124 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



tilth is used as symbol of sexual reproduction, 1 and to 

 found a home becomes equivalent to marrying. No 

 root, indeed, furnishes us with so many fossils of primi- 

 tive Teutonic society as M or heg. 2 



In Gothic the root only appears as heivan or haiv 

 in the compound heivafrauja, the hausherr, or master 

 of the home, but in Anglo-Saxon and German the 

 cognate words are very numerous. In mentioning some 

 of them I should ask the reader to bear in mind the 

 triple significance of the root, and further the picture 

 I have sketched of the primitive group, and its gradual 

 transition from kindred marriage to patriarchal customs 

 with the assumption of supreme power by the tribal 

 chief; this assumption ultimately denoting the subjection 

 of the females and younger males of the group. We 

 have to watch the root passing from a purely sexual 

 use to that connoting permanent family relations. 



First in German. In O.H.G. hijan denotes rather 

 coire than nubere, and this sense is preserved in L.G. 

 liiget uns den hund as a phrase of coarse abuse. In the 

 seventeenth century mcigdelieyer was used for seducer, 

 and a good deal of history is conveyed in the colloquial 

 Lasz mich ungeheit, "don't bother me," common in several 

 parts of Germany, a phrase fitting only in Frauen- 

 mund, and the origin of which is now quite forgotten. 3 



1 Notice, for example, Greek 7^77$, &povpa, for arable land, woman, and womb ; 

 dpjd), plough, beget ; #\o, furrow, womb, wife ; and dporos, tillage, the legal 

 term for begetting children in matrimony. See Appendix III. 



2 It is noteworthy that all that Robertson Smith tells us, in Kinship and 

 Marriage among the Arabians, of the Hayy, or kindred group, would apply to 

 the Teutonic Hiwa. Even Eve, interpreted as ffawwa, a mere variation of 

 ffayy, appears as the great mother, the Jcone at the head of the kin-group. 



3 Hijgaten remained later in the original sense in Bavarian dialect, and is 

 glossed perforare. 



