IX 



WOMAN AS WITCH 1 



EVIDENCES OF MOTHER-RIGHT IN THE CUSTOMS OF MEDIAEVAL 



WITCHCRAFT 



Quid non miraculo est, cum primum in notitiam venit ? PLINY. 



WHEN we seek to investigate the origins of such familiar 

 institutions as ownership and matrimony, we rapidly dis- 

 cover that written history is itself the product of a stage 

 of human development long posterior to that of the 

 origins we are curious about. To speak paradoxically, 

 history begins long before history. Vague and often 

 very unreliable traces of it traditional history are to 

 be found in the sagas and hero -songs of bards and 

 scalds. But bards and scalds are themselves an out- 

 come of the heroic age an age of warlike organisation 

 and of petty chieftains, if not of kings ; an age, indeed, 

 when ownership and marriage have already a long his- 

 tory, and are of that patriarchal type which the Bible, 

 if not Maurer or Maine, has made familiar to all of us. 

 This heroic age is, however, a thing but of yesterday- 



1 A lecture given in 1891 at the Somerville Club, but not hitherto published. 

 The lecture is here printed substantially as it was delivered, and accordingly no 

 references are given to the very numerous sources whence information has been 

 drawn. 



VOL. II B 



