bamboo-broom. The broom is an implement whose assistance may possibly be required for her protection from the attacks of evil supernatural beings during her delivery—it seems not improbable that her frequent association with it in the course of her normal household duties may have aided in giving the household's broom a special standing with respect to her—but that assistance can scarcely be reasonably expected from a broom which has been treated in such a way as to cause it displeasure, nor in full measure from a broom to which something has been done which may have weakened it. Indeed, it may possibly even be supposed that the broom which has been stepped over not only will refuse to help in keeping off the attacking demons, but that it will perhaps seek to revenge itself in some more active way upon the parturient woman.[1] There is, however, another groundwork which—though, I think, with less to recommend it—may reasonably be advanced to account for the taboo. It is that, since the woman who steps over a broom may be regarded as thus entering into some sort of psychical relationship with an implement disliked (or feared) by ghostly supernatural beings, such beings may therefore be thought likely to avoid introducing themselves into her body for the purpose of incarnation, and she therefore to tend to have the great misfortune of remaining barren—or, if one of those beings has already entered, to expect a miscarriage.
If we may assume that the fear of displeasing or of weakening the psychical member of the broom is the true basis of the taboo just discussed, we may easily account for the
- ↑ What seems to parallel this closely, especially if we may regard the "cursing" as an accretion—as, in view of certain of the European beliefs I have cited, we appear justified in doing—is the Silesian cursing of an old broom followed by the placing of it where the prospective victim will step over it, with the intention that he should become ill (Samter, op, cit. p. 33 quoting Drechsler, op. cit. ii. p. 236).
