io WOMAN AS WITCH 



for the communism of the kin-group, and for the license 

 and cruelty of its religious rites. 



Looking at such a hypothetical phase of civilisation 

 as I have sketched above, where, if it had once existed, 

 should we expect to still find fossils of it 1 ? Clearly 

 in the primitive words for relationship and sex, in 

 the folklore of early agriculture ; in the folklore of 

 distaff, of pitchfork, and of broom ; in the myths of 

 primitive female deities ; in the customs of the medi- 

 aeval spinning -room ; in peasant customs at marriage 

 and birth ; in folk-festivals on high holidays, especially 

 spring and harvest feasts, with their faint reflexes in 

 children's games ; in peasant dances and songs ; in 

 early religious ceremonies, whether adopted by primi- 

 tive Christianity, or driven by it into dark corners as 

 witchcraft ; in the sagas of primitive and titanic women, 

 already in the heroic age fossils of an earlier period such, 

 for instance, as the stories of Clytemnestra and Medea, 

 of Brunhilda and Gudrun. If there be any truth in 

 our hypothesis, not only will fossils be found in these 

 various places, but these fossils themselves will be 

 strangely linked together, and by piecing and compar- 

 ing them it will be possible to reconstruct a whole. 

 We should expect to find related, if not identical, 

 customs in the spinning-room of the Middle Ages and 

 in peasant marriage ceremonies ; in the observances of 

 witchcraft, and in the veneration of local saints in ; 

 May Day celebrations, and in the licentious worship of 

 Walpurg on the Brocken. 



In order to find examples of these linked fossils 

 let us, in the first place, go back to some primitive 



