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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
CHAP. L. CUSTOM OF THE " COUVADE"
91
4
that metal the under row . . . . it is sometimes indented to the shape of the teeth, but more usually quite plain. They do not remove it either to eat or sleep." The like custom is mentioned by old travellers at Macassar, and with the substitution of silver for gold by a modern traveller as existing in Timor ; but in both, probably, it was a practice of Malay tribes, as in Sumatra. (1MTarsden's Sumatra, 3rd ed., p. 52 ; fi a' Zes's Java, I. 105 ; Bick»zore's Ind. Archipelago.)
[In his second volume of The River of Golden Sand, Captain Gill has two chapters (viii. and ix.) with the title : In the footsteps of Marco Polo and of Augustus Marrary devoted to The Land of the Gold-Teeth and The Marches of the Kingdom of Mien.—H. C.]
No'i'E 3. —This is precisely the account which Lieutenant Garnier gives of the people of Laos : " The Laos people are very indolent, and when they are not rich enough to possess slaves they make over to their women the greatest part of the business of the day ; and 'tis these latter who not only do all the work of the house, but who husk the rice, work in the fields, and paddle the canoes. Hunting and fishing are almost the only occupations which pertain exclusively to the stronger sex." (Notice sur le Voyage d'Exploration, etc., p. 34.)
NOTE 4.—This highly eccentric practice has been ably illustrated and explained
by Mr. Tylor, under the name of the Couvade, or " Hatching," by " hich it is known in sonic of the Béarn districts of the Pyrenees, where it formerly existed, as it does still or did recently, in some Basque districts of Spain. [In a paper on La Couvade chez les Basques, published in the République Française, of 19th January, 1877, and reprinted in Etudes de Linguistique et a'Etlznographie par A. Ilovelacque et Julien Vinson, Paris, 1878, Prof. Vinson quotes the following curious passage from the poem in ten cantos, 1_uciniade, by Sacombe, of Carcassonne (Paris and Nîmes, 1790) :
" En Amérique, en Corse, et chez l'Ibérien, En France même encor chez le Vénarnien,
Au pays Navarrois, lorsqu'une femme accouche,
L'épouse sort du lit et le mari se couche ;
Et, quoiqu'il soit très sain et d'esprit et de corps,
Contre un mal qu'il n'a point l'art unit ses efforts.
On le met au régime, et notre faux malade, Soigné par l'accouchée, en son lit fait couvade :
On ferme avec grand soin portes, volets, rideaux ;
Immobile, on l'oblige á rester sur le dos, Pour étouffer son lait, qui gêné dans sa course, Pourrait en l'étouffant remonter vers sa source. Un mari, dans sa couche, au médecin soumis, Reçoit, en cet état, parents, voisins, amis, Qui viennent l'exhorter á prendre patience Et font des voeux au ciel pour sa convalescence."
Professor Vinson, who is an authority on the subject, cornes to the conclusion that it is not possible to ascribe to the Basques the custom of the couvade.
Mr. Tylor writes to me that he " did not quite begin the use of this good French word in the sense of the ` man-child-bed' as they call it in Germany. It occurs in Rochefort, Iles Antilles, and though Dr. Murray, of the English Dictionary, maintains that it is spurious, if so, it is better than any genuine word I know of."—H. C.] " In certain valleys of Biscay," says Francisque-Michel, " in which the popular usages carry us back to the infancy of society, the woman immediately after her delivery gets up and attends to the cares of the household, whilst the husband takes to bed with the tender fledgeling in his arms, and so receives the compliments of his neighbours."
The nearest people to the Zardandan of whom I find this custom elsewhere
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