190 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



permanence and fidelity would be prominent in his 

 mind. A similar expression occurs in his account 

 of three other tribes, the Radimich, the Viatich and 

 the Sever. They dwelt " in forests like other wild 

 animals ; they ate everything unclean ; and shameful 

 things occurred amongst them between fathers and 

 daughters-in-law " very much as between the moujik 

 of to-day and his daughters-in-law. Nestor goes on : 

 " Marriages were unknown to them, but games were 

 held in the outskirts of villages ; they met at these 

 games for dancing and every kind of diabolic 

 amusement ; and there they captured their wives, 

 each man the one he had covenanted with. They 

 generally had two or three wives." The capture here 

 is preceded by an agreement between the bridegroom 

 and the lady of his choice. The festival described 

 is the public and formal recognition of unions which 

 the writer in spite of himself admits as marriage of 

 a kind ; though they did not exclude infidelities of 

 which he mentions a specimen in the relations be- 

 tween a father-in-law and his daughter-in-law. A 

 writer of the same century, Cosmas of Prague, says 

 of the old Bohemians or Czechs : " They practised 

 communal marriage (connubia erant illis communia] ; 

 for like beasts they contract every night a fresh 

 marriage, and with the rising morn they break the 

 iron bonds of love." The anonymous biographer of 

 Saint Adalbert, Bishop of Prague towards the end of 

 tenth century, ascribes the hostility which drove the 

 saint from his diocese to his attempts to put down 

 the shameful promiscuity of the Bohemian people. 

 He testifies moreover to the existence of certain 

 yearly festivals at which great licence prevailed. 



