THE ' MAILEHN ' A ND ' KIL TGANG ' 411 



Noah's Ark of 1693 speaks of the " Tanzen und andern Kunkel- 

 stuben" destroying all Christian integrity, and condemns their 

 improper tales, songs and ribald actions ; why indeed an old 

 devotional book of about 1750 tells us that no maids of good 

 character frequent them, for the talk is unkeusch, the dancing frech, 

 and the singing consists of Bulillieder a reminiscence, indeed, of 

 the winileod, which had troubled the Christian teachers nearly a 

 thousand years before ! The same book tells us that many Kunkel- 

 stuben can hardly be distinguished from Hexenzusammenkunfften, 

 and that in judicial proceedings women and maids have frequently 

 confessed that it was in the Kunkelstuben that they were made witches. 

 We have, in fact, the full identification of the old Mleih, the Hexen- 

 mahl and the Kilt, one and all are fossils of the old sex-festival. 

 The ribald dances of the Kunkelstube are not merely an outburst 

 of coarse peasant natures, they are a fossil of the worship of the 

 old goddess of fertility. 



As if to complete the round of feast, choral-dance, sex-festival, 

 judicial assembly, we find the Kunkelstube identified in the devo- 

 tional work just referred to with the Heimgarten. The Heimgarten 

 gelien is exactly equivalent to the Kiltgang in its double sense of the 

 private rendezvous and the gathering of maids and youths in the 

 Kunkelstube or Hochstube. 1 In a confessional book of 1 693, quoted by 

 Birlinger, the penitent says, "Ich habe gebult, ich hab gehostubet, 

 ich hab gehaimgartet, ich bin zu einem Magdlein gangen." We find, 

 in 1618, Haimgarten glossed conventiculum amicorum seu vidnorwn, 

 and in police orders it is identified with Kunkelstube. The priests 

 describe going to dances and Heimgarten as snares of the devil. 



Now in a gloss to Prudentius given by Graff (Diutiska, Bd. ii. 

 p. 347), we find/oro, heimgart, and there can be little doubt that the 

 original sense of the word is hedged-in or fenced place, the hag (p. 

 128). It is just such a fenced-in place that we have seen was the 

 scene of the primitive judicial assembly, and the origin of forum, agora 

 and maJial. But just as in the latter cases we have seen a relation 

 to the sex-gathering, so we find gart glossed both chorus and leno- 

 dnium, while Hayngarten is dance, conventicle, Kunkelstube, and also 

 the site of the judicial gathering. The Haingarten was the fenced 

 place of the imperial tribunal at Rotweil, and the last Hofgericht was 



1 See inter alia the Kundl Dorfordnung in Die tirolischen Weisthiiiner, Bd. 

 ii. pp. 361, 362. 



