Cult of fertility among the Bosnian People

mosque and from a stretcher which
carry dead people, to take out a
nail. Out of the nail she needs to
have someone forge at night a few
hoops and she should carry them
with her until she gives birth,
when she gives birth, she should
sow them to the child's hat, so
that spirits and witches don't
suffocate the child.
If children die and the mother
cannot nurse them, she should take
nine rags from nine widows, she
should sow a shirt to the child,
and it will not die. Similarly it
is good for such a mother or
someone else to find some wool
from a sheep that a wolf
slaughtered. She should wash that
wool, comb it and then on gargaše
(a contraption for tidying up wool)
to tidy it up so that it looks
like silk. Once she has tidied up
the wool in such a manner, she
should knit a string like the
waist of the child and she should
girdle the child with it. Who
comes late there is no luck for
him that's why it should be
started as soon as the child is
born, since if she misses only one
dekiku, minute, it will be of no
use.
In Vinac next to Jajce there is a
custom that to the couple whose
children keep on dying after birth,
call another woman to breastfeed
their new born in order to fool
the misfortune. This woman will
also cut the child's umbilical
cord and fix it and that's why she
is called eba, short version of
ebejka, grandma. If male children
were dying other forms of magical
activity was undertaken with the
Raif Esmerović
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intention of stopping the
misfortune. To a new born son one
would give his father's name or
even the holly name Mohammed, and
it used to happen that parents
would go to the extreme of
actually hiding from all the
neighbours that they had a baby
boy. They would clothe the boy as
a girl and they would teach him to
act as one, and these habits used
to stay with children their entire
lives.
Magical and physical causes
of sterility
Infertility could have been
caused by the actions of the
individual himself. Namely, in
folk medicine in BiH it is still
today considered that one of the
causes of sterility could come
from the so called "dislocated
stomach". We're talking about a
disease which equally affects both
men and women and it would usually
come about as the result of
difficult manual labour while
among the population today,
according to stravarke, the
stomach "shifts" usually due to
stress and worry. Among men the
disease was mostly manifested by
poor sperm motility, which was
often accompanied by strong belly
pain which spread towards the
stomach, the belly is always
bloated, the person has dark
circles around the eyes, has a
Cult of fertility among the Bosnian People