SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 233 



relationship. We have already referred to the Teutonic 

 terms swdsman, swdseline, and swdsenede ; we may add 

 Slavonic svoja, become intimate, whence svatu for 

 relative, and Lithuanian svotai for the relatives who 

 attend a marriage. Hence schwager may only be 

 another method of expressing swdsman, the intimate 

 man or brother. It is to a very intimate relation of 

 this kind that we shall find other words for the brother- 

 and sister-in-law connection directly lead us. 



If we look back on the origin of endogamous 

 monogamy in a kin -group, the first appearance of it 

 would be heralded by the exclusive attachment, at any 

 rate for a time, of a man of the group to a particular 

 woman. He became her ' own ' or ' dear ' man, her 

 leofman, lefmon, leman, in the best sense of this last 

 word. The leman was with more or less rigour tabu to 

 the other women of the group, hence would arise the 

 first traces of a brother - in - law relationship. The 

 leofman stands in a new relation to the other women 

 of the group, but not one which absolutely excludes 

 traces of the earlier sexual communism. The same 

 process that we have indicated here actually went on in 

 the public brothels of the mediaeval towns. The town 

 councils repeatedly issued regulations against the public 

 prostitutes having their Hebe manner, their ' dear men/ 

 with whom they were intimate to the exclusion of the 

 public in general. Here we have the worse sense of 

 leman. It is to such a specialisation of lovers within 

 the group, an exclusive intimacy, that possibly the sve 

 in svekr may refer, whether the k-r- stand for kura or 

 not. From the svekr are deduced the svek-r-uno, or those 



