SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 205 



the fodder, the food. These Wackernagel connects with 

 fadar, as other philologists pater with pasco, pastor, 

 and pasture. As the protector and feeder of the herds 

 is their ruler, so the father is said to be the feeder, ruler, 

 protector of the household. In this sense the whole round 

 of cognate Aryan terms Sanskrit patar, Latin pater, 

 Greek Trartjp, A.S. f cider, Gothic and O.S. fadar, 0. 

 Friesian feder, etc., is interpreted as signifying that the 

 father was originally the patriarch, the feeder and ruler. 

 Now the notion of ruling in pd seems to be second- 

 ary to that of feeding, and, as I have indicated, the 

 appetites of food and sex are the primary facts of primi- 

 tive human life. May we, then, take it that the father 

 received his name from the fact that he was the feeder ? 

 It could scarcely be that he was the feeder of the child ; 

 in the first years of life and generally for long after, 

 the mother fulfilled that task. Was he, then, the feeder 

 of the household? Hardly this, for as a general rule 

 among primitive peoples the women collect and cook 

 the food ; they do what simple tillage there may be, 

 and bruise and cook the grain. Very often indeed if 

 the man hunts and brings his quarry home, it is tabu 

 to the rest of the household. It is difficult to conceive 

 that the central fact of the relationship of father to 

 either child or household would in primitive times be 

 his provision of the food. It is certainly hardly con- 

 sistent with the part played by men in the early kin- 

 groups. That the kin-chief developed into ruler and 

 protector, as kuninck and zupan, is fairly clear, but to 

 assert that civilisation had already reached this stage 

 when the name father was specialised, is to demand a 



