of
the storytellers? Do these princesses and their peasant wooers belong
to the topsy-turvy land of fairies? No: in these stories, drawn from
so many various countries, we have echoes of a very distant past. It
is by placing the customs here represented by the side of similar
social conditions still to be found among primitive maternal peoples,
that we find their significance. We then understand that these old,
old stories of the folk really take us back to the age in which they
first took form. We have read these "fairy stories" to our children,
unknowing what they signified--a prophetic succession of witnesses,
pointing us back to the ripening of that phase of the communal family,
before the establishment of the individual patriarchal rule, when the
law was mother-right, and all inheritance was through women.

I would add to this chapter a notice I have just recently lighted
on[246] of the ancient warrior, Queen Meave of Ireland. She is
represented as tall and beautiful, terrible in her battle chariot,
when she drove full speed into the press of fighting men. Her virtues
were those of a warlike barbarian king, and she claimed the like large
liberty in morals. Her husband was Ailill, the Connaught king; their
marriage was literally a partnership wherein Meave, making her own
terms, demanded from her husband exact equality of treatment. The
three essential qualities on which she insisted were that he should be
brave, and generous, and completely devoid of jealousy.

[246] "Ancient Irish Sagas," _Century_, Jan. 1907.

CHAPTER XII

CONCLUDING REMARKS

My investigation of the mother-age might fitly have terminated with
the preceding chapter; but the immense interest which attaches to the
subject, and the amount of misconception which prevails regarding the
origin and conditions of the maternal family, as well as my own
special views upon it, induce me to devote a brief final chapter to a
few observations that to me seem to be important.

In my little book (which must be regarded rather as a sketch or design
than as a finished work) an attempt has been made to approach the
problem of the primitive family from a new and decisive standpoint. I
am well aware that in certain directions I have crossed the threshold
only of the subjects treated. I hope that at least I have opened up
suggestions of many questions on which I could not dwell at length.
All this may bring the hesitation that leads to further inquir