Whistling during sex, the sprinkling of stale urine and the dangers of fairies are some of the peculiar piseoga surrounding pregnancy and birth in days gone by on the Great Blasket off Co Kerry.
These superstitions and more are revealed in a just-published journal on women's health.
In his contribution to the fifth volume of the Women's Studies Review, folklorist Dr Padraig O Healai tells of unusual practices, definitely not mentioned in the Leaving Cert version of Peig, on the island in the earlier part of the century.
A desire for male offspring often resulted in the employment of "magical means". Traditionally it was recommended that the would be father wear his cap with the peak turned backwards when having sex. Another required he whistle while having intercourse.
Dr O Healai's contribution draws on the "source material of Blasket provenance". This includes advice from Meini, the Blasket midwife, to the English scholar Robin Flowers, who wrote extensively about island life.
"Blaithin [as she called him], says I, the next time you are about your business with your wife, whistle and you will have a son. Blaithin went off and afterwards he let me know he did as I told him . . . He wrote saying in a letter, `A young son has been born to us since, and we called him Patrick'."
Fairies were feared because of the widely accepted notion that they could steal or harm mother or child. The peculiar attraction of nursing mothers to the fairies was commonly explained by their need for her services to suckle previously abducted children.
Stale urine was a substance employed as a protective agent against evil. It was commonly regarded as an unpleasant substance, and consequently anything to which it was applied was thereby rendered unattractive and undesirable.
A similar symbolism was applied to saliva. Spitting on the infant was generally considered good luck, and it was believed "less likely to attract either the evil eye or the interests of fairies".
The urine was carefully collected and transferred from the pot under the bed to a small tub to mature. Night urine was more popular than that passed during the day, and a neighbour's urine had greater efficacy than one's own. It had to be at least three days old before it had any power.
The urine-sprinkling practice on mothers and babies was more popular with some rather than others. The aforementioned Meini had an experience in one house where a daughter-in-law, Siobhan, strongly objected to the urine being thrown by her mother-in-law. "She won't throw any of it on me and may God not give her a day's luck for it," said Siobhan during her confinement.
Dr O Healai's contribution is just one of a number included in this volume, published by the Women's Studies Centre at University College Galway. Its theme is "Women and Health". It was published last night at UCG.