Birth in the amniotic sac in folk belief, literature and history

Modern medicine holds that birth inside the amniotic sac, or caul, occurs in roughly one case in eighty thousand, which is why such deliveries tend to become a significant news item for specialist journalists. In former times, children born in such a bubble, with the waters not yet broken, were considered lucky and marked with some mystical sign. In the East it is customary to believe that such circumstances of birth foretell a great future for a person. The luck embodied in this wondrous occurrence was, as it were, preserved along with the biological material: mothers kept the sac in dried form, as an amulet for their child. European superstition endowed children born in the amniotic sac with supernatural abilities, and sometimes the same characteristics turn up in legends about vampires. Recall the opening of the novel by David Copperfield (sic), where the talisman, the dried sac, worked its magic by protecting against drowning. In works of fiction such a birth appears in Alan Moore, is ascribed to Hamlet, or, for instance, to Danny Torrance in «The Shining», who was likewise born with a caul. Among historical figures, Freud, Byron and Napoleon came into the world in the amniotic membrane.