Its borders from the Amazons to the Plate, and among the
Abipones of Paraguay; it also exists or has existed among the aborigines
of California, in West Africa, in Bouro, one of the Moluccas, and among a
wandering tribe of the Telugu-speaking districts of Southern India.
According to Diodorus it prevailed in ancient Corsica, according to Strabo
among the Iberians of Northern Spain (where we have seen it has lingered
to recent times), according to Apollonius Rhodius among the Tibareni of
Pontus. Modified traces of a like practice, not carried to the same extent
of oddity, are also found in a variety of countries besides those that
have been named, as in Borneo, in Kamtchatka, and in Greenland. In nearly
all cases some particular diet, or abstinence from certain kinds of food
and drink, and from exertion, is prescribed to the father; in some, more
positive and trying penances are inflicted.
Butler had no doubt our Traveller's story in his head when he made the
widow in Hudibras allude in a ribald speech to the supposed fact
that
- "Chineses go to bed
And lie in, in their ladies' stead."
The custom is humorously introduced, as Pauthier has noticed, in the
Mediaeval Fabliau of Aucasin and Nicolete. Aucasin arriving at the
castle of Torelore asks for the king and is told he is in child-bed.
