cit., p. 469) quotes a description of an Ehstonian
festival in the Island of Moon, when the girls dance in a circle round the
fire, and one of them,--to the envy of the rest, and the pride of her own
family,--is chosen by the young men, borne away so violently that her
clothes are often torn, and thrown down by a youth, who places one leg
over her body in a kind of symbolical coitus, and lies quietly by her side
till morning. The spring festivals of the young people of Ukrainia, in
which, also, there is singing, dancing, and sleeping together, are
described in "Folk-Lore de l'Ukrainie." Kryptadia, vol. v, pp. 2-6, and
vol. viii, pp. 303 et seq.
[142] M. Kowalewsky, "Marriage Among the Early Slavs," _Folk-Lore_,
December, 1890.
[143] A. Tille, however (_Yule and Christmas_, 1899), while admitting that
the general Aryan division of the year was dual, follows Tacitus in
asserting that the Germanic division of the year (like the Egyptian) was
tripartite: winter, spring, and summer.
[144] Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_ (English translation by Stallybrass),
pp. 612-630, 779, 788.
[145] Wellhausen, _Reste Arabischen Heidentums_, 1897, p. 98.
[146] See, e.g., the chapter on ritual in Gerard-Varet's interesting book,
_L'Ignorance et l'Irreflexion_, 1899, for a popular account of this and
allied primitive conceptions.
[147] Jastrow, _Religion of Babylonia_, especially pp. 485, 571; regarding
the priestesses, Jastrow remarks: "Among many nations, the mysterious
aspects of woman's fertility lead to rites that, by a perversion of their
original import, appear to be obscene.
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