| The CUCKOO BIRD resurfaces
in family lineage. When the family tree is based on ‘male blood'
a son is sought after so that the family does not ‘die out’.
The patriarchal tradition favours women who bear sons and male children
over female children. An interesting twist. In England, when couples adopted a child, it was the female child that was preferred over the boy for he was seen as a sort of CUCKOO-CHILD. Were he adopted he would be entitled to the family name, and thus, pass on cuckoo-blood [biologically unrelated] to the family line. An adopted girl would only bear the surname of the man she married. 1 Her blood was in sort, invisible in the European family tree. Her blood did not CORRUPT the family line.
[next] |
 |
1 ILLEGITIMACY
- AN EXAMINATION OF BASTARDY, Jenny Teichman Cornell University
Press: New York, 1982 (p.95) TOP |