First, I wasn't trying to continue the YT debate yesterday; Ian filed one submission twice on Friday, and realised that he'd done that when he saw them yesterday.
Guy Hoyle (134) mentions spells designed to protect the child from the rigours of childbirth, while Martin Crim (136) says that these are unlikely to be used, since birth is the first great journey that everyone must make.
While I like the heroquest idea, I think that it is more to the point to concentrate on the ability to protect the mother from injury or death during childbirth, as Guy also did. The Spartans raised the status of a woman dead in childbirth to a warrior's death in battle, which is a fair assessment of the risk she ran in giving birth. It is also a great loss to the family when she dies. The baby's death is not assured, but is also very likely. Therefore strengthening the mother during her ordeal is a normal part of most births, because it helps both mother and child. Easing her pain and distracting her from it are also wellknown in most cultures. Since without anaesthetics it is very hard to prevent the woman from feeling the most of the pain, it is not very likely that most cultures would scorn what alleviation was possible.
Preventing injury to her is just common sense. After all, any warrior will use whatever magic or armour they can to protect themselves which are appropriate in their struggles. Likewise the mother should arm herself as well as she can.
Also, why use healing magic if none is needed? It can be scarce and expensive. Proper first aid before using major healing spells would also be far more difficult for an internal abdominal injury. Those spells seem to me to work best on obvious external injuries that can be rearranged with the torn sides or broken bones nicely aligned before casting a spell. Lastly, major bleeding cannot be replaced by anything less than a Heal Body, if I remember correctly, and heavy bleeding is one of the worst dangers after infections.
Concerning the use of a diviner, I agree with Martin. I think that a very poor divination result would result in the woman being encouraged to abort the child. A damaged child is very hard to bring up. However, any hint that the child would cause the downfall of the family is probably impossible to get, due to the restrictions of the Compromise. Therefore, there shouldn't be any self-fulfilling prophecies such as those in the Oedipus story.
An additional point to make is that births of future heroes or gods are frequently signalled by what their mother went through to have them. For instance, Hon-eel's twins were born in great and obvious pain, although her rival's child had a very easy birth. On Earth, Mary bore Jesus with no pain whatsoever, according to most tales. Tales of Caesarian birth (such as that of Caesar himself) are probably common, usually after the mother's death.
Powered by hypermail