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ascetic virgin saint. She is the typical goddess of 

 fruitfulness with a by no means ascetic cult. She is the 

 presiding spirit of the old group-gatherings with their 

 common meal, their clan discussions and elements of 

 law-making, their agricultural ritual, their general wor- 

 ship of fruitfulness and fertility, and their blessing 

 of animals, of corn, and of the hearth and its industries. 

 But the fruitfulness of animals and land is associated 

 with the like in mankind, and the bathing in the sacred 

 spring or the dew are only another side of the worship 

 which culminated in the license of Walpurgisnacht. 

 It is in this aspect that the Westphalian Walpurg at 

 Antwerp appears as a Venus, a goddess of fertility to 

 whom barren women offer wreaths of flowers. In this 

 aspect of goddess of love and fertility she reappears near 

 Eichstadt, while even in the Catholic calendar she has 

 the patronate of the fruitfulness of the soil. 



It will be seen from the above brief account of Wal- 

 purg that she corresponds exactly to the type of goddess 

 we should expect to meet with in the ceremonials of 

 witchcraft and in the revels of Walpurgisnacht. She is 

 the old type of mother-goddess who, like a good many 

 of her sisters, has received a slight coat of whitewash 

 from the early Christians and reappeared as a Catholic 

 virgin and saint. 



Walpurg brings before us clearly all the strong and 

 weak points of that old- woman civilisation, fossils of which 

 I have suggested are lurking half hidden in the folklore 

 of witchcraft. It is a civilisation based rather on the 

 useful arts of agriculture and domestic economy than of 

 war and the chase. It is one in which the earliest rudi- 



