GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 171 



we have close traces of the origin of agriculture and horti- 

 culture in the old woman -civilisation, with its peculiar 

 worship of mother-goddesses of fertility. Such worship 

 is to be found also in those other festivals of Demeter, 

 the Cerealia and Eleusinia, which were essentially sur- 

 vivals of the old woman-directed religious observances 

 of the mother-age. They may be illustrated from the 

 witch-gatherings and periodic festivals of the Middle 

 Ages. At present I must be content to point out how 

 freien leads us up to the kin-group, with its periodic sex- 

 festivals and its licentious worship of mother-goddesses. 

 There remains, however, two important senses of the 

 root which I have not yet touched upon, those of frei 

 or free, and freude, joy. As the kin are the friends, 1 

 so the kinsman is the freeman as distinguished from 

 the bondsman ; the source of the idea * freedom ' is 

 to be sought in the bond between the old vriunte or 

 co-wooers. As Grimm long ago pointed out, the root fri 

 takes us into a chain of words dating from the highest 

 antiquity. These words cross and recross into each 

 other with a great flexibility of sense, but they are one 

 and all intelligible if we go back to the primitive mean- 

 ing of fri, which is undoubtedly that of sexual love, 

 and then attempt to realise the circumstances of 

 that kin-group which was the primitive unit for family, 

 society, and sex. It was in the kin-group of wooers, 

 among the vriunte, that there was freedom, peace, and 

 pleasure. Precisely as other names for the kin-wooing 



1 With Frea and the vriunte may be compared "Hpct and the ijpwes, the tribal 

 mother and her progeny, the freemen, who have become the goddess and the 

 tribe-founders. I take Latin heres to be related ; it stood for the male or female 

 member of the kin-group, the heirs. 



