"Diodorus tells us that when Zeus persuaded his jealous wife Hera to adopt Hercules, the goddess got into bed, and clasping the burly hero to her bosom, pushed him through her robes and let him fall to the ground in imitation of a real birth; and the historian adds that in his own day the same mode of adopting children was practised by the barbarians. At the present time it is said to be still in use in Bulgaria and among the Bosnian Turks. A woman will take a boy whom she intends to adopt and push or pull him through her clothes; ever afterwards he is regarded as her very son, and inherits the whole property of his adoptive parents. Among the Berawans of Sarawak, when a woman desires to adopt a grown-up man or woman, a great many people assemble and heave a feast. The adopting mother, seated in public on a raised and covered seat, allows the adopted person to crawl from behind between her legs."Sir James George Frazer: The Golden Bough
MacMillan Paperbacks, New York (abridged edition) - 1950
pagg. 16-17
catalogazione: una delle librerie di Susan
