io6 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



the cleared space by spring or Brunnen. The group 

 itself occupied a palisaded or fenced dwelling, and 

 appears to have had considerable social and some 

 amount of defensive organisation, probably a leader, in 

 case of fighting, was chosen by the whole group. From 

 this leader ultimately arose the father as tribal father 

 (before the father as family-father), and so the patriarchal 

 system. Eound the fenced dwelling we should find the 

 common land of the group tilled for its common benefit 

 and used for the group cattle, and probably a more or 

 less ample girdle of wood separating one settlement 

 from a second. Under the patriarchal system the 

 whole develops into the Mark, which receives a new 

 significance when its customs are interpreted in the 

 light of group -marriage. Each district had its particular 

 mother-goddess, who may have been common to several 

 groups which had branched off from a common parent 

 group. This goddess, whether called Nerthus, Berchta, 

 G-ode, Fru, Hilde, Walpurga, or Verena, was essentially 

 a goddess of fruition. She is the source of fertility in 

 land, in animals, and in human beings ; she is both a 

 goddess of agriculture and a goddess of love. She 

 favours the crops, aids women in childbirth ; and yet 

 her worship is associated with what appeared to a 

 later age as the wildest forms of license. Furthermore, 

 the primitive savagery of this early form of human 

 society is marked by the underlying element of cruelty 

 to be traced in the nature of Berchta, Gode, or 

 Hilde. 



The servants of these goddesses were priestesses, or, 

 at a later date, men dressed as women ; and the traces we 



