GENERAL WORDS FOR SEX AND KINSHIP 173 



precisely comparable with queen and quean. Freimann 

 is not only a freeman, but also a wooer and a pimp, just 

 like freier, which leads us to freierin smdfreierei in bad 

 senses. Even a trace of the same idea has associated 

 itself with freigeist and freethinker, which latter has 

 often been identified with libertine. 



Noteworthy is the sense attached to freihof and 

 freiort, not merely of free land or house, but of a 

 place of shelter or refuge, it is the kin -dwelling as 

 an asylum. This leads us up to freiung or vrtunge 

 for a fenced-in or palisaded place of refuge precisely 

 the notion of the hag. Thus the friedhof is also 

 called freihof, and we pass to the notion of friede, 

 friedigung, as in einfriedigung, and Swabian frid 1 

 and gefride, a fence, the freedom or peace maintained 

 by a fence. In this case the fridhag, fridgatter, and 

 fridzaun (a gloss for sepes), as parts of the old mark 

 system, are of great suggestiveness. The fact that all 

 early judicial assemblies were held in the open air, and 

 derived all their authority from a society of freemen, 

 makes the proclamation of bann and frid, and the 

 hegung of the gericht, of special importance. The 

 notion associated in the earliest times with bann and 

 frid, as in fridbann, was much more that of a limita- 

 tion to the going and coming, a fencing in of the 

 assembly, than one of orderliness and peace in the 

 modern sense of these words. Spannen is used in 

 much the same way as hegen. The lager, camp, or 

 ' outspanning ' of a group of freemen or kinsmen, is 

 as much the origin of the judicial unit of peace as it 



1 Compare the deorfrid of the Saxon Chronicle. 



