GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 129 



unpatriarchal sex notions. The hag, hac, A.S. haege, 

 haga ; English haiv, and Scottish haugh, a staked 

 inclosure or hedged -in place, gave its name to its 

 occupants. Thus we have the hitherto obscure word 

 hagestolz, at present meaning a confirmed old bachelor. 

 Its earlier forms are O.H.G. hagastalt, A.S. hagsteald, the 

 stalt of the hag. Its primitive meaning is, I think, clearly 

 indicated by the early glosses mercenarius, famulus, 

 while in Anglo-Saxon it denotes the man who has not his 

 own household. (Compare the Scotch hagasted, of one 

 familiar with a place.) It is precisely equivalent to the 

 heie and hienman, the member of the hive. Haistaldi is 

 glossed agricolae libri, and we see in the hagestalt, the 

 fighter, the servant, and the agriculturist of the primi- 

 tive hag group. But how came the word to be used for 

 old bachelor ? In the Rheinpfalz it had the meaning of 

 childless man, whether married or not ; in other parts of 

 Germany it was used for the bastard or fatherless man 

 both are equally significant indications of the primitive 

 sense. The haistaldi were a class who knew not their 

 fathers, and this because the hive had the custom of 

 group-marriage and knew only womb-kinship. As the 

 patriarchate developed, and men began to possess in- 

 dividual children by the capture or purchase of wives 

 as the patricians became the dominant power, those 

 men who still lived under the old group -marriage system, 

 and had no special children among the progeny of the 

 hag, were looked upon as childless, even as they were 

 held to be fatherless and wifeless from the standpoint 

 of patriarchal man. Thus, as the old kin-group dis- 

 appeared before the new civilisation, the word hagestalt 



VOL. II K 



