The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 14

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 coa.r.s.e 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. I must refer to Mr. Tylor's interesting remarks on the rationale of the custom, for they do not bear abridgment.

Professor Max Muller humorously suggests that "the treatment which a husband receives among ourselves at the time of his wife's confinement, not only from mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, and other female relations, but from nurses, and from every consequential maid-servant in the house,"

is but a "survival," as Mr. Tylor would call it, of the _couvade_; or at least represents the same feeling which among those many uncivilised nations thus drove the husband to his bed, and sometimes (as among the Caribs) put him when there to systematic torture.

(_Tylor Researches_, 288-296; _Michel, Le Pays Basque_, p. 201; _Sketches of the Meau-tsze_, transl. by _Bridgman_ in _J. of North China Br. of R. As. Soc._, p. 277; _Hudibras_, Pt. III., canto I. 707; _Fabliaus et Contes par Barbazan, ed. Meon_, I. 408-409; _Indian Antiq._ III. 151; _Muller's Chips_, II. 227 seqq.; many other references in TYLOR, and in a capital monograph by Dr. H.H. Ploss of Leipzig, received during revision of this sheet: '_Das Mannerkindbett_.' What a notable example of the German power of compounding is that t.i.tle!)

[This custom seems to be considered generally as a survival of the matriarchate in a society with a patriarchal regime. We may add to the list of authorities on this subject: _E. Westermarck, Hist. of Human Marriage_, 106, seqq.; _G. A. Wilken, De Couvade bij de Volken v.d.

Indischen Archipel, Bijdr. Ind. Inst._, 5th ser., iv. p. 250. Dr. Ernest Martin, late physician of the French Legation at Peking, in an article on _La Couvade en Chine_ (_Revue Scientifique_, 24th March, 1894), gave a drawing representing the couvade from a sketch by a native artist.

In the _China Review_ (XI. pp. 401-402), "Lao Kw.a.n.g-tung" notes these interesting facts: "The Chinese believe that certain actions performed by the husband during the pregnancy of his wife will affect the child. If a dish of food on the table is raised by putting another dish, or anything else below it, it is not considered proper for a husband, who is expecting the birth of a child, to partake of it, for fear the two dishes should cause the child to have two tongues. It is extraordinary that the caution thus exercised by the Chinese has not prevented many of them from being double-tongued. This result, it is supposed, however, will only happen if the food so raised is eaten in the house in which the future mother happens to be. It is thought that the pasting up of the red papers containing ant.i.thetical and felicitous sentences on them, as at New Year's time, by a man under similar circ.u.mstances, and this whether the future mother sees the action performed or not, will cause the child to have red marks on the face or any part of the body. The causes producing _naevi materni_ have probably been the origin of such marks, rather than the idea entertained by the Chinese that the father, having performed an action by some occult mode, influences the child yet unborn. A case is said to have occurred in which ill effects were obviated, or rather obliterated, by the red papers being torn down, after the birth of the infant, and soaked in water, when as the red disappeared from the paper, so the child's face a.s.sumed a natural hue. Lord Avebury also speaks of _la couvade_ as existing among the Chinese of West Yun-Nan. (_Origin of Civilisation and Primitive Condition of Man_, p. 18)."

Dr. J.A.H. Murray, editor of the _New English Dictionary_, wrote, in _The Academy_, of 29th October, 1892, a letter with the heading of _Couvade, The Genesis of an Anthropological Term_, which elicited an answer from Dr. E.B. Tylor (_Academy_, 5th November): "Wanting a general term for such customs," writes Dr. Tylor, "and finding statements in books that this male lying-in lasted on till modern times, in the south of France, and was there called _couvade_, that is brooding or hatching (_couver_), I adopted this word for the set of customs, and it has since become established in English." The discussion was carried on in _The Academy_, 12th and 19th November, 10th and 17th December; Mr. A.L. Mayhew wrote (12th November): "There is no doubt whatever that Dr. Tylor and Professor Max Muller (in a review of Dr. Tylor's book) share the glory of having given a new technical sense to an old provincial French word, and of seeing it accepted in France, and safely enshrined in the great Dictionary of Littre."

Now as to the origin of the word; we have seen above that Rochefort was the first to use the expression _faire la couvade_. This author, or at least the author (see _Barbier, Ouvrages anonymes_) of the _Histoire naturelle ... des Iles Antilles_, which was published for the first time at Rotterdam, in 1658, 4to., writes: "C'est qu'au meme tems que la femme est delivree le mary se met au lit, pour s'y plaindre et y faire l'acouchee: coutume, qui bien que Sauvage et ridicule, se trouve neantmoins a ce que l'on dit, parmy les paysans d'vne certaine Province de France. Et ils appellent cela _faire la couvade_. Mais ce qui est de facheus pour le pauvre Carabe, qui s'est mis au lit au lieu de l'acouchee, c'est qu'on luy fait faire diete dix on douze jours de suite, ne luy donnant rien par jour qu'vn pet.i.t morceau de Ca.s.save, et un peu d'eau dans la quelle on a aussi fait bouillir un peu de ce pain de racine.... Mais ils ne font ce grand jeusne qu'a la naissance de leur premier enfant ..." (II. pp. 607-608).

Lafitau (_Maeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains_, I. pp. 49-50) says on the authority of Rochefort: "Je la trouve chez les Iberiens ou les premiers Peuples d'Espagne ... elle est aujourd'hui dans quelques unes de nos Provinces d'Espagne."

The word _couvade_, forgotten in the sense of lying-in bed, recalled by Sacombe, has been renovated in a happy manner by Dr. Tylor.

As to the custom itself, there can be no doubt of its existence, in spite of some denials. Dr. Tylor, in the third edition of his valuable _Early History of Mankind_, published in 1878 (Murray), since the last edition of _The Book of Ser Marco Polo_, has added (pp. 291 seqq.) many more proofs to support what he had already said on the subject.

There may be some strong doubts as to the _couvade_ in the south of France, and the authors who speak of it in Bearn and the Basque Countries seem to have copied one another, but there is not the slightest doubt of its having been and of its being actually practised in South America.

There is a very curious account of it in the _Voyage dans le Nord du Bresil_ made by Father Yves d'Evreux in 1613 and 1614 (see pp. 88-89 of the reprint, Paris, 1864, and the note of the learned Ferdinand Denis, pp.

411-412). Compare with _Durch Central-Brasilien ... im Jahre_ 1884 _von K.v. den Steinen_. But the following extract from _Among the Indians of Guiana_.... _By Everard im Thurn_ (1883), will settle, I think, the question:

"Turning from the story of the day to the story of the life, we may begin at the beginning, that is, at the birth of the children. And here, at once, we meet with, perhaps, the most curious point in the habits of the Indians; the _couvade_ or male child-bed. This custom, which is common to the uncivilized people of many parts of the world, is probably among the strangest ever invented by the human brain. Even before the child is born, the father abstains for a time from certain kinds of animal food. The woman works as usual up to a few hours before the birth of the child. At last she retires alone, or accompanied only by some other women, to the forest, where she ties up her hammock; and then the child is born. Then in a few hours--often less than a day--the woman, who, like all women living in a very unartificial condition, suffers but little, gets up and resumes her ordinary work. According to Schomburgk, the mother, at any rate among the Macusis, remains in her hammock for some time, and the father hangs his hammock, and lies in it, by her side; but in all cases where the matter came under my notice, the mother left her hammock almost at once.

In any case, no sooner is the child born than the father takes to his hammock and, abstaining from every sort of work, from meat and all other food, except weak gruel of ca.s.sava meal, from smoking, from washing himself, and, above all, from touching weapons of any sort, is nursed and cared for by all the women of the place. One other regulation, mentioned by Schomburgk, is certainly quaint; the interesting father may not scratch himself with his finger-nails, but he may use for this purpose a splinter, specially provided, from the mid-rib of a c.o.kerite palm. This continues for many days, and sometimes even weeks. _Couvade_ is such a wide-spread inst.i.tution, that I had often read and wondered at it; but it was not until I saw it practised around me, and found that I was often suddenly deprived of the services of my best hunters or boat-hands, by the necessity which they felt, and which nothing could persuade them to disregard, of observing _couvade_, that I realized its full strangeness.

No satisfactory explanation of its origin seems attainable. It appears based on a belief in the existence of a mysterious connection between the child and its father-far closer than that which exists between the child and its mother,--and of such a nature that if the father infringes any of the rules of the _couvade_, for a time after the birth of the child, the latter suffers. For instance, if he eats the flesh of a water-haas (_Capybara_), a large rodent with very protruding teeth, the teeth of the child will grow as those of the animal; or if he eats the flesh of the spotted-skinned labba, the child's skin will become spotted. Apparently there is also some idea that for the father to eat strong food, to wash, to smoke, or to handle weapons, would have the same result as if the new-born babe ate such food, washed, smoked, or played with edged tools"

(pp. 217-219.)

I have to thank Dr. Edward B. Tylor for the valuable notes he kindly sent me.--H.C.]

NOTE 5.--"The abundance of gold in Yun-nan is proverbial in China, so that if a man lives very extravagantly they ask if his father is governor of Yun-nan." (_Martini_, p. 140.)

Polo has told us that in Eastern Yun-nan the exchange was 8 of silver for one of gold (ch. xlviii.); in the Western division of the province 6 of silver for one of gold (ch. xlix.); and now, still nearer the borders of Ava, only 5 of silver for one of gold. Such discrepancies within 15 days'

journey would be inconceivable, but that in both the latter instances at least he appears to speak of the rates at which the gold was purchased from secluded, ignorant, and uncivilised tribes. It is difficult to reconcile with other facts the reason which he a.s.signs for the high value put on silver at Vochan, viz., that there was no silver-mine within five months' journey. In later days, at least, Martini speaks of many silver-mines in Yun-nan, and the "Great Silver Mine" (_Bau-dwen gyi_ of the Burmese) or group of mines, which affords a chief supply to Burma in modern times, is not far from the territory of our Traveller's Zardandan.

Garnier's map shows several argentiferous sites in the Valley of the Lan-t'sang.

In another work[3] I have remarked at some length on the relative values of gold and silver about this time. In Western Europe these seem to have been as 12 to 1, and I have shown grounds for believing that in India, and generally over civilised Asia, the ratio was 10 to 1. In Pauthier's extracts from the _Yuen-shi_ or Annals of the Mongol Dynasty, there is an incidental but precise confirmation of this, of which I was not then aware. This states (p. 321) that on the issue of the paper currency of 1287 the official instructions to the local treasuries were to issue notes of the nominal value of two strings, i.e. 2000 _wen_ or cash, for every ounce of flowered silver, and 20,000 cash for every ounce of gold. Ten to 1 must have continued to be the relation in China down to about the end of the 17th century if we may believe Lecomte; but when Milburne states the same value in the beginning of the 19th he must have fallen into some great error. In 1781 Sonnerat tells us that _formerly_ gold had been exported from China with a profit of 25 per cent., but at that time a profit of 18 to 20 per cent, was made by _importing_ it. At present[4]

the relative values are about the same as in Europe, viz. 1 to 15-1/2 or 1 to 16; but in Canton, in 1844, they were 1 to 17; and Timkowski states that at Peking in 1821 the finest gold was valued at 18 to 1. And as regards the precise territory of which this chapter speaks I find in Lieutenant Bower's Commercial Report on Sladen's Mission that the price of pure gold at Momein in 1868 was 13 times its weight in silver (p. 122); whilst M. Garnier mentions that the exchange at Ta-li in 1869 was 12 to 1 (I. 522).

Does not Shakspeare indicate at least a memory of 10 to 1 as the traditional relation of gold to silver when he makes the Prince of Morocco, balancing over Portia's caskets, argue:

"Or shall I think in silver she's immured, Being ten times undervalued to tried gold?

O sinful thought."

In j.a.pan, at the time trade was opened, we know from Sir R. Alc.o.c.k's work the extraordinary fact that the proportionate value set upon gold and silver currency by authority was as 3 to 1.

(_Cathay_, etc., p. ccl. and p. 442; _Lecomte_, II. 91; _Milburne's Oriental Commerce_, II. 510; _Sonnerat_, II. 17; _Hedde, Etude, Pratique_, etc., p. 14; _Williams, Chinese Commercial Guide_, p. 129; _Timkowski_, II. 202; _Alc.o.c.k_, I. 281; II. 411, etc.)

NOTE 6.--Mr. Lay cites from a Chinese authority a notice of a tribe of "Western Miautsze," who "in the middle of autumn sacrifice to the Great Ancestor or Founder of their Race." (_The Chinese as they are_, p. 321.)

NOTE 7.--Dr. Anderson confirms the depressing and unhealthy character of the summer climate at Momein, though standing between 5000 and 6000 feet above the sea (p. 41).

NOTE 8.--"Whereas before," says Jack Cade to Lord Say, "our forefathers had no books but score and tally, thou hast caused printing to be used."

The use of such tallies for the record of contracts among the aboriginal tribes of Kweichau is mentioned by Chinese authorities, and the French missionaries of Bonga speak of the same as in use among the simple tribes in that vicinity. But, as Marsden notes, the use of such rude records was to be found in his day in higher places and much nearer home. They continued to be employed as records of receipts in the British Exchequer till 1834, "and it is worthy of recollection that the fire by which the Houses of Parliament were destroyed was supposed to have originated in the over-heating of the flues in which the discarded tallies were being burnt." I remember often, when a child, to have seen the tallies of the colliers in Scotland, and possibly among that cla.s.s they may survive. They appear to be still used by bakers in various parts of England and France, in the Canterbury hop-gardens, and locally in some other trades.

(_Martini_, 135; _Bridgman_, 259, 262; _Eng. Cyclop._ sub v. _Tally; Notes and Queries_, 1st ser. X. 485.)

[According to Father Crabouillet (_Missions Cath._ 1873, p. 105), the Lolos use tallies for their contracts; Dr. Harmand mentions (_Tour du Monde_, 1877, No. VII.) the same fact among the Khas of Central Laos; and M. Pierre Lefevre-Pontalis _Populations du nord de l'Indo-Chine_, 1892, p. 22, from the _J. As._ says he saw these tallies among the Khas of Luang-Prabang.--H.C.]

"In Ill.u.s.tration of this custom I have to relate what follows. In the year 1863 the Tsaubwa (or Prince) of a Shan Province adjoining Yun-nan was in rebellion against the Burmese Government. He wished to enter into communication with the British Government. He sent a messenger to a British Officer with a letter tendering his allegiance, and accompanying this letter was a piece of bamboo about five inches long. This had been split down the middle, so that the two pieces fitted closely together, forming a tube in the original shape of the bamboo. A notch at one end included the edges of both pieces, showing that they were a pair. The messenger said that if the reply were favourable one of the pieces was to be returned and the other kept. I need hardly say the messenger received no written reply, and both pieces of bamboo were retained." (_MS. Note by Sir Arthur Phayre_.)

NOTE 9.--Compare Mr. Hodgson's account of the sub-Himalayan Bodos and Dhimals: "All diseases are ascribed to supernatural agency. The sick man is supposed to be possessed by one of the deities, who racks him with pain as a punishment for impiety or neglect of the G.o.d in question. Hence not the mediciner, but the exorcist, is summoned to the sick man's aid."

(_J.A.S.B._ XVIII. 728.)

NOTE 10.--Mr. Hodgson again: "Libations of fermented liquor always accompany sacrifice--because, to confess the whole truth, sacrifice and feast are commutable words, and feasts need to be crowned with copious potations." (Ibid.)

NOTE 11.--And again: "The G.o.d in question is asked what sacrifice he requires? a buffalo, a hog, a fowl, or a duck, to spare the sufferer; ...

anxious as I am fully to ill.u.s.trate the topic, I will not try the patience of my readers by describing all that vast variety of black victims and white, of red victims and blue, which each particular deity is alleged to prefer." (Ibid. and p. 732.)

NOTE 12.--The same system of devil-dancing is prevalent among the tribes on the Lu-kiang, as described by the R.C. Missionaries. The conjurors are there called _Mumos_. (_Ann. de la Prop. de la Foi_, x.x.xVI. 323, and x.x.xVII. 312-313.)

"Marco's account of the exorcism of evil spirits in cases of obstinate illness exactly resembles what is done in similar cases by the Burmese, except that I never saw animals sacrificed on such occasions." (_Sir A.

Phayre._)

Mouhot says of the wild people of Cambodia called _Stiens_: "When any one is ill they say that the Evil Spirit torments him; and to deliver him they set up about the patient a dreadful din which does not cease night or day, until some one among the bystanders falls down as if in a syncope, crying out, 'I have him,--he is in me,--he is strangling me!' Then they question the person who has thus become possessed. They ask him what remedies will save the patient; what remedies does the Evil Spirit require that he may give up his prey? Sometimes it is an ox or a pig; but too often it is a human victim." (_J.R.G.S._ x.x.xII. 147.)

See also the account of the Samoyede _Tadibe_ or Devil-dancer in Klaproth's _Magasin Asiatique_ (II. 83).

In fact these strange rites of Shamanism, devil-dancing, or what not, are found with wonderful ident.i.ty of character among the non-Caucasian races over parts of the earth most remote from one another, not only among the vast variety of Indo-Chinese Tribes, but among the Tamulian tribes of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the races of Siberia, and the red nations of North and South America. Hinduism has a.s.similated these "prior superst.i.tions of the sons of Tur" as Mr. Hodgson calls them, in the form of Tantrika mysteries, whilst, in the wild performance of the Dancing Dervishes at Constantinople, we see perhaps again the infection of Turanian blood breaking out from the very heart of Mussulman orthodoxy.

Dr. Caldwell has given a striking account of the practice of devil-dancing among the Shanars of Tinnevelly, which forms a perfect parallel in modern language to our Traveller's description of a scene of which he also had manifestly been an eye-witness: "When the preparations are completed and the devil-dance is about to commence, the music is at first comparatively slow; the dancer seems impa.s.sive and sullen, and he either stands still or moves about in gloomy silence. Gradually, as the music becomes quicker and louder, his excitement begins to rise. Sometimes, to help him to work himself up into a frenzy, he uses medicated draughts, cuts and lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends; there is no mistaking that glare, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. The demon has now taken bodily possession of him, and though he retains the power of utterance and motion, both are under the demon's control, and his separate consciousness is in abeyance. The bystanders signalise the event by raising a long shout, attended with a peculiar vibratory noise, caused by the motion of the hand and tongue, or the tongue alone. The devil-dancer is now worshipped as a present deity, and every bystander consults him respecting his diseases, his wants, the welfare of his absent relatives, the offerings to be made for the accomplishment of his wishes, and in short everything for which superhuman knowledge is supposed to be available." (_Hodgson, J.R.As.Soc._ XVIII. 397; _The Tinnevelly Shanars_, by the _Rev. R. Caldwell, B.A._, Madras, 1849, pp. 19-20.)

[1] "_Singpho_," says Colonel Hannay, "signifies in the Kakhyen language 'a man,' and all of this race who have settled in Hookong or a.s.sam are thus designated; the reason of their change of name I could not ascertain, but so much importance seems to be attached to it, that the Singphos, in talking of their eastern and southern neighbours, call them Kakhyens or Kakoos, and consider it an insult to be called so themselves." (_Sketch of the Singphos, or the Kakhyens of Burma_, Calcutta, 1847, pp. 3-4.) If, however, the Kakhyens, or _Kachyens_ (as Major Sladen calls them), are represented by the _Go-tchang_ of Pauthier's Chinese extracts, these seem to be distinguished from the Kin-Chi, though a.s.sociated with them. (See pp.

397, 411.)

[2] [Mr. E.H. Parker (_China Review_, XIV. p. 359) says that Colonel Yule's _Langszi_ are evidently the _Szilang_, one of the six _Chao_, but turned upside down.--H.C.]

[3] _Cathay_, etc., pp. ccl. seqq. and p. 441.

[4] Written in 1870.

CHAPTER LI.