bond, so that what is done to the one acts directly upon the other."[67:A] The couvade custom is thus closely connected with the question of the special relationship of a child to one or other of its parents. Curious notions on this subject have been formed from time to time; but the ancients almost universally entertained the idea held by the Greeks that "the father, as endowed with creative power, was clothed with the divine character, but not the mother, who was only the bearer and nourisher of the child." Professor Hearn accepts this view in his work, "The Aryan Household," and suggests as the Aryan thought on the subject: "A male was the first founder of the house. His descendants have 'the nature of the same blood' as he. They, in common, possess the same mysterious principle of life. The life spark, so to speak, has been once kindled, and its identity, in all its transmissions, must be preserved. But the father is the life-giver. He alone transmits the life spark, which from his father he received. The daughter receives, indeed, the principle of life, but she cannot transmit it."
