Childbirth in a Galician cottage: death and superstition among 19th-century peasant women

In 19th-century Galicia, women gave birth to as many as a dozen or more children, and each birth threatened health and life. Births took place in village cottages, often with the help of midwives and amid numerous superstitions. Ethnographer Oskar Kolberg documented the local rituals and songs, preserving an image of the suffering and danger faced by peasant women.