goat-suckle

Perhaps you considered goat suckling the province of fiction, coming across it in Chapter 8 of Finnegan's Wake, or Greek mythology in the opening passage from Longus' Daphnis and Chloe:

"He saw the ewe behaving just like a human being-offering her teats to the baby so that it could drink all the milk it wanted, while the baby, which was not even crying, greedily applied first to one teat and then to another a mouth shining with cleanliness, for the ewe was in the habit of licking its face with her tongue when it had had enough."

In more modern times, we have Elian Gonzales, the Cuban boy who was a pawn in the apparent "struggle" between good and evil. No, we are not suggesting he was suckled by goats. But you might remember a well-publicized incident in which his grandmother, Mariela Quintana stuck her hand down the six year old boy's pants to determine how well his penis had been developing. This shocked Americans but did not surprise Cubans.

And similarly at first glance, the picture above seems shocking. But in turn-of-the-century rural Cuba, goat suckling was quite common. A plethora of souvenir postcards survive, depicting scenes similar to the above. They are testimony to the amusement Americans found visiting their newly-conquered island.


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