i88 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



a husband dying left neither brother nor son the widow 

 was entitled to take any lover she chose. In all these 

 cases alike the issue reckons as that of the legitimate 

 husband. 1 The testimony to the licentiousness of the 

 Circassian women and to the indomitable complaisance 

 of their husbands is overwhelming. Of the Chechen 

 we are told that the women are rarely faithful to their 

 husbands. The Pshavs are in the habit of celebrating 

 yearly a festival in honour of Lasha, the legendary son 

 of Queen Tamara. This hero appears in the Pshav 

 imagination in a very mixed character : sometimes as 

 Saint George, sometimes as the representative of a cult 

 analogous to that of Bacchus. His saturnalian festival 

 is signalised by sexual licence. 2 



The Russian peasants themselves, frequently herded 

 together, partly from ancient custom and partly from 

 economic causes, under patriarchal rule in what is 

 known as a Joint Family, attach but too little im- 

 portance to the sexual relations supposed to be safe- 

 guarded by their Church. A sort of promiscuity 

 results, unhealthy for body and mind. The domestic 

 autocracy is itself a danger to the chastity if not to the 

 integrity of the family. The house-father, like the 

 noble over the female serfs on his domain, sometimes 

 arrogated to himself a sort of droit de seigneur over 

 the women under his authority. Officially entitled the 

 Old One, he, thanks to the moujik's habit of early 

 marriage, is often hardly forty when his sons bring 

 home their brides, and it is a common thing for him 



1 Kovalevsky, LAnthrop. iv. 274. 



2 Ibid. 266, 270, 273, 275; Lobel, 70; Darinsky, Zeits. vergl. 

 Rechtsw. xiv. 175 sqq. See further as to the sexual customs of 

 these and other non-Slavonic peoples in Russian territory, Globus, 

 xcv. 1 88. 



