This custom of swatheling children in their infancy, though evidently injurious as well as ridiculous, has prevailed from a very early period, and is still practised in some parts of Europe. We can hardly doubt that our Anglo-Saxon forefathers swatheled their children, although the practice is not very clearly described by any of their writers. We derive the word itself from the Anglo-Saxon language, in which _beswethan_ means to swathe or bind, _suethe_ signifies a band or swathe, and _swethel_ or _swæthil_, a swaddling-band. These words appear, however, to have been used in a more extensive sense among the Anglo-Saxons than their representatives in more recent times, and as I have not met with them applied in this restricted sense in Anglo-Saxon writers, I should not hastily assume from them that our early Teutonic forefathers did swathe their new-born children. In an Anglo-Saxon poem on the birth of Christ, contained in the Exeter Book (p. 45), the poet speaks of-- _Bearnes gebyrda,_ _The child’s birth,_ _þa he in binne wæs_ _when he in the bin was_ _in cildes hiw_ _in a child’s form_ _claþum biwunden._ _with cloths wound round._ These words refer clearly to the practice of swaddling; and, though the Anglo-Saxon artist has not here portrayed his object very distinctly, we can hardly doubt that, in our cut (No. 34), taken from the Anglo-Saxon manuscript of Cædmon, the child, which its mother is represented as holding, is intended to be swathed. [Illustration: _No. 34. Anglo-Saxon Mother and Child._] The word _bin_, used in the lines of the Anglo-Saxon poem just quoted, which means a hutch or a manger, has reference, of course, to the circumstances of the birth of the Saviour, and is not here employed to signify a cradle. This last word is itself Anglo-Saxon, and has stood its ground in our language successfully against the influence of the Anglo-Norman, in which it was called a _bers_ or _bersel_, from the latter of which is derived the modern French _berçeau_. Another name for a cradle was _crib_; a poem in the Exeter Book (p. 87) speaks of _cild geong on crybbe_ (a young child in a cradle). Our cut No. 35, also taken from the manuscript of Cædmon, represents an Anglo-Saxon cradle of rather rude construction. The illuminators of a later period often represent the cradle of elegant form and richly ornamented. The Anglo-Saxon child appears here also to be swaddled, but it is still drawn too inaccurately to be decisive on this point. The latter illuminators were more particular and correct in their delineations, and leave no doubt of the universal practice of swaddling infants. A good example is given in our cut No. 36, taken from an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth century, of which a copy is given in the large work of the late M. du Sommerard. [Illustration: _No. 35. Anglo-Saxon Child in its Cradle._]