174 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



is of the social and sexual units. The freiding passes 

 insensibly over into the O.H.G. friduding. Tliefriede 

 words, however, pass just like the frei words back to 

 the sexual sense wiihfriedel and friedela. 



If we turn to the notion of fri in frawi, frawida, 

 freude, joy, we find this phase of the root closely 

 associated with O.H.G-. frd, the man, master, lord 

 (Gothic frauja, O.S. fralio), and O.H.G. frdwd (Norse 

 frfi, German frau), the woman, lady. These words 

 frd and frdwd, are identical with the Norse divini- 

 ties Freyr and Freyja. 1 Grimm would deduce frd, 

 man, from froh, joyous, but this seems to invert the 

 natural order ; the fundamental idea still seems that of 

 wooers or sexual-lovers, and the notion of pleasure or 

 joy is deduced from this. The word has remained with 

 its primitive weight in freudenhaus, freudenmadchen, 

 freudenspiel, and freudenkind. As Grimm has him- 

 self pointed out, there is in freude a strong sense of 

 voluptas, the pleasures of the meal and of sexual love, 

 an aspect of the word represented in freudenmahl and 

 freudentanz. 



The double sense of free is represented in other 

 words than those from the root fri. Thus O.H.G. laz 

 is free and libertinus in the double sense, while lazza 

 is a harlot. But a still more complete analogy for the 

 origin of the notion of freedom in the group-marriage 

 will be found in the Latin liber, free, itself. Here 

 liberi denotes, like fry, the offspring, the free kin. 

 But liber, besides free and frank, also means licentious. 



1 Freya and Freyja are essentially the brother and sister wooers, the man 

 and woman, the brother and the bride. 



