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The husband is excluded from the hut
for eight days of the lying-in period, chiefly from fear that he
might be contaminated by this secretion. He dare not take his child
in his arms for the three first months after the birth. But the
secretion of childbed is particularly terrible when it is the
product of a miscarriage, especially _a concealed miscarriage._ In
this case it is not merely the man who is threatened or killed, it
is the whole country, it is the sky itself which suffers. By a
curious association of ideas a physiological fact causes cosmic
troubles!" As for the disastrous effect which a miscarriage may have
on the whole country I will quote the words of a medicine-man and
rain-maker of the Ba-Pedi tribe: "When a woman has had a
miscarriage, when she has allowed her blood to flow, and has hidden
the child, it is enough to cause the burning winds to blow and to
parch the country with heat. The rain no longer falls, for the
country is no longer in order. When the rain approaches the place
where the blood is, it will not dare to approach.


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