The female of the European cuckoo (cuculus canorus) keeps intercourse with several males in different districts during the same season. Still, this is far from the human polyandry, in which the men and one women all live together in the same place, the men mutually tolerating one another, which male cuckoos do not.
[9] Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, London, 1891.
[10] Espinas, Des Societes Animales, 1877.
[11] Espinas, l. c., quoted by Giraud-Teulon, Origines du mariage et de la famille, 1884, p. 518-20.
[12] Author's note. In the spring of 1882, Marx expressed himself in the strongest terms on the total misrepresentation of primeval times by Wagner's Nibelungen text: "Who ever heard of a brother embracing his sister as a bride?" To these lascivious Wagnerian gods who in truly modern style are rendering their love quarrels more spicy by a little incest, Marx replies: "In primeval times the sister was the wife and that was moral." (To the fourth edition.) A French friend and admirer of Wagner does not consent to this foot note, and remarks that even in the Oegisdrecka, the more ancient Edda on which Wagner built, Loki denounces Freya: "Before the gods you embraced your own brother." This, he says, proves that marriage between brother and sister was interdicted even then. But the Oegisdrecka is the expression of a time when the belief in the old myths was totally shaken; it is a truly Lucian satire on the gods. If Loki as Mephisto denounces Freya in this manner, then it is rather a point against Wagner. Loki also says, a few verses further on, to Niordhr: "With your sister you generated (such) a son" ("vidh systur thinni gatzu slikan mog"). Niordhr is not an Asa, but a Vana, and says in the Ynglinga Saga that marriages between brothers and sisters are sanctioned in Vanaland, which is not the case among the Asas. This would indicate that the Vanas are older gods than the Asas. At any rate Niordhr lived on equal terms with the Asas, and the Oegisdrecka is thus rather a proof that at the time of the origin of the Norwegian mythology the marriage of brother and sister was not yet repulsive, at least not to the gods. In trying to excuse Wagner it might be better to quote Goethe instead of the Edda. This poet commits a similar error in his ballad of the god and the bajadere in regard to the religious surrender of women and approaches modern prostitution far too closely.
[13] There is no longer any doubt that the traces of unrestricted sexual intercourse, which Bachofen alleges to have found—called "incestuous generation" by him—are traceable to group marriage. If Bachofen considers those Punaluan marriages "lawless," a man of that period would look upon most of our present marriages between near and remote cousins on the father's or mother's side as incestuous, being marriages between consanguineous relatives.—Marx.
[14] The People of India.
[15] See translator's note, p. 55.
[16] Translator's note.
According to Cunow, Kroki and Kumite are phratries. See "Die Verwandschaftsorganizationen der Australneger," by Heinrich Cunow. Stuttgart, Dietz Verlag, 1894.