GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 133 



A. S. lac is Indus and sacrificium ; Old French lat, Eng- 

 lish lay may be noted. Old Slavonic liku, O.N. leikr 

 for game, dance, are also to the point. In Landsmaal leik 

 is still a game with rapid motion, a violent dance ; leikvoll 

 is the dancing place ; leikestova, a dancing-room ; leikfugl 

 is a bird at pairing time ; and leike is used for the gambols 

 of birds at pairing time. But in M.H.G-. hUeih simply 

 means marriage. Thus a word for patriarchal marriage 

 takes its name from the old group custom. It is 

 reflected in the modern English wedding dance, but 

 much more strongly in the more or less obscene dances 

 occurring among the German peasantry at weddings and 

 at Kirmes, May-day, and other periodic festivals. 1 The 

 choral wedding song is found in most Aryan races. We 

 may note the Greek eV^aXayiuo?, Swedish brddsang, 

 O.H.G. briitisang, A.S. bri/dsang and bri/dleod* In 

 this respect also we must compare the htteih with the 

 mysterious wwvtteod, the cantica diabolica, or ribald 

 songs sung by German maidens at periodical feasts at 

 or even inside the early Christian churches. In the 

 Fivelingoer Landregt, an old Friesian law-book of 

 which the existing MS. is early fourteenth-century, we 

 are told that the Friesian bride is to be brought to her 

 bridegroom with winnasonge. 3 A more direct link 

 between the patriarchal bridal ceremony and the old 

 group habits it is difficult to imagine. What, however, 



1 I hope later to publish an essay on peasant festivals, and show their 

 relation to the old kin-group customs. 



2 The term Frauentanz also deserves notice ; it was used by the Minnesinger, 

 not for dance, but for a particular form of song, probably originally a choral 

 dance. 



3 Edition Hatterna, p. 44. A translation of the whole passage is given in 

 the Essay on "Woman as Witch," p. 17. 



