The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing.

  • Herbert Standing
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The children of Madagascar / by Herbert F. Standing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and inhuman practices, for ' the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.' And here in Madagascar thousands of little innocent babies have been put to death by their own parents, because they happened to be born on a so-called unlucky day. These specially unlucky days occur at the beginning of the Malagasy month called Alakaosy, and it was formerly believed that all children born at this time were likely when they grew up to bring evil upon their fathers and mothers, or, in the case of slaves, upon their masters : so it was thought that the surest way of averting the evil was to put the baby out of the way by taking its life. This was often done by pouring warm water into a sahdfa, or large round wooden tray used for winnowing rice, and then turning the little one face downwards into the water and leaving it there until it was drowned. Sometimes, however, the child was not put to death at once, but placed out at the village gate, or at the entrance of an ox-pit in the yard outside the house, just at the time when the cattle were being driven home for the night. If the oxen all passed by without touching it, the evil fates which had hung over the child's life were supposed to be removed, and it was taken home again with great rejoicing ; but if the huge animals happened to tread on the soft little naked thing lying in their path, it was of course crushed to death at once, and its mother took up its poor little bruised body, wrapped it in a piece of dark-blue or unbleached calico, placed it in a large earthen pot and buried it. A very interesting story was told me by one of my scholars how on one occasion a little child belonging to a slave woman of theirs was placed at the gate of an ox-pit, when seven oxen were being driven home in the evening. The first, on coming to the place where the baby lay, put its nose down and smelt it, or as the Malagasy say ' kissed ' it, for their kissing consists in nose-rubbing, then at one bound jumped right over it and down into the pit below. The second came and smelt it and leapt over it in the same way ; the third came and did just the same, and the fourth, and so