176 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



as in gelubde. The earliest use of loben with regard 

 to marriage does not appear to have connoted what 

 we should now understand by a marriage vow or 

 promise, but rather a mutual approval expressed in 

 the presence of the kin, out of which the notion of 

 the compact or promise itself developed and became 

 attached to the luV root. Thus originally verlobung 

 is not the promise of future nuptials, but the expression 

 of mutual approval, which follows the recognition of 

 mutual desire. 1 In fact, we can trace almost stage by 

 stage the evolution of the word from the mere notion 

 of sexual desire in lub' up to the promise of future 

 nuptials conveyed in verlobung. It is also clear that 

 in the earliest period the gelobnis, or the lofte, was 

 immediately followed by the sexual union. Both 

 Fischart and Luther use the word verloben as identical 

 with marriage. In M.L.G. lovelber is used for the 

 marriage feast, and brfitloft is identical with marriage. 

 Here we may also draw attention to the mediaeval 

 gelobtanz or lobetanz, a dance of the whole commune 

 in a public place. In the sixteenth century we are told 

 the young women would not serve in the parsonages, 

 because they were not allowed to go over the green to 

 the lobetanz. Whitsuntide and St. Lawrence's Day 

 (August 10th) were the times, and under the linden 

 tree was the place for these dances, which a sixteenth- 

 century writer tells us " were maintained by our ances- 

 tors in order that their children might be seen by their 

 neighbours, and marriages result." It is difficult not 



1 It is not only that the approval, lob, follows the desired, but that what is 

 the desired is the be-lieved, the glauben, an argument for the acceptance of 

 belief recently advocated by a distinguished author ; see vol. i. Essay VI. 



