122 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



gesivester, svskende, systkin, are those who are suds to- 

 gether that is, familiar or lieimlich together, and much 

 in the same sense originally as to become heimlich is to 

 pair. 1 Sivdsman is 0.8. for brother, sivdseline Middle 

 Dutch for relative, and swdsenede for female friend ; 

 beswas is M.L.O. for related, and stvesbedde Friesian 

 for incest. Similarly, we may find the same primitive 

 idea involving both sexes in bar. Sanscrit Vartar is 

 spouse and nourisher, b'ratardu denotes brother and 

 sister, brethren of both sexes. Greek fyparpa, kinship, 

 marks closely the old kin -group, but also a common 

 meal, a O-VO-O-LTIOV : and I believe that the annual festival 

 of the Apaturia, 2 or gathering of the clan, preceded 

 immediately by the Chalceia or feast of the goddess 

 Athene, was a fossil of the old kin sex-festival and 

 the worship of the goddess of fertility. 3 Doubtless it 

 was primitively associated with the same intermingling 

 of kin. Indeed, the root of brother and bride carries 

 us back to the stage of civilisation which left its fossils 

 in Iris, sister and wife of Osiris ; Freya, sister and wife 



1 Compare the Latin sueo to be accustomed, to be wont, and the sexual mean- 

 ing of consuesco and consuetio. Bopp would deduce sister, svasr, fromsm, own, 

 private, and stdr = strt = woman. This stri he takes to be a degenerate form of 

 stitri and sdtar, from sd, to bring forth, bear, so that sister would stand for 

 sva-stitar, a man's own or special child-bearer. 



2 There was an enrolling of the new members of the Qp&rpa I expect 

 originally a matriculation (see footnote, p. 203) there was a torch procession 

 and a meeting for judicial business in fact, all the features, as we shall find 

 later, of the typical sex-festival. 



3 The record of virgin goddesses is much like that of many early female 

 saints, the farther we carry it back the more the ascetic character disappears ; 

 they become agamic rather than virgin. It was a later age which laid patri- 

 archal stress on virginity, and converted the original pangamic character of 

 these goddesses, exemplified in the doings of Demeter, into the virgin strength 

 of Athene or Artemis. The original type is the mother-goddess of fertility, 

 modelled on the agamic, but certainly not virgin, woman of the mother-age. 



