Similar traces are found in England: Canute, the Dane, when acknowledged King of England, married Emma, the widow of his predecessor, Ethelred. Ethelbald, King of Kent, married his stepmother, after the death of his father Ethelbert; and, as late as the ninth century, Ethelbald, King of the West Saxons, wedded Judith, the widow of his father. Such marriages are intelligible only if we suppose that the queen had the power of conferring the kingdom upon her consort, which could only happen where maternal descent was, or had been, practised. These marriages with the widow of a king were at one time very common. The familiar example of Hamlet’s uncle is one, who, after murdering his brother, married his wife and became king. His acceptance by the people, in spite of his crime, is explained if it was the old Danish custom for marriage with the king’s widow to carry the kingdom with it. In Hamlet’s position as avenger, and his curious hesitancy, we have really an indication of the conflict between the old and the new ways of descent.[225]
The Celtic population of Britain preserved the institution of the clan much longer than the other European races. In Wales and in Ireland, in particular, communism was strongly established. The clan was responsible for the crimes of its members, paid the fines, and received the compensations.[226] There are numerous indications of mother-right. In Ireland women retained a very high position and much freedom, both before and after marriage, to a late period: temporary unions were freely allowed, and customs having the force of law safeguarded the rights of the wife. “Every woman,” it was said, “is to go the way she willeth freely.”[227]
The early Celtic mythologies and folk-records are full of these survivals. Goddesses are frequent as primeval tribal-mothers. Let me give one instance. The Irish goddess Brigit (whose attributes at a later date were transferred to St. Bridget) is referred to in a ninth-century glossary as—operum atque artificiorum initia. She was the tribal-mother of the Bringantes. Similarly Vote was tribal-mother of the Burgundians; and the goddess Bil of the Billings, and there are numerous other cases. In a recent book on Ulster Folk-lore,[228] I have been fortunate enough to find a most interesting passage referring to the Irish goddess Brigit. I quote it with pleasure as a fitting ending to this chapter.[229]
“Now, St. Bridget had a pagan predecessor, Brigit, a poetess of the Tuatha de Danann, and whom we may perhaps regard as a female Apollo. Cormac in his Glossary tells us she was a daughter of the Dagda and a goddess whom all poets adored, and whose sisters were Brigit the physician and Brigit the smith. Probably the three sisters represent the same divine, or semi-divine, person whom we may identify with the British goddess Brigantia and the Gaulish Brigindo.”
FOOTNOTES:
[180] Herodotus, Book II, p. 35.
[181] Starcke, The Primitive Family, p. 67.
[182] Diodorus, Book I, p. 27.
[183] For a fuller account of the position of women in Egypt, see the chapter on this subject in The Truth about Woman, pp. 179-201.
[184] H. Ellis, Psychology of Sex, Vol. VI, p. 393.