t, en cet etat, parents, voisins, amis,
Qui viennent l'exhorter a prendre patience
Et font des voeux au ciel pour sa convalescence."

Professor Vinson, who is an authority on the subject, comes 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
recorded, is one called _Langszi_,[2] a small tribe of aborigines in
the department of Wei-ning, in Kweichau, but close to the border of
Yun-nan: "Their manners and customs are very extraordinary. For example,
when the wife has given birth to a child, the husband remains in the house
and holds 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