4. It is plain that this condition would not be permanent. The male power had yet to advance further; the child had to gain a father. We reach the patriarchal period, in which descent through the male line has replaced the earlier custom. Woman's power, first passing to her brother or other male relative, has been transferred to the husband and father. This change of power did not, of course, take place at once, and even under fully developed father-right systems many traces of the old mother-rights persist.
What it is necessary to fasten deeply in our minds is this: the father as the head of the woman and her children, the ruler of the house, was not the natural order of the primitive human family. Civilisation started with the woman being dominant—the home-maker, the owner of her children, the transmitter of property. It was—as will be made abundantly clear from the cases we shall examine—a much later economic question which led to a reversal of this plan, and brought the rise of father-right, with the father as the dominant partner; while the woman sank back into an unnatural and secondary position of economic dependence upon the man who was her owner—a position from which she has not even yet succeeded in freeing herself.
The maternal system of descent is found in all parts of the world where social advance stands at a certain level. This fact, added to the widespread traces the custom has left in every civilisation, warrants the assumption that mother-right in all cases preceded father-right, and has been, indeed, a stage of social growth for all branches of the human race.[102]
I shall not attempt to give the numerous traces of mother-descent that are to be found in the early histories of existing civilised nations, for to do this would entail the writing of the whole chapter on this subject. For the same reason I must reluctantly pass over the abundant evidence of mother-right that is furnished in folk-lore, in heroic legends, and in the fairy stories of our children. These stories date back to a time long before written history; they are known to all of us, and belong to all countries in slightly different forms. We have regarded them as fables; they are really survivals of customs and practices once common to all society. Wherever we find a king ruling as the son of a queen, because he is the queen's husband, or because he marries a princess, we have proof of mother-descent. The influence of the mother over her son's marriage, the winning of a bride by a task done by the wooer, the brother-sister marriage so frequent in ancient mythologies, the interference of a wise woman, and the many stories of virgin-births—all are survivals of mother-right customs. Similar evidence is furnished by mother-goddesses, so often converted into Christian local saints. I wish it were possible to follow this subject,[103] whose interest offers rich rewards. Perhaps nowhere else can we gain so clear and vivid a picture as in these ancient stories and legends of the early powerful position of woman as the transmitter of inheritance and guardian of property.
It may interest my readers to know that mother-descent must once have prevailed in Britain. Among the Picts of Scotland kingship was transmitted through women. Bede tells us that down to his own time—the early part of the eighth century—whenever a doubt arose as to the succession, the Picts chose their king from the female rather than from the male line.[104] 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 matrilineal descent was, or had been, recognised.[105] In Ireland (where mother-right must have been firmly established, if Strabo's account of the free sexual relations of the people[106] is accepted) women retained a very high position and much freedom, both before and after marriage, to a late period. "Every woman," it was said, "is to go the way she willeth freely," and after marriage "she enjoyed a better position and greater freedom of divorce than was afforded either by the Christian Church or English common law."[107]
Similar survivals of mother-right customs among the ancient Hebrews are made familiar to us in Bible history. To mention a few examples only: when Abraham sought a wife for Isaac, presents were taken by the messenger to induce the bride to leave her home; and these presents were given to her mother and brothers. Jacob had to serve Laban for fourteen years before he was permitted to marry Leah and Rachel,[108] and six further years of service were given for his cattle. Afterwards when he wished to depart with his children and his wives, Laban made the objection, "these daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children."[109] Such acts point to the subordinate position held by Jacob, which is clearly a survival of the servitude required from the bridegroom by the relatives of the woman, who retain control over her and her children, and even over the property of the man, as was usual under the later matriarchal custom. The injunction in Gen. ii. 24, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife," refers without any doubt to the early marriage under mother-right, when the husband left his own kindred and went to live with his wife and among her people. We find Samson visiting his Philistine wife, who remained with her kindred.[110] Even the obligation to blood vengeance rested apparently on the maternal kinsmen (Judges viii. 19). The Hebrew father did not inherit from his son, nor the grandfather from the grandson,[111] which points back to an ancient epoch when the children did not belong to the clan of the father.[112] Among the Hebrews individual property was instituted in very early times (Gen. xxiii. 13); but various customs show clearly the ancient existence of communal clans. Thus the inheritance, especially the paternal inheritance, must remain in the clan. Marriage in the tribe is obligatory for daughters. "Let them marry to whom they think best; only to the family of the tribe of their father shall they marry. So shall not the inheritance of the children of Israel remove from tribe to tribe."[113] We have here an indication of the close relation between father-right and property.
Under mother-descent there is naturally no prohibition against marriage with a half-sister upon the father's side. This explains the marriage of Abraham with Sara, his half-sister by the same father. When reproached for having passed his wife off as his sister to the King of Egypt and to Abimelech, the patriarch replies: "For indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife."[114] In the same way Tamar could have married her half-brother Amnon, though they were both the children of David.[115] The father of Moses and Aaron married his father's sister, who was not legally his relation.[116] Nabor, the brother of Abraham, took to wife his fraternal niece, the daughter of his brother.[117] It was only later that paternal kinship became recognised among the Hebrews by the same title as the natural kinship through the mother.[118]
Other examples might be added. All these survivals of mother-descent (and they may be discovered in the early history of every people) have their value; they are, however, only survivals, and their interest rests mainly in comparing them with similar facts among other peoples among whom the presence of mother-right customs is undisputed. To these existing examples of the primitive family clan grouped around the mother we will now turn our attention.