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The psychoanalyst interested in the folklore of pregnancy and childbirth should not overlook this beautiful little book. The titles of its ten essays provide a good idea of its rich and fascinating
contents: The Crowing Hen; Heifer, Freemartin, and Ridgeling; Pregnancy and Fertility Tests; The Prediction of Sex; Chalcedony and Childbirth; Word Charms and the Sator Mystery; The Veil of Good Fortune [caul]; The Midwife and the Witch; Perette the Midwife; and Early Regulation of English Midwives.
Professor Forbes lucidly and entertainingly describes many popular superstitions, and outlines their gradual replacement by scientific fact and theory. He utilizes modern endocrinologic and pharmacologic data to demonstrate the kernels of truth in some of the beliefs of the credulous. The most notable example is that of the early midwives who experimented with witchcraft. Several of the ingredients of the 'flying ointments' they concocted contained narcotic and hallucinogenic drugs of sufficient strength to be absorbed through the skin and provide 'trips' that the poor women could, in all honesty, have sworn to even as they went to the stake.
My most serious reservation about the book is directed to the nonpsychoanalytic reader: while his material repeatedly begs for a psychoanalytic commentary, Forbes remains oblivious to psychoanalysis. The psychoanalytic reader will supply the missing interpretation. The most valuable part of the book for the scholar is the surprising bibliography consisting of almost nine hundred items, most of them primary sources unfamiliar to many American students of magic and superstition.