Another feature of the matriarchal family, the lack of any prohibition as to marriages between persons who are sprung from the same father or grandfather, is also mentioned more than once by early Slavonic writers. Such marriages were not prohibited by custom among the old Bohemians or Czechs. "Populus miscebatur cum cognatis," says the biographer of St. Adalbert. They are also frequently mentioned in the epic poems of our peasants, the so-called bilini, of which the late W.R.S. Ralston has given to English readers an accurate and profound analysis. I will quote certain passages from these poems to give you the facts on which my theory is based.
One of the most celebrated heroes of our popular ballads, Ilia Mourometz. encounters one day a freebooter named Nightingale (Solovei Razboinik). "Why," asks the hero, "do all thy children look alike?" Nightingale gives the following answer: "Because, when my son is grown up, I marry him to my daughter; and when my daughter is old enough, I give her my son for a husband, and I do so in order that my race may not die out." Another popular ballad, representing the evil customs of former days, describes them in the following manner:
Brother made war upon brother, Brother took sister to wife.
Endogamous marriages still occur in a few very remote parts of Russia. Such is the case in certain villages in the district of Onega, and especially in that of Liamika, where the peasants do their best to infringe the canonical prescriptions which disallow marriage between blood relations to the fourth degree inclusively. The same has also been noticed in certain parts of the Government of Archangel, quite on the shores of the White Sea, where the peasants are in the habit of saying that marriages between blood relations will be blessed with a more rapid increase of "cattle" - the word "cattle" standing in this case for children. In some provinces of Siberia and in the district of Vetlouga, which belongs to the Government of Nijni Novgorod, endogamous marriages, though contrary to the prevailing custom are looked upon with a favourable eye. (4*)Another fact, which deserves the attention of all partisans of the theory of the matriarchate, first promulgated by McLennan, is, the large independence enjoyed by the Slavonic women of old days. Let me first quote the words of Cosmas of Prague, which relate to this subject, and then show you what illustration they find both in written literature, and in popular ballads and songs.
Non virgines viri, sed ipsoemet viros, quos et quando voluerunt, accipiebant.
Such is the statement of Cosmas Pragensis, (ch. xxi). This means: "It is not the men who choose the maids, but the maids themselves who take the husbands they like, and when they like."This freedom of the Bohemian girls to dispose of their hearts according to their own wish shows the comparative independence of the Bohemian women at that period.
The oldest legal code of this people, the sniem, seems to favour this independence by recognising the right of the women to be free from any work, except that which is connected with the maintenance of the household.(5*)Confronted with the facts just brought forward, the popular legend, reported by Cosmas in his chronicle, of a kind of Bohemian Amazons, who took an active part in the wars of the time, appears in its true light. Free as they were from the bonds of marriage, not relying on husbands for the defence of their persons and estates, the old Bohemian Amazons were probably very similar to those warlike women who still appear in the King of Dahomey's army, and who in the time of Pompey were known to exist among certain autochthonic tribes of the Caucasus. A fact well worth notice is that the memory of these bellicose women is still preserved in the traditions of the Tcherkess, who call them by the name of "emcheck." Giantesses, wandering by themselves through the country and fighting the heroes they meet on their way, are also mentioned more than once in our popular ballads, or bilini. The name under which they are known is that of polinitzi, the word pole meaning the field and in a secondary sense the battle-field.
Like the Bohemian girls described by Cosmas of Prague, these Russian Amazons chose their lovers as they liked.
"Is thy heart inclined to amuse itself with me?" such is the question addressed to Ilia Mourometz by one of these Amazons, the so-called Beautiful Princess. "Be my husband and I will be thy wife," says another of these polinitzi, Anastasia the Beautiful, to the paladin, Theodor Tougariu. It is not the freebooter Nightingale who chooses his wife, nor the paladin Dobrinia who is going in search of a bride; both are represented as accepting the offers of betrothal made to them by the Russian Amazons, Zaprava and Marina. (6*)Evidence of still greater importance is that of the French writer, Beauplan, who, speaking of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of Little Russia during his time, the latter half of the seventeenth century, states as follows:
"In the Ukraine, contrary to the custom of all other nations, the husbands do not choose their wives, but are themselves chosen by their future consorts."I hope I have now given an amount of information sufficient to answer the purpose I have in view; which is no other, than to show that, in a low state of morality, communal marriage between near relations and endogamy went hand in hand amongst the early Slavs with a considerable degree of independence among the weaker sex.
