GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 137 



If we turn to hirdt, we find in it either the council 

 of the hiwa, the family group, or the kin-talk which 

 took place at the hijen festival. It is not an unnatural 

 evolution that in patriarchal days the arrangement of 

 marriages should have come to take place, as Tacitus 

 tells us, at the kin -meeting, at the meal which in still 

 more primitive times preceded the sex-festival. Another 

 name for the old kin-talk, not, however, used like heirath 

 for matrimony, was hagespraka. I have found it used 

 for the annual assembly for judicial purposes of the 

 Markgenossen - - an assembly, be it noted, always 

 accompanied by a convivial meal. 1 



While Mr at has come to mean marriage in German, 

 the cognate Anglo-Saxon hired denotes the family and 

 not the marriage. We have, in fact, the tribe-talk or 

 council used on the one hand to denote the sexual rela- 

 tions of the group, and on the other the group itself. 

 Hiredsmoder is materfamilias, and might, perhaps, be 

 pressed to show the position of the kin or tribe mother 

 in council. On the other hand, paterfamilias is rendered 

 by hiredesealder, the family alderman, as well as by 

 hiredesfaeder, and probably the use indicates a transi- 



of folklore from north to south of the Germanic lands. The sacrifice of a real 

 goat, gaily bedecked with flowers and ribbons, occurs in Dauphine, and here, be 

 it noted, the woman has to hold the goat while it is killed. In Miinsterthal on 

 Fastnacht the women used to lead round the streets a gaily-bedecked goat, and 

 carried also wine for a feast. No man before nightfall might be seen even at the 

 windows (Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, ii. s. 184). Fastnacht falls generally 

 within the Weibermonat. When we notice also the important part played by 

 the goat in the Hexenmahl and its ceremonies, we recognise rpayySLa, ' the goat- 

 song, ' to be only a variant of the Mleih. 



1 The association of the hag and the mark is very close, and I hope to return 

 to it. Haaggeld was the fee paid to a lord or chief for protection of a fenced 

 farm, and Jiaghenne, a similar tribute, paid, be it observed, on Walpurgistag, 

 the day of the old sex-festival. 



