it in the little island of Marken in the Zuyder Zee. Even in rural England, notably in East Anglia, a curiously obstinate belief survives (the prevalence of which in earlier times is proved by references to it in Elizabethan drama) that the pregnancy of the woman affects the man, and the young husband who complains of a toothache is assailed by pleasantries as to his wife’s condition. In Guiana the custom is observed in its most typical form. The woman works to within a few hours of the birth, but some days before her delivery the father leaves his occupations and abstains from certain kinds of animal food lest the child should suffer. Thus the flesh of the agouti is forbidden, lest the child should be lean, and that of the capibara or water-cavy, for fear he should inherit through his father’s gluttony that creature’s projecting teeth. A few hours before delivery the woman goes alone, or with one or two women-friends, into the forest, where the baby is born. She returns as soon as she can stand, to her work, and the man then takes to his hammock and becomes the invalid. He must do no work, must touch no weapons, is forbidden all meat and food, except at first a fermented liquor and after the twelfth day a weak gruel of cassava meal. He must not even smoke, or wash himself, but is waited on hand and foot by the women. So far is the comedy carried that he whines and groans as if in actual pain. Six weeks after the birth of the child he is taken in hand by his relatives, who lacerate his skin and rub him with a decoction of the pepper-plant. A banquet is then held from which the patient is excluded, for he must not leave his bed till several days later; and for six months he must eat the flesh of neither fish nor bird. Almost identical ceremonies have been noticed among the natives of California and New Mexico; while in Greenland and Kamchatka the husband may not work for some time before and after his wife’s confinement. Among the Larkas of Bengal a period of isolation and uncleanness, synchronous with that compulsory on the woman, is imperative for the man, on the conclusion of which the child’s parentage is publicly proclaimed.
No certain explanation can be offered for the custom. The most reasonable view is that adopted by E. B. Tylor, who traces in it the transition from the earlier matriarchal to the later patriarchal system of tribe-organization. Among primitive tribes, and probably in all ages, the former order of society, in which descent and inheritance are reckoned through the mother alone, as being the earliest form of family life, is and was very common, if not universal. The acknowledgment of a relationship between father and son is characteristic of the progress of society towards a true family life. It may well be that the Couvade arose in the father’s desire to emphasize the bond of blood between himself and his child. It is a fact that in some countries the father has to purchase the child from its mother; and in the Roman ceremony of the husband raising the baby from the floor we may trace the savage idea that the male parent must formally proclaim his adoption of and responsibility for the offspring. Max Müller, in his Chips from a German Workshop, endeavoured to find an explanation in primitive “henpecking,” asserting that the unfortunate husband was tyrannized over by “his female relatives and afterwards frightened into superstition,”—that, in fact, the whole fabric of ceremony is reared on nothing but masculine hysteria; but this theory can scarcely be taken seriously. The missionary, Joseph François Lafitau, suspected a psychological reason, assuming the custom to be a dim recollection of original sin, the isolation and fast types of repentance. The explanation of the American Indians is that if the father engaged in any hard or hazardous work, e.g. hunting, or was careless in his diet, the child would suffer and inherit the physical faults and peculiarities of the animals eaten. This belief that a person becomes possessed of the nature and form of the animal he eats is widespread, being as prevalent in the Old World as in the New, but it is insufficient to account for the minute ceremonial details of La Couvade as practised in many lands. It is far more likely that so universal a practice has no trivial beginnings, but is to be considered as a mile-stone marking a great transitional epoch in human progress.
Authorities.—E. B. Tylor’s Early History of Man (1865; 2nd ed. p. 301); F. Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop (1868–1875), ii. 281; Lord Avebury, Origin of Civilisation (1900); Brett’s Indian Tribes of Guiana; Johann Baptist von Spix and Karl F. P. von Martius, Travels in Brazil (1823–1831), ii. 281; J. F. Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages américains (1st ed., 1724); W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe (1900); A. H. Keane’s Ethnology (1896), p. 368 and footnote; A. Giraud-Teulon, Les Origines du mariage et de la famille (Paris, 1884).
COVE, a word mostly used in the sense of a small inlet or
sheltered bay in a coast-line. In English dialect usage it is also
applied to a cave or to a recess in a mountain-side. The word
in O. Eng. is cofa, and cognate forms are found in the Ger.
Koben, Norwegian kove, and in various forms in other Teutonic
languages. It has no connexion with “alcove,” recess in a room
or building, which is derived through the Span. alcoba from Arab.
al, the, and qubbah, vault, arch, nor with “cup” or “coop,”
nor with “cave” (Lat. cava). The use of the word was first
confined to a small chamber or cell or inner recess in a room or
building. From this has come the particular application in
architecture to any kind of concave moulding, the term being
usually applied to the quadrantal curve rising from the cornice
of a lofty room to the moulded borders of the horizontal ceiling.
The term “coving” is given in half-timbered work to the curved
soffit under a projecting window, or in the 18th century to that
occasionally found carrying the gutter of a house. In the Musée
Plantin at Antwerp the hearth of the fireplace of the upper
floor is carved on coving, which forms part of the design of the
chimney-piece in the room below. The slang use of “cove”
for any male person, like a “fellow,” “chap,” &c., is found in
the form “cofe” in T. Harman’s Caveat for Cursetors (1587)
and other early quotations. This seems to be identical with the
Scots word “cofe,” a pedlar, hawker, which is formed from
“coff,” to sell, purchase, cognate with the Ger. kaufen, to
buy, and the native English “cheap.” The word “cove,”
therefore, is in ultimate origin the same as “chap,” short for
“chapman,” a pedlar.
COVELLITE, a mineral species consisting of cupric sulphide,
CuS, crystallizing in the hexagonal system. It is of less frequent
occurrence in nature than copper-glance, the orthorhombic
cuprous sulphide. Crystals are very rare, the mineral being
usually found as compact and earthy masses or as a blue coating
on other copper sulphides. Hardness 1½-2; specific gravity 4.6.
The dark indigo-blue colour is a characteristic feature, and the
mineral was early known as indigo-copper (Ger. Kupferindig).
The name covellite is taken from N. Covelli, who in 1839 observed
crystals of cupric sulphide encrusting Vesuvian lava, the mineral
having been formed here by the interaction of hydrogen sulphide
and cupric chloride, both of which are volatile volcanic products.
Covellite is, however, more commonly found in copper-bearing
veins, where it has resulted by the alteration of other copper
sulphides, namely chalcopyrite, copper-glance and erubescite.
It is found in many copper mines; localities which may be
specially mentioned are Sangerhausen in Prussian Saxony,
Butte in Montana, and Chile; in the Medicine Bow Mountains
of Wyoming a platiniferous covellite is mined, the platinum
being present as sperrylite (platinum arsenide). (L. J. S.)
COVENANT (an O. Fr. form, later convenant, from convenir,
to agree, Lat. convenire), a mutual agreement of two or more
parties, or an undertaking made by one of the parties. In the
Bible the Hebrew word בריה, bĕrīth, is used widely for many
kinds of agreements; it is then applied to a contract between
two persons or to a treaty between two nations, such as the
covenant made between Abimelech and Isaac, representing a
treaty between the Israelites and the Philistines (Gen. xxvi. 26, seq.); more
particularly to an engagement made between
God and men, or such agreements as, by the observance of a religious rite, regarded God as a party to the engagement. Two suggestions have been made for the derivation of bĕrīth: (1) tracing the word from a root “to cut,” and the reference is to the primitive rite of cutting victims into parts, between which the parties to an agreement passed, cf. the Greek ὅρκια τέμνειν, and the account (Gen. xv. 17) of the covenant between God and Abraham, where “a smoking furnace and burning lamp passed
