It in his arms for a whole month, not once going out of doors.
The wife in the mean time does all the work in doors and out, and provides
and serves up both food and drink for the husband, she only giving suck to
the child." I am informed also that, among the Miris on the Upper Assam
border, the husband on such occasions confines himself strictly to the
house for forty days after the event.
The custom of the Couvade has especially and widely prevailed in South
America, not only among the Carib races of Guiana, of the Spanish Main,
and (where still surviving) of the West Indies, but among many tribes of
Brazil and 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. Where
then is his wife? She is gone to the wars and has taken all the people
with her. Aucasin, greatly astonished, enters the palace, and wanders
through it till he comes to the chamber where the king lay: -
"En le canbre entre Aucasins
Li cortois et li gentis;
Il est venus dusqu'au lit
Alec u li Rois se gist.
Pardevant lui s'arestit
Si parla, Oes que dist;
Diva fau, que fais-tu ci?
Dist le Rois, Je gis d'un fil,
Quant mes mois sera complis,
Et ge serai bien garis,
Dont irai le messe oir
Si comme mes ancessor fist," etc.
Aucasin pulls all the clothes off him, and cudgels him soundly, making him
promise that never a man shall lie in again in his country.
This strange custom, if it were unique, would look like a coarse practical
joke, but appearing as it does among so many different races and in every
quarter of the world, it must have its root somewhere deep in the
psychology of the uncivilised man.
