. 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_,