The broom's common application as an expeller of things may conceivably sometimes have acted as a factor in determining its association with delivery and with the expulsion of the placenta. And the shape of its handle may conceivably in some cases have caused the broom to be looked upon as representative of the phallus or of a phallic divinity, and this again may possibly have acted as a factor in associating it with child-birth. I think, however, that our evidence indicates that the basis of the association in question lies primarily in the belief in the broom as an object feared by evil supernatural beings. An extremely widely distributed idea—and one very common in Japan—is that the difficulties, pains, and dangers of parturition are due to the actions of evil supernatural beings, who tend to gather about the mother, and seek to injure her and the unborn (or helpless new-born) babe. We have seen that such beings are thought, in Japan, to fear brooms, and, although we have had no Japanese examples of the use of brooms as simple amulets, we have had examples from China, whence come at least several of the Japanese beliefs concerning brooms. Examples of the employment, in other countries, of brooms for the protection of parturient women or new-born children are easily to be cited—thus, among the ancient Romans, a woman was protected, after childbirth, by the beating and sweeping of each threshold of the house in which she lay with an axe, a pestle, and a broom, by three men who went about at night;[1] "among the Bani Isrâîls of Bombay, when the midwife drives off the blast of the Evil Eye, she holds in her left hand a shoe, a winnowing fan, and a broom;"[2] a number of examples of the use of brooms
- ↑ Frazer, in Folk-Lore in the Old Testament, London, 1918, vol. iii. p. 476, quoting Augustine. Samter, op. cit. pp. 29, 38 and 52 seqq., discusses this in detail.
- ↑ W. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, London, 1896, vol. ii. p. 191.
