Professor Vaz da Silva Speaks of the Dangers and Mysteries of
the Seventh Born Child
by Shaun Lynn
Professor Francisco Gentil Vaz da Silva, a visiting
scholar from the University of Lisbon, presented his views on
ethnography and folklore in a lecture entitled Seventh-Born
Children in Iberian Folktales: Mythism and Everyday Life.
Professor Alan Dundes, Chair of UC Berkeley's Folklore Program,
introduced Vaz da Silva to the capacity audience in Kroeber Hall's
Gifford Room.
"An interesting point to make about Professor Vaz da Silva,"
said Dundes, "is that he was not trained as a folklorist. He spent
his early career as an anthropologist and ethnographer of the
Iberian region." Vaz da Silva soon discovered that folklore played
a critical role in the lives of these people, and any ethnographic
study would be incomplete without a detailed examination of their
beliefs and oral tradition. He deems areas of the Iberian Peninsula
"ethnographical singularities," where specific folktales thrive
and circulate within certain communities.
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The topic of Vaz da Silva's talk focused on the peculiar familial
and societal relationships that surrounded the seventh-born children
of northern Iberia. Vaz da Silva noticed that when families had
seven or more children, the eldest sibling—or sometimes even
a complete stranger—was chosen to be the youngest sibling's
godparent. This was done, according to the families he interviewed,
"lest he or she be doomed to a supernatural fate [or] epileptic
fits." Such supernatural fates include children becoming witches
and werewolves as well as possessing magical healing powers.
Vaz da Silva created a complex formula—he calls it his "Trinity"
or "Triune" equation—to describe this phenomenon of Otherness
found in seventh-born children. Simply stated, the equation shows
how the seventh born child is removed from the family since his
or her birth disrupts the Trinity pattern (two groups of three
children have come before it). The last-born is therefore not
fully connected with the social world. Its association with the
number seven means that the child shares its existence with the
realm of the dead, since in Iberian folklore the last seven years
of a person's life are spent between living and death. By assigning
the first-born the position of godparent to the last-born, the
older sibling brings the youngest closer to the family and aids
in the child's integration into the land of the living.
The stigma associated with "exceptional children," those born
seventh or later, is a reflection of the social stigma that comes
with large families. These children are born "in excess of family
positions" and are therefore deemed beyond the scope of the parents
(as well as a burden on the neighbors who have been called in
as godparents before). The connection between the first- and last-born
children addresses this problem, since it symbolically completes
the circle of life. This relationship is seen as a form of mystical
contraception, since it should, in theory, represent the end of
the family line. Of course, this is not always the case, and with
each exceptional child there remains the chance that they will
become a witch or werewolf. Exceptional girls must suffer the
added shame of being branded sexually ravenous, since her birth
was the result of the super-fecundity of her parents.
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The seventh-child archetype appears in many fairytales collected
in the Iberian region. A common tale recounts the story of a woman
who has seven children in three years: three sets of twins and
a seventh child no bigger than a thumb who possesses supernatural
powers. A version of Hansel and Gretel holds that Hansel is the
seventh-born child of his family. There is the story of a woman
who is pregnant with an exceptional child and who must go to a
bridge built by the devil to have her fetus baptized by a passing
stranger. Werewolves recruit their ranks from seventh born children
who have been improperly baptized or who resulted from improper
sexual activities. Curses of witchcraft or lycanthrope are often
suffered for a period of seven years.
Through his study of the seventh-child phenomenon, Professor
Vaz da Silva is better able to explain the culture that defined
these people's lives. Through measured folkloric examinations
he creates a clearer picture of the Northern Iberia's past as
well as the reasoning behind the oral history that defines its
present.
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Professor Vaz da Silva is currently teaching a course
in European Fairy Tales as well as a course on Portuguese and
Spanish Oral
Tradition. Click
here for more information.
