GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 147 



and we grasp how it is that the mdlschatz (which 

 Grimm and others derive from mahal) is yet used in 

 the sense of bride-money, or is closely related to the 

 malet. We have on the one hand group - custom 

 reappearing in bridal, on the other hand in judicial 

 ceremonies, both, however, were originally part of one 

 and the same group -gathering. What seems to me, 

 also, quite certain is that in Tyrolese, Carinthian, 

 and Styrian Weisthilmer and Taidinge the word mdl, 

 in the sense of a meal, is used back to about 1300, 

 and passes almost insensibly into the meaning of mahal, 

 the assembly. That the mahlmann, obman, or what- 

 ever else the presiding officer of the mahal is termed, is to 

 be provided with a gerichtsmahl ein guetes mall is 

 nearly always a special injunction of the Taidinge; and 

 traces of the old custom of providing such a meal may 

 be seen in the provision the English sheriff makes for 

 the judges on assize. Even the word malzeit is used in 

 a manner which leaves us in doubt whether it refers to 

 the duration of the mahal, or to the gerichtsmahl, 1 the 

 fact probably being that both were originally identical 

 notions. It is not in the court-poets, the Minnesinger 

 of the M.H.G. period, that we must look for the use of 

 mahl for meal, but in the peasant judicial proceedings 

 which preserved the traditions of the primitive folk. 

 The mahal notion is accordingly seen to embrace a clan- 

 gathering, a feast, and a sexual commingling. 2 I venture 

 to assert that we have again a root representing the old 



1 See Zingerle u. Egger, Die Tiroler Weisthumer, iv. Theil, s. 270. 



2 The meal idea in mahal shows us the confarreatio springing out of the clan 

 vermahlung. The notion is just as much Teutonic as Latin, and folklore shows the 

 looseness of the relationship from which monogamic marriage arose. Thus in 

 Zurich the bridal pair had to use one spoon, so that there might be a genuine 



