TOBIAS AND SARA—JUS PRIM NOCTIS 433 
wearing of and the fumigation with the glands of a fish, to 
ensure that “ the demons will flee from him.” 
The jealous passion of demons or devils for maidens colours 
Asian, African, and European folk-lores. They lie in wait for 
married couples ; sternly guard their so-called brides.!_ Other- 
wise they were usually innocuous. Tobias argues with the 
angel, ‘‘ If I go in unto her, I die as the others before.: for a 
wicked spirit loveth her, which hurteth nobody, but those that 
come in unto her ”’ (vi. 14). 
According to the Testament of Solomon, Asmodeus (the 
demon) avows, “my business is to plot against the newly 
wedded, so that they may not know one another. I sever them 
by many calamities, and I waste away the beauty of virgin 
women.’’ In Asmodeus we recognise a male counterpart of 
Lilith and her dangerous relations with men. The demon, in 
fact, regards the virgin as his own, himself as her true and 
constant lover, and resents, prevents, or ‘‘ avenges any infringe- 
ment of his jus prime noctis.’’ 2 
The misconception, evident in the last eight words of this 
learned writer, as to what constituted the jus prime noctis 
prevails widely. As the us is the child, strange as the parentage 
may appear, of the tale of Tobias and Sara, it seems worth our 
while to notice the strangely erroneous views held both as to the 
possessor of the jus and the occasion of its exercise, and shortly 
to explain, even at the risk of seeming to stray from fishing 
into folklore, the origin and the establishment of the custom. 
According to popular belief the superior or lord of the fee, 
among other feudal privileges, possessed, as such, the vested right 
of connection with the daughters of his tenantry or of holders of 
land under him on the first night of their marriages. Some 
writers on the French Revolution, indeed, indignantly class 
the wide and brutal exercise of this right on chaste maidens by 
licentious seigneurs as not the least, perhaps one of the most 
provocative, of the social causes, which led to the detestation and 
subsequent massacre of the noblesse in many départements and 
to the overthrow of the old landed system ! 
1 J. G. Frazer, Folk-Love in the Old Testament (London, 1918), 520 ff. 
2 R. Campbell Thompson, Semitic Magic (London, 1908), pp. 74-75- 
