412 APPENDIX I 



held in the Haingarten in 1784. The court, according to the Zim- 

 merscJie Chronik (ed. Barack, Bd. ii. p. 306), was held under a linden 

 tree, and the Lindengart, wherein the Hofgericht was always opened 

 and ended, was termed the Haimgarten. The reader who remembers 

 the dance of the Landvogt under the linden tree (p. 155 ftn.), the 

 peasant dances under the linden, the betrothal kiss under the linden 

 (p. 84), the gart as chvrus and lenocinium, will be prepared to see 

 in the Haingarten the site of the old sex-festival, developing on the 

 one hand into peasant customs, and on the other into judicial cere- 

 monies. The Kiltgang and Haingarten are but other phases of the 

 same ideas as we have found associated with hileih, mahal, and 

 Hexensabbath. 



The philological connection of Kilt with A.S. cveld, O.N. kveld, 

 Danish kvceld, evening, seems to me by no means so definite and 

 clear as some writers hold. The references in which Kilt can be 

 taken as simply denoting eveningtide are very hard to find ; they 

 can equally well be referred to the Spinnstube or the night-visit. 

 The evening gathering may itself have introduced the notion of 

 evening into Kilt. The one strong point on the other side is the 

 appearance of the word chwiltiwercli in a document of 81 7. It runs : 



Ut servi et ancillae conjugati et in mansis manentes tributa et vehenda 

 et opera, vel texturas sen functiones quaslibet dimidia faciunt, excepto 

 aratura ; puellae vero infra salam manentes tres opus ad vestrum et tres 

 sibi faciant dies, et hoc, quod alamanni chwiltiwerch dicunt, non faciant. 



This might well denote an early prohibition of night spinning, which 

 we have seen associated with the Kilt meetings even the witch 

 takes her distaff to the bacchanalian Hexenmahl it does not seem 

 to me to necessarily connect Kilt with cveld. Remembering the 

 probable sense of womb in wif and of gathering in fiing, we may 

 possibly identify the Kiltgang with the wiffiing, and both ultimately 

 with the Hexen, or wood-women, going with their distaves and 

 spindles to the Hexenmahl. In this case the primitive value of Kilt 

 must be sought in Gothic kilfiei, the womb, Swedish dialect kilta, 

 Icelandic kelta, the lap, and Lithuanian kiltis, kin, race (kunni). The 

 Kiltgang would thus, in philology as well as in folklore, be the 

 Vergaderung. 



