146 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



(0. Swedish mala and gamalialus are vermahlung and 

 gemahl), denote the whole round of marriage relations. 1 

 Can this be merely a figurative use of the idea of 

 talking together for the marriage relation, 2 or does 

 the notion arise from something which happened at the 

 old mahal, or tribal gathering? But, searching still 

 further, we find the word mdl denoting meal, food, 

 which has usually been distinguished from mdl, a 

 talk, an assembly. The ultimate identity of the two 

 can scarcely, I think, be disputed, although the origin 

 of mahl, a meal, has been ingeniously associated by 

 Skeat and others with the root ma, to measure, and so 

 with a measure of time. 3 In this case mahlzeit becomes 

 a senseless repetition, and the essential notion of meal 

 as a convivium, a high feast or banquet, disappears from 

 the origin of the word. Schmeller unconsciously bears 

 evidence for the close relation between mdl = mahal, 

 and mdl mahl, when he states that das mdl is par 

 excellence the hochzeitsmdl 4 among the Bavarian 

 peasantry. The mdlgeld, which each peasant has to 

 pay for this common feast, and his present to bride 

 and groom termed mdlet (the giving is maelen), come 

 strikingly close to the mdlpfenning which must be 

 paid to the mahlmann or judicial official of the mahal, 



1 It is a noteworthy fact that in many peasant-festivals, such as the Kirmes, 

 which I take to be relics of old heathen sex -festivals (see p. 19), we still find a 

 Gerichtspiel or Amtmanspiel ; a fossil of the old judicial assembly remains in a 

 redemption of mock pledges. 



2 Compare the double use of intercourse, conversation (in older English, and con* 

 versatio in Latin), fenstern in Swabian, etc. At the kammafensta we find both 

 chorus and riddle marked features of the primitive sex-festival. 



3 Primitively a meal is an epoch of time, before time suggests meals. 



4 The original use of hochzeit, not for a bridal feast, but for a communal 

 dance-gathering, may be seen preserved in Aschenputtel, Grimm's Marchen, No. 140. 



