138 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



tion from the tribal chief, or ' alderman of the kin,' to 

 the patriarch. In concluding this part of our subject, I 

 may stay to remark that if we put on one side words 

 for marriage which are of patriarchal manufacture 

 (e.g. brautkauf, ehe (?), veddjan, wedding, conjugium, 

 coemptio, Norse and Anglo-Saxon gift, giftung, English 

 spousals, giving away, German mitgift, etc.), we find 

 that the remainder are chiefly deduced from the old 

 kindred group customs, thus from the common meal 

 (vermcihlung, confarreatio), the choral dance (hileih, 

 v/jirjv, hymen*), and the kin council (Mrdt). In these 

 customs we find the prototype of most Aryan wedding 

 ceremonies. 2 



(5) We must now pass to a series of roots for kin- 

 ship, emphasising still more strongly the endogamous 

 character of the primitive kin-group. 



The next general root for sex relationship which we 

 will take is mag or mah, and this is simply the root of 

 our English make. I shall give reasons later for sup- 

 posing the mother to have been looked upon in primi- 

 tive times as the maker of life, 3 and the mould in which 

 she cast it was the magen (A.S. maga), the belly or 

 womb. A long series of words marks the relationship 

 of the magen or womb, or at any rate denote what is 

 moulded or formed there. Mac, mdk, mdg, mdch, and 



1 Hymen is originally nothing more than the hymn or song, the winileod. 



2 I take contubernium, consortium to be essentially fossils of the mother-age 

 civilisation. ydfj.os is also interesting ; its root, as in ya^w, may denote mere 

 sexual relations, and it is used itself both for the marriage and the feast before it. 



3 Kindermachen = Troi?v Traida, to bear children, was originally used of the 

 mother in a perfectly refined sense, e.g. "in dieser nechst vergangen nacht, hat 

 mich mein mutter erst gemacht." Then later machcn like iroieiv is used of the 

 father. In mediaeval German it is used chiefly of the mother for children born 

 out of wedlock this in itself is suggestive. 



