SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 211 



same generation. In this sense compater and gafatero, 

 or gevatter, are used as terms of address between equals 

 where there is no spiritual relationship, or at least where 

 no stress is laid on it. Thus in M.H.G. comrades in the 

 fight address each other as gevatter, and Isengrin the 

 wolf calls Keynard the fox gevatere! The dog is gevatter 

 to the wolf in Grimm's Marchen, No. 48 ; the fox and 

 the wolf, gevatter and gevatterin in No. 74 ; and the 

 gevatterschaft is a pretty widely-spread relationship 

 among the characters in Der alte Hildebrand (No. 95). 

 Hugo von Trimberg and many mediaeval writers use 

 gevatter in the sense of English gossip and French 

 commere, for intimates and even scandalmongers. 1 The 

 former idea of intimacy is probably retained in the term 

 Gevatter Tod. It may be said this use of gevatter is 

 only a degeneration of its use for a spiritual relationship, 

 which marked a much closer intimacy in the Middle 

 Ages than it does to-day. I am inclined, however, to 

 believe that more weight must be given to the origin of 

 the term in the feteron of the primitive social group. 

 In this respect the frequent association of vetter and 

 gevatter as terms for intimates, and the fact that the 

 earliest ninth-century gevatter gloss is givatarun, com- 

 matrem spiritualem, are suggestive for both the original 

 gavateron and the original commatres or compatres 

 having also had a non-spiritual meaning. 2 Bearing in 



1 Low German vadder is compater, vadderkols, gossip, vadderspel, nepotism ; 

 while vaddersche, commuter is even used to render Latin nutrix. 



2 The terms compater spiritualis and commater spiritualis, which Ducange cites 

 from an early date, would appear to illustrate the existence of a non-spiritual 

 compater and commater. The earliest use of these terms would certainly appear 

 to be Germanic. Thus they occur in the Lex Langobardorum and in a cartulary 

 of Karl the Great. The Council of Mainz in A.D. 813 speaks of compatres 



