428 APPENDIX IV 



Middle Ages the dancing of the Virgin and saints in heaven, 1 of the 

 devils in hell, and the soul- and death-dances (see pp. 337-342), are 

 all reigen. The reigen were often conducted under the linden-tree, 

 the spot later of the gericht and of betrothal, earlier of the sex-festival 

 (p. 412). From this aspect the Low German reien, reen, which is 

 used of loitering about in the streets in the evening, especially of 

 maids who run after men, is peculiarly significant. A Liibeck Zunft 

 order forbids the journeymen tailors, when holding their reyen on 

 Walpurgistag, to have women and maidens present. Further we 

 find that it was the custom in Liibeck for the bridegroom to come 

 into the bride's house with a sammelinge to dantzende edder to reyende. 

 The sense of reige, I think, is preserved in English rig, a frolic, rig, 

 a wanton, and rigge, to be wanton, corresponding with German 

 reien just cited. The above sexual sense of the rag root might be 

 thought to be limited to the Germanic branch of the Aryan tongues, 

 but I venture to think we can trace it also in the Greek. I have 

 already pointed to the d/>yas as the fenced meadow. Now the 

 dpyas between Athens and Megara was a tract sacred to the god- 

 desses of fertility, Demeter and Persephone'. 2 Young marriageable 

 women were termed d/oyaSes, possibly from the tilth analogy, but at 

 least comparable with Welsh rhiain for virgo. In Greek opy?? (for 

 opeyrj) we have the conception of passion, doubtless in the earliest 

 period sexual passion ; o/>yao> (for d/aeyaw) is to swell with lust, to 

 wax wanton, and corresponds to the sense in English rig and Low 

 German reien, and less closely to the sense of excite in Latin erigo, 

 Modern German eregen, and more grossly to the use of ragen in the 

 Fastnachtspiele. But the d/ayas, as the haingarten of the goddess of 

 fertility, is the seat of the opyia (for d/>eyia), the sexual festival to 

 the goddess of fertility, whose priest and priestess are the 6pyc<av and 

 dpyewvTy. 3 Thus we have made the whole round from the root rag, 

 the judicial court, the meal, the sex-festival with its worship of a 

 goddess of fertility, the choral dance in the inclosure, and the tribe 

 leader developing into parent, king, and priest. We have the hag 



1 (Maria speaks) 



min briutgom viiert den reigen da 

 die heilegen tanzent alle na. 



Marienleben, cited in Grimms' Wdrterbuch. 



2 See references in Index II. 



3 The Norse use of regin for the gods, and the verb ragna, to call down the 

 gods' anger on any one, may possibly be compared. 



