| The Mammy |
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THE MAMMY/MIDWIFE The Mammy was the midwife. She went out at all hours of the day and night to collect the baby.Yes, that was the verb they used: collect, from the ancient custom of the women to give birth standing, with two relatives who held the sheet to collect the infant. Or maybe the verb came about because of the even more ancient act of the father acknowledging his child, picking him up from the ground where the women had laid him by rite.Our mammy always carried his capacious bag with her. The midwife attended the birth along with the woman’s close relatives, who would be saying prayers. As soon as the baby was born the Mammy religiously gave it its first bath in a basin: this held warm water and a scrap of bread, a blessed palm leaf, salt, a silver coin, something gold and a grain of coral.Baptism was soon carried out, but until the baby was baptized a votive light had to be left alight in the room.The ceremony involved the Mammy taking the child, all covered in bows, in her arms, on the threshold of the house, and saying to the mother, who was standing as still as a statue, "You have given him to me a pagan, I will return him to you a Christian" And the mother replied: "God’s will be done". The little festive procession set off to church. On returning home, to the mother who awaited them, the midwife said; “You gave him to me a pagan, I return him to you a Christian”, to which the mother replied “God bless him”. Bibliography:
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