THE 'GERICHT* 427 



rhiain is virgo, puella ; in other words, while in Irish the kone has 

 developed into queen, in Welsh she remained the quean. It is 

 difficult to appreciate how a primitive notion of ruling could de- 

 generate into virgo, but the ascent to queen we have followed in 

 kone (p. 116). That, on the other hand, the pen or fence notion 

 can lead to all the ideas of rex, king, and gericht, judicial court, we 

 have already seen. Take hegen with the original sense of hedging, 

 and we find heger for a defender, protector, prince. To be the 

 heger seines volkes is often described as the mission of a ruler. 

 Heger ding and heger gericht are the judicial courts of a group of 

 peasants who are holders, so-called hegermanni or hdgcri, of a hag or 

 hagen. In the Grafschaft Schaumberg seven villages are termed die 

 siebenfreien Jiagen, and the hegerding was the court held in the hag, 

 the gehegtes gericht, by the hegermdnner. Here the correspondence to 

 the rett and the gericht are very striking. Even the O.H.G. kastalt, 

 which we have come across in the gestalt of the hag, modern 

 hagestolz, will be found glossed judex, as well as famulus and 

 mercenarius. Lastly, we may compare hag, the fitting, the 

 orderly, the skilful, the wise (pp. 130, 131) with the notions 

 of order and security involved in the rett and right series of words. 

 To further justify our position, we ought to see the notion of the 

 meal and the dance, or combined the hexenmahl, arising out of the 

 rak, reg root. In the first place, we notice the use of gericht for a 

 portion of food ; the idea at first might be that it is simply what is 

 handed or reached. But the significant thing is that this sense is 

 common to nearly all the Germanic tongues, and must therefore be 

 primitive. O.X. rettr is either a judicial court or a meal, a mdl, 

 either as mahal or mahl. M.H.G. rihte, riht is either a judicium or 

 prepared food, while Swedish riitt, Danish ret, have the like senses 

 of food. The meal notion is thus not wanting. Turning to the 

 dance notion we have, in the first place, the German reige, reihe, 

 which is essentially a choral dance. Fick seeks the origin of this 

 word in Sanskrit rej, spring, tremble, and compares Gothic reiran, 

 tremble, as giving the base of the word. The old forms are reyge, 

 rey, reye, M.L.G. rege, rei, reige, and I would ultimately connect 

 with the reg, rak series. The reige is a choral dance, for the minne- 

 singer speaks of singing a rei ; it was peculiarly a peasant dance in 

 the open air in summer or springtime ; it was a violent dance ; it 

 was, as Grimm points out, gesprungen, and not getreten. For the 



