Subject:Pregnancy
Entries
Entry 6870
[Instead of scattering the following cures and protective devices throughout this subsection, I have gathered them here under one submargin title:] Before the Civil War they wouldn't put a woman to make soap that was in a family way. She could turn it backwards and it wouldn't make. And it won't neither. You take a woman in a family Way, she can take a spoon and turn cream backwards and can't git it to come [[to butter]]. And you can't neither. ["This old man was a boy of eleven when the Civil War started." I am quoting the notation on my pencil transcription made almost immediately after the recording. Yes, he must have said Civil War, though in his younger years he may have spoken of the "War between the States." For the power and peculiarities of women during pregnancy, See FACI, 2nd ed., 1965.] [Fredericksburg, Va., informant 44, by Ediphone.]
Entry 6887
If a woman didn't have no intahco'se wit no boy friend or man or sompin lak dat, she would have a hard time [at childbirth] see. Dat's all ah've heard of dat. (How do you mean if they didn't have intercourse?) Well, jis' lak if ah wus impregnant, dat's whut chew mean. Well, ah wus impregnant. Well, maybe mah husband wus away. Well, ah an' 'im nevah had no dealin's wit each othah at all, see. Well, regardless tuh whut de othah man done, dat would git me in birthin' dis chile, if ah nevah had no intahco'se or nuthin tuh do wit dis man [I would have a hard time at delivery]. [Having had contact with the other man during her husband's absence, she must continue this contact to avoid a hard delivery. This reminds me of a tale I read years ago, an old Italian novella, the type of Boccaccio's Decameron: The husband after fertilizing his wife left home on a long journey. As time past, a neighbor, a trickster, informed the woman that her husband had left home without completing his task. The parts of a baby, he told her, were made at different times. Unless the husband returned soon the baby would be born with an arm, a leg, almost any- thing missing. To make a short story shorter, the neighbor, being a man, agreed to help her. The baby was born with all its parts.]