ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 83 



Berg the bridal fiddles and pipes resound ; while in 

 both Der Konigssohn der sich vor nielits furchtet and 

 Der Trommler we see that the marriage festival was 

 in the evening or at night. Lastly, the hostility which 

 the witches offer (as in Jorinde und Joringel) to chaste 

 maidens is not without its suggest iveness, if the witch 

 be the degraded form of the old priestess of the goddess 

 of fertility, and the witches' Sabbath a relic of the old 

 sex-festival. Such a goddess of fertility actually crops 

 up in the appeal of Dat Maken von Brakel for a 

 husband to St. Anne in the Hinnenborg Chapel. It 

 will be seen that the marriage of the Mdrelien is more 

 akin to that of the free Friesian woman, with its choral 

 song and torches by night, than to the sober ceremony 

 of the church. Indeed I can only recall seven tales in 

 which any reference is made to a religious ceremony at 

 marriage, and the majority of these are late, because 

 they are marked by a patriarchal law of inheritance. 

 Thus in Der treue Johannes, Aschenputtel, Kdnig 

 Drosselbart, De beiden Kunigeskinner, and Die seeks 

 Diener we are dealing with kings or kings' sons, who 

 take their brides to church and afterwards to their own 

 home or kingdom. The wife rides off with her husband, 

 and it is a Brautlauf of the patriarchal period, not an 

 ancient matriarchal Heileich with which we are dealing. 

 The remaining two of the seven tales in which the 

 church ceremony is referred to are those of Vom Jclugen 

 Schneiderlein and of Die ivalire Braut, and in these 

 the husband does go to the wife's home. The mention 

 of the church in the first may easily be a later addition, 

 and the casual reference to the priest in the last line of 



