MARITAL JEALOUSY 189 



to levy on his daughters-in-law a tribute which the 

 youth or the state of dependence of his sons prevents 

 them from disputing. Writers of credit assure us that 

 it is by no means rare to see the domestic hearth thus 

 polluted by the authority which ought to maintain its 

 purity. 1 Among the Southern Slavs the same practice 

 subsists, and there if not also in Russia boys are 

 married when mere children. 2 



Such a condition of family life must in any case 

 be a survival of the practices of centuries gone by. 

 A distinguished Russian jurist is of opinion that 

 the sexual immorality of the Russian peasant has 

 no other cause than the survival of numerous vestiges 

 of the early forms of marriage. There is little doubt 

 that among the ancient Slavs kinship was reckoned 

 through the mother only. It was often accompanied 

 by a considerable amount of sexual freedom. If we 

 may believe the evidence of Nestor, probably a 

 Russian monk of the eleventh century, the Drevlians, 

 a Slavonic tribe, " lived like beasts ; they killed one 

 another ; they fed on things unclean ; no marriage 

 took place amongst them, but they captured young 

 girls on the banks of rivers." The words "no 

 marriage took place amongst them " may of course 

 mean that no open formal marriage rite was performed, 

 but the girl captured was simply taken to the captor's 

 home. It probably implies much more. It probably 

 implies that other characteristics of a marriage ac- 

 cording to the notions of a Christian monk were 

 wanting. Among the characteristics in question 



1 Kovalevsky, 64, quoting and adopting the words of Anatole 

 Leroy Beaulieu, L? Empire des Tzars et les Russes^ 488. 



2 VAnnee Soc. x. 441, citing Krauss. 



