i 9 2 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



served in the archives of some of the provincial 

 ecclesiastical councils, particularly in the Government 

 of Kharkov, disclose similar licentiousness at other 

 evening assemblies of the peasants. These assemblies 

 are known in Great Russia as Posidelki and in Little 

 Russia as Vechernitzi. The clergy made war upon 

 them. More than once they induced the authorities 

 to dissolve the assemblies by force. It is little 

 wonder that the priests were often wounded and 

 obliged to seek refuge in the houses of the village 

 elders from the stones with which they were pelted. 1 



The history of the Russian gatherings on Mid- 

 summer Eve and other festival occasions suggests that 

 formerly all over Europe such assemblies were of the 

 same licentious character. Doubtless they were. The 

 games still played by youths and maidens at these 

 times, though now for the most part innocent, irre- 

 sistibly lead to the conclusion that actual sexual inter- 

 course took place in days of less developed civilisation. 2 

 And if married women frequented the meetings they 

 must have been included in the sports and in what the 

 Russian monk stigmatises as the "diabolical amuse- 

 ments." More than this it is impossible to say in the 

 present state of our evidence, which may be found in 

 the pages of Mannhardt Frazer and other writers, but 

 the full consideration of which would lead us too far 

 away from our main subject to be entered upon here. 



1 Kovalevsky, 6 sqq. 



2 For example, the game played in various villages ot the 

 Luneburg district, in which a girl is allotted to every youth (Zeits. 

 des VereinS) vi. 363). Compare the Saturnalia of ancient Rome, and 

 the Holi festival in Northern India, where no act of intercourse 

 now occurs, but indecency of word and gesture is an essential part 

 of the rite. 



