408 APPENDIX I 



Middle Ages, the Kaiser sent a herald to announce to the daughter 

 of a burgher of one of the imperial towns that he proposed to give 

 her in marriage to one of his retinue. 



Very frequently the Mailehn took the form of an auction of the 

 girls of the village, the money obtained being spent on their enter- 

 tainment with food and on dance-music. It is noteworthy that at 

 St. Goar the money itself went into the town-chest, and the auction 

 took place in the Eathhaus (Kriegk, Deutsclies Biirgerthum im Mittel- 

 alter, p. 420) ; it is thus clear that we are dealing with a fossil of 

 what was once a communal sex-festival. 



The use of the term buhler in the Mailehn verses cited above is 

 also very suggestive. Buhli, fastenbiihli, or their equivalents are 

 used almost throughout Germany either for the May-brides or for 

 partners chosen for the year, or at least for the great spring-festivals 

 and for Kirmes. It is precisely this word, however, which we have 

 noted as used for the old sexual group of lovers (p. 222). It is 

 still a widely current term for a pair of dancers, and Grimm cites a 

 most valuable bit of folklore from Holland, which brings together 

 the primitive significance of the Mailehn with the old sexual group 

 weight of both buhl and/?i (see pp. 167, 222). It runs : 



menich vroukin sprekt in schimpe 

 tot enen jonghen gheckelin, 

 ' ' vrient, du moets min boelkin sin 

 desen mei ende langher niet." 



Worterbuch, ii. 506. 



The ghecky or sommergheck, is equivalent to the heelghesel or secret 

 lover. 



As if to complete the picture of the May-brides with their tem- 

 porary lovers, their common feast and dancing, the Vergaderung in 

 the woods, we have also the selection of the May queen, a fossil of 

 the old worship of the goddess of fertility. A thirteenth-century 

 work of Aegidius (cited in Grimm's Mythologic, ii. p. 657) describes 

 the custom of the May queen in the Netherlands in the twelfth 

 century : 



Sacerdotes ceteraeque ecclesiasticae personae cum universe populo in 

 solemnitatibus pascliae et pentecostes aliquam ex sacerdotum concubinis pur- 

 puratam ac diadematerenitentem in eminent! ori solio constitutam et cortinis 

 velatam reginam creabant, et coram ea assistentes in choreis tympanis et 

 aliis rnusicalibus instrumentis tota die psallebant, et quasi idolatrae effecti 

 ipsam tanquam idolum colebant. 



