198 KINDRED GROUP-MARRIAGE 



or its cognates, are used (equally with bar- and gebar- 

 mutter) for the womb ; and further, for openings and 

 spaces into which screws, bolts, and other bodies pass. 

 In English, Landsmaal, and Dutch, simply, and in Ger- 

 many as mutterbeschiver, we find mother used for the 

 sexual passion in woman. In Sanskrit mdtdrdu, a 

 dual for both parents, as well as in Latin maternitas and 

 matrimonium, 1 it is very difficult not to see a primitive 

 sexual productivity emphasised long before an organis- 

 ing or thinking activity. 



Granted the idea of production in the term mother, 

 we may still question how it is related to other cognates 

 from the root md. Here a brief digression into mythology 

 may possibly be suggestive. The earliest deity appears 

 to be identified with the un tilled Earth ; to the savage, 

 not yet developing primitive forms of agriculture, the 

 swamp, mud, mould, dirt, are symbols of fertility ; 2 their 

 apparently unassisted reproduction strikes his mind. The 

 male is not directly, or at least emphatically, associated 

 with the offspring. Mother Earth springs from chaos, 

 and her first children have no known father. A trace 

 of such a goddess is to be found in most Aryan cults. 

 Then with the growth of agriculture the notion of seed 

 planted and generating becomes prominent, and is con- 

 nected with sex-functions. Mother Earth is replaced 

 by, or develops into, a goddess of fertility and of agri- 



1 This word must be primitive, for it marks an original mother-making as 

 the source of matrimony. It exactly expresses the earliest Teutonic notion of 

 group-marriage as a mother-making. In later days marriage became a bedecken, a 

 connubium, or coverture, as in 'unter eine Decke kommen/fc.e. get married, and 

 finally an ehe, conjugium, wedding, yoking, or pact. 



2 Notice that Frigg's house is termed Fensal, swamp-hall, and that Frigg 

 was a goddess of chaotic fertility. 



