1 3 o KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



became unintelligible, the ideas of wifeless, childless, and 

 fatherless vaguely remaining associated with it, and 

 ultimately they crystallised out into the conception of 

 confirmed old bachelor. Celibates are unknown, how- 

 ever, in primitive society. How many ' spinsters ' 

 were virgins even in 1200 ? How many words for 

 celibates (caelebs, 1 virgo, spinster, bachelor, hagestalt, 

 TrapOevos, etc.) can be traced to a primitive root bearing 

 the sense of unwed ? They are either late introductions, 

 or their first senses are lost in the obscurity of a primi- 

 tive social order not yet reconstructed by philologists. 



If hagastalt was the name for the male dweller in 

 the hag, we have a still more suggestive one for the 

 female. This is the O.H.G-. hagazusa, hagezissa, con- 

 tracted to hdzus and hdzusa, M.H.G. hagetisse, A.S. 

 hagtesse, haegesse, hdgtis, Swiss hagsch, and English hag. 

 The haegesse is the woman of the hag ; she is the woman 

 of the old civilisation, the priestess of its faith, and the 

 mistress of its ancient wisdom. Traces of her were found 

 by the early Christian missionaries, and her choral festi- 

 vals, sex-feasts, and strange sacrifices seemed to them 

 very devilish ; but this is a point on which I have 

 enlarged elsewhere. 2 With regard to the derivation sug- 

 gested for hexe, or rather for its earlier forms hagezissa, 

 hagetissa, I must mention that Weigand first associated 

 it with the root hag, and interpreted it to mean woman 

 of the woods. The earlier derivation from O.N. hag, 

 A.S. hog, skilful, wise, had already been objected to by 



1 Cae-lebs is Slavonic sti-logu, the bed-fellow, the male unit of the old group- 

 marriage, exactly like hagestalt ! 



2 See Essays X. and XII. The tenth to eleventh century translator of 

 Martinus Capella uses hazessa for the women who eat by night. 



