will cause a woman to suffer severely in childbed (7)."[1] And in England women are often warned not to step over brooms or broom-handles, and are threatened with an undesired conception as a penalty if they step over one of the latter.[2] It thus seems manifest that the Japanese beliefs associating brooms with childbirth are founded upon something broader than purely Japanese (or Sino-Japanese) conceptions or combinations of ideas. We are therefore enabled to put aside, as probably of minor importance, if of any, in determining this association, the broom's use as a representative of a human being, or reasons directly underlying that use. So, too, we may safely disregard, excepting as perhaps a minor factor, the play on words (suggested to me, by a Japanese friend, as possibly being the basis of the association of brooms with parturition) whereby the word "hahaki," "a broom," may be taken as "haha-ki," equivalent to "mother-tree."
- ↑ Frazer, "Some Popular Superstitions of the Ancients," in Folk-Lore, vol. i. p. 157, quoting (5) Lammert, (6) Wuttke, and (7) Indian Notes and Queries.
- ↑ For some examples, see E. S. Hartland, Primitive Paternity, vol. i. pp. 133, 134. This English taboo appears as if it might possibly be connected, through some mental association, with the ceremonial jumping-over of a broom used as a marriage-rite by English and Welsh gipsies (see T. W. Thompson, "Ceremonial Customs of the British Gipsies," in Folk-lore, vol. xxiv. pp. 336, 337), or with the term "Broomstick Marriage" (equivalent to "Hop-pole Marriage") referring to a marriage "contracted to save the legitimacy of a child, or to father the child on another parish" (see W. Rye, Glossary Words used in East Anglia, London, 1895, pp. 26, 105). The stepping-over of a broom by a bridal pair, which appears in various parts of Central Europe (see, for some examples, Samter, op. cit. pp. 35 and 170) is, I think, probably merely a means, such as is commonly used at the lime of a marriage, to rid the bridal pair of evil influences, whether inherent or those of supernatural beings about them. It, like the stepping-over of an axe and a broom by the procession or the midwife taking a child to baptism (Westphalia and E. Prussia; Samter, op. cit. p. 36, and Kunze, op. cit. p. 136), and the stepping of cattle over a broom (Silesia) or over a broom and an axe (Hesse) as a protection against evil (Samter, p. 35), seems to me to be a survival of a set of conceptions in which the broom was looked upon rather as an implement of defence (or of offence⟨)⟩ than as the seat of an animating spirit or of some other supernatural being.
