PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



must have been difficult to determine, at all events 

 within a narrower range than ten or twelve men, and 

 the nominal husband was the reputed father. If this 

 was the standard of morality in the comparatively 

 civilised regions of southern Britain we cannot be 

 surprised to find that in the wilds of Caledonia among 

 the Picts, a matrilineal people, the women consorted 

 openly with the best warriors. 1 The ancient Irish, if 

 Strabo's information may be trusted, were laxer still : 

 he paints them as more abandoned than the Kamt- 

 chadals or the Koryaks. They had intercourse, and 

 that openly, with women including their own mothers 

 and sisters. 2 Whether this be strictly accurate or not 

 (and the geographer intimates his own doubts on the 

 subject) their voluminous sagas, put into literary shape 

 in a much later age, testify to morality by no means 

 exalted. They practised the hospitable custom of 

 providing a temporary bedfellow for a guest a custom 

 not abandoned as late as the sixteenth century. 

 When Cuchulainn and the heroes of Ulster sought the 

 abode of Maive, queen of Connaught, and her husband 

 Ailill to have their quarrels adjudged, thrice fifty 

 maidens were placed at their disposal for the nights ; 

 and Findabair, daughter of Ailill and Maive, fell to 

 the lot of Cuchulainn. Before he left, however, Maive 

 herself was wont to resort to his stead. 3 Moreover 

 Conchobar, king of Ulster, not merely exercised the 

 jus primcz noctis over the daughters of all his subjects, 



1 Dion Cassius, Ixxvi. 16. 2 Strabo, iv. 5, 4. 



3 Irish Texts Soc. ii. 69, 81. See the adventure of the Bishop of 

 Valence, a French emissary to Ireland in the year 1547-8, quoted 

 by Froude, Hist. Eng. v. 74 note, from Memoirs of Sir James 

 Melville, 



