vidence 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