resembles a tiny human creature.

In Iceland, according to Max Bartels ("Isländischer Brauch und
Volksglaube," etc., _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1900, Heft 2
and 3) we find a transition between the natural and the fanciful
in the stories told to children of the origin of babies (the
stork is here precluded, for it only extends to the southern
border of Scandinavian lands). In North Iceland it is said that
God made the baby and the mother bore it, and on that account is
now ill. In the northwest it is said that God made the baby and
gave it to the mother. Elsewhere it is said that God sent the
baby and the midwife brought it, the mother only being in bed to
be near the baby (which is seldom placed in a cradle). It is also
sometimes said that a lamb or a bird brought the baby. Again it
is said to have entered during the night through the window.
Sometimes, however, the child is told that the baby came out of
the mother's breasts, or from below her breasts, and that is why
she is not well.

Even when children learn that babies come out of the mother's
body this knowledge often remains very vague and inaccurate. It
very commonly happens, for instance, in all civilized countries
that the navel is regarded as the baby's point of exit from the
body. This is a natural conclusion, since the navel is seemingly
a channel into the body, and a channel for which there is no
obvious use, while the pudendal cleft would not suggest itself to
girls (and still less to boys) as the gate of birth, since it
already appears to be monopolized by the urinary excretion. This
belief concerning the navel is sometimes preserved through the
whole period of adolescence, especially in girls of the so-called