WOMAN AS WITCH 25 



the maiden places a wreath round the hat of her sweet- 

 heart, and the evening ends in feasting and drinking. 

 In other parts of Hesse the fee-calling takes place at 

 Kirmes, and the couple only dance together for the 

 Kirmes. Both periods remind us, however, of the 

 Kirmes lover, or " three-day sweetheart " ; we are clearly 

 dealing with a fossil of the old temporary sex-relation- 

 ship. In Oberndorf, in Swabia, a like ceremony occurs 

 at Midsummer Day, another great heathen and witch 

 festival. This ceremony is called the Weiberdingete, 

 or wife-hire, and consists in each man taking his wife 

 to the village inn. The wife asks : " Will you hire 

 your old wife again for another year ? " The husband 

 answers: "Yes, I'll try it again with my old wife." 

 Feasting, singing, and drinking go on till midnight, 

 and the wife, it should be noted, pays the score. 



A similar institution was the Handfasting in Esk- 

 dalemuir at the annual fair, where the unmarried of 

 both sexes selected partners for the space of one year. 

 If they were satisfied with the marriage, they continued 

 again after the year, but if not they separated. This 

 old Scottish custom seems to have combined the May- 

 fee and the wife-hire. All are most noteworthy, as 

 indicating that the licentious extravagances of the 

 witch - gatherings point back to a form of marriage 

 totally different from that of the patriarchal system, 

 and peculiar to an age when the status of woman in 

 both social and religious matters was far freer than it 

 could be after the advent of Christianity and the 

 martial organisation which accompanied the age of 

 the folk- wanderings. 



