SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 213 



the child. This same heathen 'baptism' with the 

 naming of, and the pouring water over, the child 

 existed also in Germany. 1 We find both German and 

 Scandinavian heathendom fighting hard on the advent 

 of Christianity for this right of exposure, and there 

 can be little doubt that the heathen ceremony of infant 

 baptism influenced the Christian. It was precisely the 

 males of the old kin -group who would be concerned 

 with the preservation or exposure of a new life ; they 

 took upon themselves the responsibility for it, and 

 hence the name gavateron, originally equivalent to 

 fateron, was very naturally adopted for the Christian 

 sponsors and name-givers of the new-born child. 2 It 

 would appear that Boniface must have written to 

 Gregory III. about this heathen baptism, for we find 

 that Pope writing in reply that such baptism is to be 

 held invalid. 3 Ecclesiastical decrees of a later date 

 forbidding any persons to assert compaternitas, because 

 they have poured water on the linen or swaddling 

 clothes of the infant, appear also to be directed against 

 a heathen survival. 4 Brother Berthold, so late as 1250, 

 preached against baptismal practices of an apparently 

 heathen origin. 5 The earliest account we have of Chris- 

 tian baptism, Tertullian's work against Quintilla, 6 shows 



1 See Weinhold : Altnordisclies Leben, pp. 26Qetseq., and Die deutschen Frauen 

 in dem Mittelalter, ii. p. 95. 



2 A good deal of the gevatter folklore thus becomes intelligible, e.g. the 

 proverb, Wer bei seiner ersten Gevatterschaft ein uneheliches Kind hebt hat Gluck 

 zum heirathen, may be taken to mean that he who becomes one of ihefateron in 

 a kin-group (i.e. where the children are ' fatherless ') will have the favour of the 

 women or join in the old hi-rath (see p. 137). 



3 Jatfe, Bibliotheca rerum Germanicarum, iii. s. 91. 



4 See Ducange under fasciatorium and compaternitas. 



5 J. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, Bd. iv. p. 325. 



6 See Opera, Lyons, 1675. De Baptismo, A.D. 160-200. 



