Chapter V. Matriarchy

Plate 17. MOTHER ELSPETH

"Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon, among others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them, which she does with postures and practices which are scandalously indecent." (Robert Burns)

Elspeth Buchan became a powerful and charismatic leader of a religious sect known as the Buchanites. The sect lived in various parts throughout south-west Scotland in the late 18th century. Elspeth had the title of "Friend Mother in the Lord". When she died, her followers stole her body. It lay hidden under the bed of one of her disciples for 54 years.

Plate 18. THE MARIAN CULT

Cases of crying icons and apparitions of the Virgin have been sighted in Rwanda in the 1980s and in Medjugorie, Croatia in the 1990s.

Plate 19. NOCHMEN TENENBAUM

Served in the Polish army with great distinction and was demobbed at the age of 24.

In 1936 he checked into a Warsaw clinic and subsequently gave birth to a baby.

Plate 20.THE RABBIT WOMAN OF GODALMING

In the 17th and 18th century it was possible for male practitioners to make serious inroads into the preserve of midwifery. Women attending to births were often accused of witchery or untrained incompetence.

Non-professional male 'barber-surgeons' led the assault, claiming technical superiority on the basis of their use of the obstetrical forceps. The forceps were legally classified as a surgical instrument and women were legally barred from surgical practice - paved the way for male surgeons to claim obstetrics as their own. Doctors delved under a sheet for modesty's sake when delivering in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Today it is still illegal to give birth at home without medical supervision.

Plate 21. CONCEALMENT AND EXPOSURE

Frederick Lane, Nth. Dublin "The destroyer of fruits" (Homer)

Plate 22. THE CHANGELING

Picture of Rosebaby doll

  • At midnight hours o'er the kirkyard she raves,
  • And howks unchristened weans out of their graves

    A creature substituted by fairies for a stolen infant. Midwives in Scotland pledged to protect the baby and keep a keen eye on the mother and child with a fire vigil lasting until the baby's first sneeze or christening.


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