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.  I must refer to Mr. Tylor’s interesting remarks on the rationale of the custom, for they do not bear abridgment.  Professor Max Mueller 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; Mueller’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 title!)