ii4 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



in the Middle Ages termed the priest's concubines 

 pfaffenkunnen, ultimately corrupted into pfaffenkuhe ; 

 the change kuhe, kunne suggests another origin than cow 

 for English Jcine, the breeding females. Ayrer, in one of 

 his Fastnachtspiele, terms the sexton's daughter, kirch- 

 ners kunne, and kunne used for womb can hardly be other 

 than a variant of kone. We may note also A.S. haemed- 

 rif glossed nupta mulier, matrona, where rif is literally 

 womb, and the word haemed is glossed coitus. Thus the 

 primitive identification of the words for woman and for 

 her organ of sex is very widespread. The kone is accord- 

 ingly the woman in respect of her power of giving birth. 

 Although outside the Scandinavian kone is only pre- 

 served in Teutonic dialects at the present day in our 

 English queen as the head or female ruler on the one 

 hand, and in quean, a worthless woman or strumpet L 

 (A.S. hor-cwen, Shetland, hure-queyn) on the other, 

 still these two fossils are in themselves highly sug- 

 gestive. They mark, in the first place, the predomi- 

 nance of the kone in primitive times, and, in the second 

 place, the freedom of her sexual relations. The primi- 

 tive name for woman has been retained for two senses 

 which specially mark her early status. 



The corresponding Greek word is 71^77, but its Latin 

 equivalent has, according to some authorities, only been 

 preserved in the name of the goddess Venus. Thus 

 Venus is the woman par excellence. To term a goddess 

 simply " The Woman " is a peculiar feature of mother- 

 age mythology. Thus Sanskrit gnd, Zend ghena, is the 

 goddess or divine woman. We may also notice the 



1 Quenie, quean, queyn, is still used in a good sense in Scotland. 



