WOMAN AS WITCH 15 



Modern German Hagestolz is used for the confirmed old 

 bachelor. 1 Why should the man of the old Gehag have 

 handed down his name to the confirmed bachelor of 

 to-day ? The gradual changes in the significance of the 

 word are easy to suggest, if we remember that in the 

 mother-age descent was reckoned through the woman, 

 the man was childless, or rather only related in a vague 

 manner either to his sister's children or to all the 

 children of the group. To the men of the patriarchal 

 civilisation the Gehag man was not only childless but 

 wifeless ; the old group - marriage was for them no 

 marriage at all, and the Hagestolz became the con- 

 firmed bachelor. 



If we halt here for a minute, we see that the German 

 name for witch is carrying us into a new phase of early 

 civilisation, which we shall also find fossilised in witch- 

 craft. Namely, to a group of men and women living 

 in a palisaded dwelling, with a form of marriage totally 

 different from what we call marriage to-day. It was a 

 form of marriage which was a needful step in the 

 growth of civilisation, and therefore moral in its day. 

 But there is little wonder that the early Christian 

 missionaries looked upon it as complete license ; that 

 the hag or woodwoman, with her strange magical 

 powers over weather and cattle and young children, 

 w r ith her mysterious ceremonies at ancient trees, springs, 

 and on hilltops ; that the common meals, night dances, 

 weird and occasionally horrible sacrifices to strange 

 goddesses, that the group rites of marriage and views 



1 From the present standpoint it is noteworthy that in many parts of 

 Germany the old local laws gave the property of the Hagestolz on his death, 

 whether he made a will or not, or left blood relatives or not, to the state. 



