among the Arunta and several other Australian tribes: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, 96 ff.
[138] "Thus Herodotus states, in Babylonia, every woman was obliged once in her life to give herself up, in the temple of Mylitta, to strangers, for the satisfaction of the goddess; and in some parts of Cyprus, he tells us, the same custom prevailed. In Armenia, according to Strabo, there was a very similar law. The daughters of good families were consecrated to Anaitis, a phallic divinity like Mylitta, giving themselves, as it appears, to the worship of the goddess indiscriminately."—Westermarck, Human Marriage, 72; Herodotus, I, c. 199; Strabo, XI, 532. As to Babylon Herodotus may have been mistaken; cf. chap. iv, below. See further illustrations in Bernhöft, op. cit., 169 ff.; Giraud-Teulon, op. cit., 7 ff.; Ploss, Das Weib, I, 383 ff.; Lippert, Geschichte der Familie, 171; Friedrichs, in ZVR., VIII, 373, who enumerates the peoples where the custom has existed; idem, ibid., X, 215, 216; Hellwald, Die mensch. Familie, 356 ff.; and Howard, Sex Worship, 103-16, 201, passim, who holds that sacred prostitution, and many of the other sexual practices usually assigned as survivals of promiscuity, are evidences of phallicism.
[139] The monograph of Dr. Karl Schmidt, Jus primae noctis, is the most elaborate work on the subject. The author denies (41 ff., 365 ff., 379) that the custom existed in feudal Europe or elsewhere as a right; and he holds that the practices so called are not evidences of promiscuity. His views are sharply criticised by Hellwald, Die mensch. Familie, 349 n. 4; and especially by Kohler, in ZVR., IV, 279-87. Schmidt has a supplementary discussion in ZFE., XVI, 44 ff.; and is reviewed unfavorably by Kohler, ZVR., V, 397-406. See also Schmidt's Slavische Geschichtsquellen zur Streitfrage über das Jus Primae Noctis; Kohler, Urgeschichte der Ehe, 140; idem, in ZVR., VII, 350, 351; VIII, 85; Schneider, Die Naturvölker, II, 471-73; Giraud-Teulon, op. cit., 32-41; Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen, I, 300, 301; Letourneau, L'évolution du mariage, 56-62; Suggenheim, Geschichte der Aufhebung der Leibeigenschaft, 104, who believes the "right of the lord" existed in France far down into the Middle Ages; Bachofen, Mutterrecht, 12, 13, 17, 18, passim; Post, Anfänge, 17, 18; idem, Geschlechtsgenoss., 37; Kulischer, "Die communale Zeitehe," in Archiv für Anthropologie, XI, 228 ff., who refers to the recent existence of the alleged custom in Russia; Friedrichs, in ZVR., X, 214, 215; Starcke, op. cit., 124-26. There is a learned discussion in the quaint De uxore theotisca, cap. i, of Grupen; the literature cited in Bibliographical Note II should be consulted; and Schmidt has appended a very full bibliography to his book. The term jus primae noctis is especially applied to the alleged "right of the lord" in feudal times; but the existence of even this custom as a legal privilege is still an unsettled question.
[140] The custom is for the men "to buy the women whom they marry of their fathers and relatives at a high price, and then to take them to a chief, who is considered to be a priest, to deflower them and see if she is a virgin; and if she is not, they have to return the whole price, and he can keep her for his wife or not, or let her be consecrated, as he chooses." In the same connection, Castañeda says, "among them are men dressed like women who marry other men and serve as their wives;" and he describes also a curious kind of legal or consecrated prostitution existing among the same people: see the translation of Castañeda's account in Winship's "Coronado Expedition, 1540-2," XIV. Rep. of Bureau of Eth., 513, 514. Cf. Fawcett, "On Basivis: Women, Who, through Dedication to a Deity, Assume Masculine Privileges," Jour. Anth. Soc. (Bombay), II (1891), 322-54.
[141] Westermarck, Human Marriage, 73, 74; Wake, Marriage and Kinship, 81, 82. The custom may possibly be accounted for by the slow growth of the sentiment upon which "conjugal attachment depends:" McLennan, Studies, I, 341. For an alleged "survival" see Schmidt, Hochzeiten in Thüringen, 31. For the strictly regulated form of wife-lending among certain Australian tribes see the reference to the work of Spencer and Gillen below.
[142] Westermarck, op. cit., 72; McLennan, Studies, I, 341, 342. This is also the view of Clifford Howard in his Sex Worship, chaps. v, ix, x.
[143] Westermarck, op. cit., 78; Schmidt, Jus primae noctis, 41.
[144] Westermarck, op. cit., 73.
[145] McLennan, op. cit., I, 337; Westermarck, op. cit., 76.
[146] The well-known theory of Starcke, op. cit., 121-27. It is not essential, according to this view, in early stages of development, that a child should be actually begotten by the father. It is enough that it should be borne by his legal wife and be accepted by him. Hence the jus primae noctis, exercised by a priest, king, or other distinguished person, is sometimes regarded as an honor: ibid., 125, 126; Westermarck, op. cit., 79.
[147] The first series of relationships is seen in the Arunta tribe, where "no man will lend his wife to anyone who does not belong to the particular group with which it is lawful for her to have marital relations—she is, in fact, only lent to a man whom she calls Unwana, just as she calls her own husband, and though this may undoubtedly be spoken of as an act of hospitality, it may with equal justice be regarded as evidence of the very clear recognition of group relationship, and as evidence also in favor of the former existence of group marriage." A native, it is true, will sometimes lend his wife "as an act of hospitality to a white man; but this has nothing to do with the lending of wives which has just been dealt with." It "does not imply the infringement of any custom." The second relationship in the series named is of a public nature, and it is strictly regulated by custom. It consists in the defloration of a girl just before her marriage by certain men who have access to her in a definite order. These men belong to forbidden groups; that is, groups into which the woman may not marry. "The ceremonies in question are of the nature of those which Sir John Lubbock has described as indicative of expiation for marriage;" and they may be regarded as "rudimentary customs" pointing back to a stage of wider marital rights than those which now exist in these tribes. The third relationship is the license allowed on "occasions when a large number of men and women are gathered together to perform certain corrobborees," the more important gatherings lasting perhaps "ten days or a fortnight." Every day "two or three women are told off to attend at the corrobboree ground, and, with the exception of men who stand in the relation to them of actual father, brother, or son, they are, for the time being, common property to all the men present." The explanations of similar usages advanced by McLennan and Westermarck, such as phallicism, are deemed inapplicable to these cases: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, 92-111. Compare especially Kohler, Zur Urgeschichte der Ehe, 64 ff., passim, who finds in the totem groups and classificatory systems of relationship, existing in Australia, America, and elsewhere, evidence of former group-marriage.
[148] Mystic Rose, 236-66, 294-317, 347 ff., 468-85, passim. Cf. Lang, Social Origins, 87-111, passim.
[149] According to Friedrichs, "Familienstufen und Eheformen," ZVR., X, 190 ff., the forms of the family are the following: (1) "die lose Familie;" (2) "die matriarchale, uterine Familie;" (3) "die patriarchale, agnatische Familie;" (4) "die moderne, zweiseitige Familie."
[150] Dargun, Mutterrecht und Raubehe, 12, 13. For exceptions, however, see his Mutterrecht und Vaterrecht, 29 ff., 35, 41, 46.