122 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



familiar to every student of folklore ; and the images 

 made of boy-root and worn by Danubian Gipsies, have 

 already been mentioned. 1 Similar figures in wood are 

 worn in some districts of Bavaria by newly married 

 women among their beads, or depending from the 

 strings of their bodices. They are amulets against 

 barrenness. 2 



The practices of what is called phallic worship have 

 been described at sufficient, if not more than sufficient, 

 length in the pages of Dulaure and other writers, 

 many of whom have been inclined to see in what is 

 often no more than a magical rite something like the 

 foundation of all religions. The truth is that phallic 

 worship strictly speaking the worship of a deity of 

 fertility under sexual emblems is by no means an 

 early or a universal cult. It can only become promi- 

 nent in a population having a settled abode and 

 cultivating the soil ; its orgiastic developments are 

 sporadic. So intimately however is sexual emotion 

 mingled with the emotions we group together under 

 the name of religion, that it is anything but surprising 

 to find linked with religious worship both sexual ideas 

 and practices and attempts to secure in other than the 

 normal manner the blessing of offspring. We have 

 already discussed some phallic practices connected 

 more or less remotely with religion ; and it will be 

 needless to pursue the subject into much detail here. 

 But any treatment of the superstitious beliefs and 

 practices under consideration, would be incomplete 

 and misleading without some reference to it. 



The worship of the linga is a favourite with Hindu 

 women. The representation is sometimes carved and 

 1 Supra, p. 46. 2 Lammert, 156. 



