Unpacking the Kists by Patterson Brad;Brooking Tom;McAloon Jim;

Author:Patterson, Brad;Brooking, Tom;McAloon, Jim;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press

LIFE-CYCLE CUSTOMS

At any stage in life, from birth to death, there are bundles of traditions and practices that mark important milestones.48 Whether long-standing or recent, all are interwoven into ethnic, family, religious, and community contexts. In nineteenth-century Scotland such customs varied greatly in detail between parts of the country, but some common features tended to be replicated, and it was these that migrants carried with them to New Zealand. Such transported traditions could help make the unknown and unsettling more familiar and comfortable. However, the new environment and new demands could encourage old ways to be modified and new approaches to be adopted.

Childbirth in Scotland, especially rural Scotland, was a major community occasion, one surrounded by a multiplicity of regional customs.49 From the outset of confinement the mother-to-be was offered continuous support from older local women, and as birth approached, there was a gathering of friends and relations, who ushered in the baby with the assistance of a midwife or “howdie.” The midwife’s expertise was based on experience, usually personal, of parturition, a process regarded as a natural function rather than a medical procedure. Given the risks to mother and child, however, the delivery was surrounded by superstitious rituals to ward off ill-intentioned fairies or the evil eye. Following a successful birth there were further celebratory customs, such as “wetting the baby’s head.” The baby was baptized as early as possible to safeguard its soul.

In New Zealand, childbirth, although a time of anxiety, became, of necessity, very much more of an everyday occurrence. With the migrant population initially sparse, rural families often many miles apart, and often in the absence of the attending mature female kin networks left behind, childbirth was frequently a case of trusting to fate and calling for the assistance of whoever was available. In the Otago settlement this tended to come from neighbours with families of their own who had proved of assistance to one woman, so were prevailed upon to render similar service to others.50 Calls could come late at night and involve travel over considerable distances. Tragedies were inevitable. In emergencies husbands or even children might be required to assist, something unthinkable in Scotland. At Kaiapoi in 1860, for instance, Grace McIntosh gave birth to her first child with the assistance of a local Māori woman, and seven years later her first-born was compelled to aid her mother in the birth of a fourth child.51 In such circumstances there was little scope for the perpetuation of many traditional customs, although celebrations such as wetting the baby’s head continued to be recorded.

It is little wonder then that pregnancy and birth were not matters of unreserved joy in migrant correspondence. Jessie Campbell, wife of Whanganui’s Captain Moses Campbell, already the mother of six children, confessed herself “heartily sick of the business.”52 Unlike her less well-off Scottish sisters, however, Mrs Campbell was able to secure specialist aid. Following the birth of another son in June 1843, she told her mother, “I have suffered nothing in comparison with what I have suffered at home … Dr Wilson was my medical attendant (midwives are not known here).

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