The belief of the lighting of a lamp or candle

Note: this text is extracted from Book VI, chapter 34.

“And all present there saw that girl born, and she seemed like the streak of the new moon suddenly rising in broad daylight, for she illuminated with her splendour the lying-in chamber, and eclipsing the long row of flames of the jewel-lamps robbed them of lustre, and made them, as it were, abashed. Kaliṅgasenā, when she saw that incomparable daughter born, in her delight made greater rejoicing than she would have made at the birth of a son”

The superstitious custom of lighting fires, lamps, etc., to protect children against evil spirits is found in many countries. Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 31) refers us to Brand’s Popular Antiquities, edited by Hazlitt, vol. ii, p. 144, for the prevalence of the practice in England.

“Gregory mentions ‘an ordinary superstition of the old wives who dare not trust a child in a cradle by itself alone without a candle.’ This he attributes to their fear of the night-hag”

(cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, ii, 662-665).

He cites authorities to prove that it exists in Germany, Scotland and Sweden. In the latter country it is considered dangerous to let the fire go out until the child is baptized, for fear that the trolls may substitute a changeling in its place. The custom exists also in the Malay Peninsula, and among the Tājiks in Bokhara. The Roman custom of lighting a candle in the room of a lying-in woman, from which the goddess Candelifera derived her name (Tertullian, Adv. Nation., 2, 11), is to be accounted for in the same way. See also Veckenstedt, Wendisclie Sagen, p. 446.

The same notion will be found in Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 17, 64, 89, 91; vol. ii, p. 43. Cf. also the following passage from Brand’s Popular Antiquities, vol. ii, p. 78:

“Borlase quotes from Martin’s Western Islands. ‘The same lustration by carrying of fire is performed round about women after child-bearing, and round about children before they are christened, as an effectual means to preserve both the mother and the infant from the power of evil spirits.’”

Brand compares the Amphidromia at Athens. See Kuhn’s Westfälische Märchen, vol. i, pp. 125 and 289; vol. ii, pp. 17, 33-34.

——For fuller details see my note on “Precautions observed in the Birth-Chamber,” Vol. II, pp. 166-169—n.m.p.