One of the Irish triads stated that the oath of a woman in childbirth was one of the three oaths that could not be countersworn.

For a moment I wonder whether I should tell him the rest; that for some reason I saw that young woman with her face half eaten away, that I saw her somehow blending into, consumed by the landscape, that she was down on the pier surrounded by a crowd of men behaving like crazened, ravenous dogs, that she might even have been one of the dead women on the beach, twisted amongst the fish.

To ech of hem his tyme and his seson, / As thyn herberwe chaungeth lowe or heighe

He was hatted, booted, overcoated, and umbrellaed, as became a person who was about to expose himself to the night and the storm on an errand of charity […]