56 ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 



mediaeval society with its knight, its monk, and its 

 burgher. Here were people whose wells and streams, 

 forests and hilltops, were sacred, not to Christian, but 

 to very heathen beings, to spinning ladies, to little men, 

 and magic-working old women. The people, in fact, 

 who created the Mdrchen are the people who created 

 the Weisthumer, the folk of the Hag and the Mahal. 



Bearing in mind what other essays have to show 

 us of the nature of the primitive kin -communities, we 

 can with a considerable degree of certainty date the 

 period from which many individual Mdrchen have 

 sprung. In broad outline there are three chief periods 

 to be considered : 



(a) An endogamous period, in which relationship 

 of the womb is the bond between the group, social and 

 sexual. The continuity of the group is maintained by 

 the women, and its property may in this sense be 

 said to pass through them. The kin-group worship a 

 goddess of fertility, who is served by her priestesses, 

 the matrons, seeresses, and wise women of the group. 

 A kin-alderman is selected in case of need. 



(b) A transition period, in which the kin-alderman, 

 zupan or Kuning. has usurped chief power in the 

 group. The property still passes through the women, 

 but the king has taken possession of the women. 

 The sex-custom of the group has become exogamous, 

 but property does not descend from father to son. 

 The man marries into the wife's group, and the way 

 to obtain a ' kingdom ' is to kill the king and marry 

 his queen, or more peacefully to marry his daughter. 

 ' Kings ' are as plentiful as blackberries, because 



