While there are still countless superstitious beliefs surrounding childbirth and newborn babies, this one is likely to be less familiar to modern readers. In fact, only just over half of newborns are christened in the UK and America these days, which shows just how much times have changed since this custom was common practice. In the Middle Ages, baptism usually took place within a week of the birth but the many who died before they had been baptized were believed to exist in the ‘limbo of infants’ – a section of hell set aside for those still sullied by original sin but too young to have committed any personal sins that would consign them to the ‘Hell of the Damned’. Similar beliefs existed in European countries; for example, Scandinavian folklore said their souls became will-o’-the-wisps that drifted like mist over marshland.
Between 30 and 50 per cent of medieval babies died in infancy, many in the first days after birth, as a result of infections and diseases that basic medicine could not comprehend and had no means to prevent. This pairing of a high death rate with such fearsome beliefs about where the soul of a lost child would end up fuelled medieval families’ faith in superstitious practices that might protect their offspring through this most vulnerable time. The tradition of wrapping a newborn in its mother’s clothes was based on the hope that it would be seen by evil spirits that might prey upon it as an extension of her, and be left alone. Other forms of protection included communion wafers and iron amulets placed in the crib and red string tied around the baby’s wrist. Knives were also placed in the crib, as the following astonishing rhyme relays:
Let the superstitious wife,
Near the child’s heart lay a knife,
Point be up, and haft be down;
While she gossips in the town.
This ’mong other mystic charms
Keeps the sleeping child from harms.
A talisman or mother’s clothing also fended off the attention of fairies, who were said to covet the beauty of human babies and to swap them for their own young, which were ugly and deformed. In the days before genetics could explain congenital disorders and birth abnormalities, parents who noticed such variations in their newborns often put them down to this superstition.