this version is quite different...
Quote:
Mary Toft was four weeks with child when she chased a very naughty rabbit out of her lettuce garden. When she came upon it she accidentally frightened the animal into a gushing river where it met a violent end to it's short little life. Two weeks later she began to experience sharp labor pains. Doctors called tot he scene witnessed Mary expelling unrecognizable mounds of a flesh like substance. Afterward Mary continued to display signs of pregnancy. Seventeen times within the year she continued to give birth to what eventually became such items as rabbit torso and balls of skin in clumps. She became something of a local celebrity and eventually gave birth to a bouncing baby girl.
Many old folk legends are similar to this story and involve human-animal interbreeding. Often they were created to explain away a part of pregnancy that medical science could not understand. Superstition also claimed that if a woman with child spends too much time before a hot stove she will conceive an evil looking animal who will eventually feed off her real baby stealing it's nourishment till only it survives.
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have there been recent occurances of this kind of thing?