"The Scobs Was in Her Lovely Mouth"- Parker 1958
"The Scobs Was in Her Lovely Mouth"
by Harbison Parker
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 282 (Oct. - Dec., 1958), pp. 532-540
[Footnotes moved to the end, not edited. It seems impractical to have large sections in French without translating it- at least in a footnote.
R. Matteson 2012]
"THE SCOBS WAS IN HER LOVELY MOUTH"
BY HARBISON PARKER
THE British and Breton versions of the international ballad represented in the Child collection by Number 91, "Fair Mary of Wallington," preserve clear vestiges of a misconception regarding the anatomy of the human female which was entertained by laymen and subscribed to-or at least deferred to-by reputable European medical authorities as late as 1525.
"Fair Mary of Wallington" tells the story of a girl determined never to marry because five of her sisters had died in childbed and she feared the same fate. Her mother nevertheless flouted her daughter's foreboding and forced her to marry. After three-quarters of a year, "as big wi bairn / As ony lady could gae," the young wife, in standard ballad fashion, dispatched a bonny page boy to her mother to inform the obtuse parent of her daughter's dangerous condition. The mother rode in haste, with the standard relay of three horses, but when she got to her daughter's castle the girl was at death's door and "The scobs was in her lovely mouth, / And the razer in her side." [1] This despairing resort to Caesarean section produced an heir for the house of Wallington, but "Tho the cradle it be full spread up, / the bride-bed is left bare."[2]
In his glossary, Child defines "scob" (scope, scoup) as a gag,[3] and indeed the C version of "Fair Mary" uses the term "gaggs" instead of "scobs." Jamieson's Scottish dictionary reveals the peculiar type of gag here employed: "SCOB, s., I. A splint, a thin piece of wood used for securing a bone newly set. . . . TO SCOB, v., a. and n. . . . 3. To gag, by keeping the mouth open by means of cross pieces of wood." [4]
This procedure of gagging the patient in preparation for an operation of such severity, especially in the absence of anesthetics, might seem merely a brutal attempt to drown her screams of pain; but the crux of the matter is that, as Jamieson says, the design was to keep the mouth open.
The same purpose is dimly discernible in "Pontplankoat," the Breton version of this ballad. The plot is so similar to that of "Fair Mary" that Child says:
. . . we cannot hesitate to assume that it has the same source. . . . In the first version Pontplancoat marries Marguerite for his third wife. He is obliged by affairs to leave her, and has a dream which disturbs him so much that he returns home the same night. This dream is that his wife has been three days in travail, and it proves true. A spoon is put in the lady's mouth, an incision made in her right side, and a son taken out. This is Pontplancoat's third son, and each of them has been extracted from his mother's side. He has had three wives of the name of Marguerite, and they have all died in this way. Marguerite, in the other version, is told by her mother that she is to marry Pontplancoat. Marguerite signifies her obedience, but Pontplancoat has already had four wives of her name, all of whom "had been opened," and she shall be the fifth. As before, Pontplancoat is obliged to go away, and during his absence he receives letters which inform him that his wife is in labor and that the chances are against a normal delivery. He returns instantly. The lady has been three days in labor. A silver ball is put into her mouth, her right side opened with a knife, and a son extracted. Pontplancoath as four sons besides, all of whom have been brought into the world in this way.[5]
The silver spoon and the silver ball are even less comprehensible than the scobs as items in a surgeon's arsenal. The spoon, " 'l loa arc'hant" in the Breton version and "culliere d'argent" in Luzel's translation thereof,[6] makes little sense, though it is possible that the singer(s) knew the purpose of it. The silver ball which Child speaks of is, in Luzel's "seconde version," " 'r vil-arc'hant" in the Breton original, "la bille d'argent" in Luzel's translation.[7]
"Bille" may, as Child assumed, mean "ball"; there is, however, a second meaning, which comes nearer to the thin piece of wood which the Scottish "scob" designates: "10 Piece de bois de toute la grosseur de l'arbre, destinee a etre mise in planche. ... 40 Baton dont le peaussier et l'emballeur se servent pour tordre et serrer.... 60 Rejeton qui pousse au pied d'un arbre; Branche d'arbre coupCe par les deux bouts, propre a mettre en pepiniere. Etym: wallon, beie, baton et quille; anc. franc. bille, quille . . . du celtique: irland. bille, bas-bret. bill, pill; gall. pill, tronc d'arbre." [8] The circumstance that "B, apres ar ou eur, se change en V dans les substantifs feminins"[9] brings the vil of the second Breton version in line with the Breton "bill" or "pill" which corresponds etymologically to the French "bille" in the meaning of a piece of wood, and thus nearer than "ball" to the wooden scobs of Scotland. Even the ball (following Child), or the spoon of the first Breton version, however, forms no more effective gag than the scobs so far as insuring silence is concerned. But for the function actually expected of this special gag, a spoon or a rod would serve (a ball would be considerably less efficient). The preciousness of the material is no necessary adjunct; perhaps silver is employed merely because a nobleman's wife ought to be furnished in a manner befitting her station, even in the matter of a gag.
The second Breton version and the British A version have manifestly lost sight of the purpose of the gag. (Whether the molders of the other Breton and British variants clearly remembered it is not patent, but at least they give no indication of misunderstanding.) This Breton version permits the unfortunate Marguerite to live for three days after the operation, and the British A variant perpetrates the absurdity of Fair Mary's dictating her will with the impediment of scobs in her mouth, in addition to the basic anomaly that the presence of such a gag indicates that the woman so maltreated was already dead or just at the point of death. The explanation in stanza 29 of this version, that when the hard riding mother arrived, "Her daughter had a scope / into her cheek and into her chin, / All to keep her life / till her dear mother came," reveals certainly the singer's lack of comprehension of the purpose of the device.
The sourness of the "chin"- "came" rhyme in this version, whose rhymes are otherwise fairly regular, encourages the emendation "All for to keep the life / of the unborn babe within," or phraseology with that tenor, which would at least have the virtue of accurately stating the purpose of the scobs.
Apparently the distinction of first prescribing the use of this curious device belongs to Alexander Benedictus (died 1525), though he was not the first to describe or to advocate Caesarean section. Indeed, the operation itself is one whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Its skilful and successful performance by a native surgeon at Katura in Uganda in 1879, witnessed by R. W. Felkin and communicated to the Edinburgh Medical Journal,[10] together with medical histories of the performance of it on themselves by "impatient and ignorant women ... who were most unlikely to have had knowledge of such an operation," [11] suggests that the operation may very likely have been performed in prehistoric times. Such an inference is strengthened by the appearance of accounts of this dramatic mode of parturition in mythology.
No less than the very god of medicine, Aesculapius, according to Ovid,[12] was thus brought into the world through the surgical ministrations of Apollo; and Hermes, at Jupiter's command, delivered Dionysus from the hapless Semele by a post-mortem Caesarean section.[13] Nor was this extreme measure for relief of prolonged parturition recorded in classical mythology only. The Volsungasaga contains the account of the birth of Volsung on this wise: "But the Queen's sickness went on as before, nor could she bear her child; and this lasted six years. Now she knew that she could not live long, and so she bade them cut out the child, and it was so done. The child was a boy, and he was very large when he was brought forth, as was to be expected. It is said that the boy kissed his mother before she died."[14]
Despite this interest in Caesarean section manifested by mythology, there is no mention of it by Hippocrates, Soranus, Celsus, Oribasius, Aetius or Paulus.[15] The Lex Regia of Numa Pompilius, however, enjoined the performance of this operation on a gravid dead woman before burial, so that child and mother might be buried separately.[16] And Pliny the Elder records the Roman practice in historical times:
"Auspicatius enecta parente gignuntur; sicut Scipio Africanus prior natus, primusque Cazsarum, a caso matris utero dictus; qua de causa et Casones appellati. Simili modo natus est Manilius qui Carthaginem cum exercitu intravit." [17]
No medical writer since Pliny, with the exception of remarks in the Talmud and the Ayur-Veda of Suisruta,[18] mentions Caesarean section-on either the living or the dead-until Bernard de Gordon, a professor of medicine at Montpellier, wrote his Lilium Medicince in 1805.[19] Gordon, stating that the foetus can live for some time after the death of the mother, advises that care be taken to hold open the entrance to the womb during the operation on the dead mother-to provide the infant with air. [20]
Considering the state of anatomical knowledge at this time, before Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, and considering that modern medicine subscribes to the conclusion that twenty minutes is the longest span during which a child can survive in the womb after the mother's decease before asphyxiation puts it beyond recovery, [21] Gordon's notion could doubtless have passed muster as sober and sound medical theory. Benedictus, however, as mentioned above, adds another precaution which brings medical theory to a meeting with the folk belief standing back of the scobs: if the woman dies during parturition, one should prop her mouth open with a bit of wood between the teeth- "surculo impacto inter dentes"- and then proceed to open the belly and uterus and bring forth the child. [22]
Benedictus puts this idea forward apparently as sober medical advice, but there is indication by a slightly earlier medical authority that these ventilatory aids to Caesarean section were included merely in deference to the notions of laymen. Guy de Chauliac (1298-1368), "the most brillant surgeon of the fourteenth century,"[23] who early in his career taught, like Gordan, at Montpellier, discussed Caesarean section in his Cyrurgia. He specified that the incision should be made on the left side, "cum rasorio," and cites the practice of keeping open the entrance to the womb during the operation, "ut volunt mulieres."[24]
The cryptic "ut volunt mulieres" is an indication that this ancillary measure of furnishing oxygen to the entombed infant while rescue attempts were going forward was perhaps not the brainchild of academic anatomicians. And though it is futile to assay the possibility of irony in Eucharius Rosslin's Rosengarten, a handbook for midwives, his instructions on this point may have been given with tongue in cheek: "Ite wer es sach das die muter tod were das ma wol erkennen mag durch zeiche eins todten meschen / und ist dabey ein hoffnfig das das kind lebe / So soltu der frawen mund / die bermfiter / und de gemecht offen halten / darumb das das kind lufft und athem hab / als die frawe gewonlich wol wissen."[25]
There is no veil of possible irony, however, over the strong words which Pierre Dionis utters against the meddlesomeness of ignorant bystanders, in his Traite general des Accouchements.. ., "faithfully translated from the French" as A General Treatise of Midwifery:
Those who perform the Operation upon dead Bodies only, proceed to it that Moment the Woman has breath'd her last, and forthwith put a Gag into her Mouth to keep it open.[26]
Tho I have said that the Mother must be gagg'd in time of the Operation, 'tis not because I think that the Child breathes in the Womb, as the Vulgar do; who, if it is found dead, which is very often the Case, are sure to lay the Blame upon the Surgeon if he has not put a Gag in the Mother's Mouth. He must therefore by no means omit this Circumstance, for the Satisfaction of those that are present, and to put it out of the power of silly Women, and others who know nothing, to throw malicious Reflections upon him.[27]
A century earlier, Ambroise Pare and others had characterized these precautions as useless, since it was certain that the foetus, enclosed in its membrane, had no communication with the trachea and mouth of the mother,[28] and Pare's pupil, Jaques Guillimeau, asserted that the foetus receives its oxygen through the parental blood. Nevertheless, he advised that during the period while the mother was moribund "the midwife or else some other woman shall hold her hand within the neck of the matrice to keep it [as far] open as may be possible; for though we know he breathes only by her arteries, yet notwithstanding, the air that may enter therein, doth not only [no] hurt, but doth verie much good."[29]
This subscription to an anatomical theory which they had outgrown (or which they had perhaps never seriously held) was forced on these obstetricians not only, apparently, by the tyranny of "silly Women" but also by the demands of the Catholic church for Caesarean section, or other means (including intrauterine baptism by means of a syringe-as facetiously suggested by Sterne in Tristram Shandy) [30], in order to insure baptism of the child, if viable. Witkowski observes:
Des precautions assez baroques etaient jadis prises pour assurer la consecration de l'enfant. Le synode de Cologne, en 1528, et celui de Cambrai, en 1550, disent [he quotes from Mgr. Bouvier] "qu'il faut mettre entre les dents de la femme, a l'instant de sa mort, un tube de roseau ouvert des deux cotes. Mercatus est du meme avis. Pare et Heister rejettent cette precaution comme inutile, puisqu'il est bien stur que l'enfant enferme dans ses membranes, n'a aucune communication avec la trachee artere et la bouche de la mere. L'usage de ce tuyau est recommande dans une ordonnance sur cette matiere, donnee en I744 par M. l'eveque de Girgenti, afin de permettre l'issue des corpuscules putrides, dont le sejour pourroit etre nuisible a la conservation de l'enfant: la precaution est fort sage. Guillemau, Charles Etienne et Schenchius admettent la pratique de Mercatus. Ils ordonnent meme de mettre un tube de roseau dans le vagin a l'instant de sa mort: sed etiam ut simili modo patula uteri vagina servetur. Cette derniere precaution de l'insertion d'un tube dans le col de la matrice est tres importante, et ne doit pas etre negligee, surtout lorsque le chirurgiene st absent, et que le moment de l'accouchementn aturel etant arrive, la membrane est ouverte."[31]
This what-to-do-till-the-doctor-comess eems to have survived in actual practice in at least one locale in Europe until the 1860's:
"Diese sonderbare Meinung herrscht noch jetzt unter dem Volke im Frankenwalde. Wenn dort eine Hochschwangere stirbt, so soil man ihr den Mund mit einer Spanne oder Spreize offen halten, damit die Luft zum Kinde kommen kann und dies nicht erstickt bis der Doktor kommt und hilft."[32]
The interest of the Church in the performance of Caesarean section is strongly reflected in the Breton B version of the ballad. When Pontplankoat arrives home to find his wife in the third day of her unavailing travail, she asks him[33] to send his valet (or page) to consult Saint-Yves, for "C'est celui-la qui me tirera de peine!" Upon his return the page reports:
--Saint Yves m'a dit
Qu'il faudrait l'ouvrir.
Mettez-lui une bille d'argent dans la bouche,
Et le couteau dans le cote droit;
Et le couteau dans le cote droit,
Vous trouverez un petit enfant en vie.[34]
The wife declares, "Nul ne rendra mon coeur content, / Si ce n'est mon frere l'eveque de Leon," and requests:
Mon mari, ecrivez une lettre
A l'eveque de Leon (pour le prier) de venir a la maison;
Mettez-y en meme temps,
D'amener un medecin pour me voir;
D'amener un medecin pour me voir,
Mieux vaudrait perdre un que perdre deux;
Mieux vaudrait perdre un qui est baptise,
Qu'un autre qui ne le serait pas! [38]
Her husband tries, vainly, to hearten her with reports of royalty and nobility coming to her lying-in, but she replies:
--Ouvrez toutes les portes,
Pour que je voie venir la Mort;
Ouvrez a deux battants la porte de la cuisine,
Que je voie venir le medecin!
Une robe blanche des plus belles
J'offre a sainte Anne,
Et une autre a sainte Catherine,
Pour que je vive trois jours apres avoir enfante.[36]
In apparent response to this pious offering these two saints appear in the house, to reiterate the instructions of Saint Ives:
Au moment ou l'on s'appretaita l'ouvrir,
Deux vierges entrerent dans la maison,
Deux vierges des plus belles,
La Sainte-Viergee t sainte Anne.
Et le couteau dans le cote droit;
Le couteau dans le cest droit,
Vous y trouverezu n petit enfante n vie;
Deux vierges entrerent dans la maison,
Qui donnerent des conseils pour l'ouvrir:
-Mettez-lui la bille d'argent dans la bouche,
Faites-lui trois coutures d'aiguille dans le cote,
Elle viendra avec nous au bout de trois jours![37]
[spacing and line division may be wrong here]
In the A version, after the wife has promised "ma robe de noce, le meilleure," to Saint Anne and "ma robe de satin blanc" to Saint Catherine "pour que je meure trois jours apres avoir enfante," "la sainte Vierge" alone appears, evidently to oversee
the operation:
La sainte Vierge entra dans la maison,
Pour la voir ouvrir.
Arrete, arrete, chirurgien,
Tu vas un peu vite en besogne:
Mets-lui une cuillre d'argent dans la bouche
Et fais une incision au cote droit.[38]
Special point to this exhortation and supervision of the "medicin" by figures of the Church seems lent by a contemporaneous event cited by Young: "Mention may be made here of a case which occurred in Brittany in 1846 and gave rise to much discussion at that time. A woman died in her sixth month of pregnancy. The medical man who was summoned refused to perform Caesarean section."[39] "The priest then sent for a neighboring farmer [priests were not permitted to perform the operation unless there was absolutely no one else who could be obtained to do it [40] who carried out the operation, but the foetus was dead. Whether or not the child would have been born alive is, of course, open to doubt, but the affair created a great sensation at the time."[41] This sensational incident occurred (or was reported) almost half a century before the earlier of the Breton versions was collected-ample time, one would think, for it to have an influence on the ballad (though only, of course, in sharpening details, for the circumstance that the British A version antedated the incident by twenty-five years shows that the ballad story was already completely formed).
If we dared demand logic from ballad singers, we might conclude that Marguerite's miraculous three day survival of the operation was an intrusion upon the original story, since if "la sainte Vierge" intended to grant her prayer, there was no need for the "bille d'argent"-unless, of course, the singers did not understand just what it was for, a possibility indicated by the term "vil" (or "pill," trunk, or large section, of a tree) instead of one corresponding to the "surculus" of Alexander Benedictus or the "tube de roseau" of the Council of Cologne. The "cuillere" of the first version, though it would indeed perform after a fashion the function originally intended, seems even farther removed. The British versions, at least those which specify "scobs," preserve a device better adapted to the purpose, though that is no guarantee that the British singers understood any better the popular (and academic?) medical theory which lodged it in the ballad, and in Fair Mary's mouth.[42]
NOTES
1 Francis J. Childs, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II, 313, version B, sanza 26.
2 Child, II, 312, A, 33.
3 Child, V, 372.
4 John Jamieson, D.D., An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, A New Edition, by John Longmuir and David Donaldson (Paisley, I880-1887), IV, I44.
5 Child, II, 309-3I0.
6 F. M. Luzel, Gwerziou Breiz-lzel, Chants Populaires de la Basse-Bretagne (Lorient, 1868), I, 384 and 385.
7 Luzel, p. 393 and 394.
8 E. Littre, Dictionnaire de la Langue Franfaise (Paris, 1887), I, 346.
9 Le Gonidec, Dictionnaire Breton-Francais (Saint-Brieuc, 1850), p. 5. (I am unable to find bil or vil glossed in this dictionary or any other available to me.)
10 From which his account is digested by J. H. Young in Caesarean Section / The History and Development of the Operation From Earliest Times (London, I944), 10-11.
11 Young, 11-12.
12 MetamorphosesI, I, Feb. 8, V. 626.
13 G. J. Witkowski, Histoire des Accozchements Chez Tous les Peuples (Paris, 1887), ii; Young, p .5.
14 Translated by Margaret Schlauch, The Saga of the Volsungs (New York, 1930), p. 49.
15 Heinrich Fasbender, Geschichte der Geburtshiilfe (Jena, 19o6), pp. 979-980.
16 Young, p. 4. Young adds (p. 225) ". . . and disobedience to this mandate was considered as appending grounds for a legal suspicion that a living child had been killed"-a matter of legal consequence in questions of inheritance of household effects by the husband or by the woman's relatives.
17 Quoted by Young, p. 3, with the remark (p. 2) that "The origin of the name of the operation is still obscure, and periodically comes under discussion both in medical and classical journals" and with approval of an explanation which has been advanced, that the Lex Regia became known as the Lex Ccesarea"u nder the emperors,w ith the consequent transference of the epithet to the operation enjoined among the laws in the code (p. 4).
18 Fasbender, p. 97. Young, pp. 9-io, discusses the question of whether the references in the Talmud and the earlier published Mischnagoth (140 B.C.) indicate that the Jews performed the operation on living patients or merely on dead ones. Though not mentioned by writers on medicine, two figures of some prominence in the Middle Ages were reputed to have been delivered by post-mortem Caesarean section: Burcard, Count of Linsgow, Abbott of St. Gallen, born in 959-dubbed "Ingenitus" because of his unusual birth-and Gebhard, Count of Bregenz, Bishop of Constanz, born in 980 (E. Casp. Jac. von Siebold, Versuch einer Geschichte der Geburtshiilfe [Tiibingen, 1902], I, 323. He quotes from the Rerum alamannicarum scriptores aliquot vetusti ex biblioth. M. H. Goldasti cura H. Chr. Senckenberg . . . the information concerning Burcard, and from G. Bruschii magni opens de omnibus Germanicee piscopatibuse pitom that concerning Gebhard.)
19 Statement based on Fasbender, p. 97; date from von Siebold, I, 331.
20 Fasbender, p. 97; von Siebold, I, 332.
21 Young, p. 230.
22 von Siebold, I, 356.
23 Young, p. 224.
24 Forced to depend on secondary sources because of the rarity of Chauliac's book, I cannot make certain that he did not also refer to keeping the dead mother's mouth open. Von Siebold resumes the locus thus: "Den Gebrauch, der gestorbenen Schwangeren Mund and Gebarmutter (s. oben ?135.) often zu erhalten, damit Luft zum Kinde dringen kBnne, fiihrt Chauliac hier ebenfalls an, fiigt aber doch hinzu: 'ut volunt mulieres'" (I, 336-337.) The "135." to which he refers is his discussion of Gordon's work, concerning which he says: "Bemerkenswerth ist die Lehre am Ende dieses Kapitels: der Foetus kann eine Zeitlang nach dem Tode der Mutter fortleben; zeugt auch gleich der nach folgende Rath, fur das Fortleben der Frucht durch Offenerhalten des Muttermundes zu sorgen, von wenig geliiuterten physiologischen Grunds/itzen, so dringt doch Gordon mit Recht darauf, gleich nach dem Tode der Mutter den Unterleib zu effnen, und den Foetus herauszunehmen . . ." (I, 332). Fasbender, who often seems to follow von Siebold quite closely, refers to Chauliac's admonishment thus: "Der Muttermund wird wihrend der Operation offen gehalten, 'ut volunt mulieres.' Dieser Zusatz zeigt, dass der Autor selbst kein besonderes Gewicht hierauf legte" (p. 98). In a footnote to his account of Gordon's work, Fasbender says: "Im 15. Jahrh. empfiehlt, wie wir nachher sehen werden, Alessandro Benedetti das Offenhalten des Mundes der Verstorbenen durch ein zwischen die Zahne gelegtes
Holzstiickchen" (p. 97). Young, who cites neither Fasbender, von Siebold, Gordon, nor Benedictus, credits Chauliac with giving a specific location for the incision, but makes no mention of his provision for admission of air. Palmer Findley, in The Story of Childbirth (Garden City, I933), p. 334, credits the holding open of the mouth to Gordon, possibly because of a misreading of Fasbender's "Muttermund" (either by Findley or by one of his sources); in his subsequent Priests of Lucina (Boston, 1939), p. 373, no mention is made of Gordon, and Benedictus receives the same credit accorded him by Fasbender: "In the fifteenth century Alexander Benedictus suggested keeping the mouth of the dead mother open by inserting a piece of wood; by so doing air would be supplied to the child in the course of the operation." Actually, the assignment of the dubious honor of being the first to suggest this volksanatomische precaution is not crucial in connection with the appearance of it in the ballads, since the instruction book of the latest of these three authorities was in print by I533 (von Siebold, I, 356) and the earliest collected of the ballads was printed c. I775 (Child, II, 3II).
25 Der Swagern frawen und hebamme roszgarte (Hagenau, 1513 [per information in the facsimile edition of Gustav Klein, Munich, 1910]), p. 73.
26 Page 254 of the English translation, printed in London for A. Bell et al., I719 (the French original was printed in Paris, 1718). The "only" refers to Dionis' indignation at those "who are so cruel and barbarous, as to undertake to make the Cesarean Incision on Women alive" (p. 251).
27 Ibid., p. 255.
28 Witkowski, p. 15I.
29 Quoted by Young, p. 225, from the English translation (Childbirth or the Happy deliverie of Women [London, 1612]) of Guillimeau's De l'heureux accouchement des femmes (Paris, I609). In the absence of the primary source, I have attempted to make sense of Young's quotation by means of the bracketed emendations.
30 Book I, Chapter XX. See Witkowski, pp. I40-I48 for discussion and references.
31 Witkowski, p. I5I. The quotation is cited from the Disertatio in sextum Decalogi praceptur et supplementum ad tractatum de matrimonio of "Mgr Bouvier, eveque du Mans," dixieme edition (Paris, 1843). Witkowski cites the titte in footnote 2, p. I34; he gives no page reference.
32 D. Fliigel, Volksmedizin und Aberglaube im Frankenwalde (Miinchen, I863), as quoted in Das Weib, by Heinrich Ploss and Max Bartels, "neu bearbeitet . . von Prof. D. Paul Bartels," (Leipzig, 1913), II, p. 376.
33 Luzel's translation makes him ask her; but the Breton "Ma friedik," which he translates "Ma femme cherie," is ambiguous, meaning 'my spouse'-either gender (see Le Gonidec, p. 498, under "pried" or Victor Henry, Lexique Etymologique Des Termes Les Plus Usuels du Breton Moderne [Rennes, I900], p. 228, under the same term). It is possible that the fault is not Luzel's; the singer may have been confused.
34 Luzel, I, 391 (?IV, stanzas I and 2). 35 Ibid., stanzas 4 and 5.
36 Ibid., stanzas I2 and I3.
37 Ibid., ?V.
38 Ibid., p. 385, ?IV, stanzas 7-9.
39 Probably, I surmise, because he did not reckon the foetus viable. He may, however, have been aware of the harrowing experience of another of his brotherhood, reported in I800 by the widely influential obstetrician, Jean Louis Baudelocque, wherein "an accoucheur opened into the uterus of a woman believed dead. He extracted the child but fled the moment the woman, who apparently only had fainted, gave forth a sigh and complained of the injury done to her. It was with difficulty that the patient's relatives were able to persuade the surgeon to return and sew up the wound. The woman recovered and suffered no ill-effects except for the usual ventral hernia, which she made the subject of legal proceedings, alleging that the wrong type of needle had been used to close her wound" (Young's resume, p. 226).
40 Young, p. 227, quoting Bishop Bouvier.
41 Young, p. 228, citing Bouvier.
42 Notice should perhaps be taken of another ballad in the Child collection which centers on caesarean section: "The Death of Queen Jane" (Number I70). Based on the rumor- contradicted by sober historians (see Child's headnote, III, 170, and Young, pp. 8-9)- that Jane Seymour gave birth to King Edward by means of this operation, it depicts the Queen as pleading, after
more than six weeks in labor, that the surgeon "rip open" her sides and deliver the child. This he at first refuses to do (in many variants, King Henry refuses to order it done), but after she falls into a swoon the operation is performed, with her death as a consequence. The indignity of the scobs, however, was not inflicted upon her; if the singers knew of this surgical aid, they apparently knew also, as some who sang "Fair Mary" or "Pontplankoat" did not, that it was necessary only if the patient had ceased to breathe.
Orange Coast College
Costa Mesa, California