Space prevents us from going into the gentile institutions still 
found, in purer or more adulterated form, among the most diverse 
savage and barbarian peoples of the present day; or into the traces 
of such institutions found in the ancient history of civilised nations 
in Asia.* One or the other is encountered everywhere. A few 
illustrations may suffice: Even before the gens had been recog- 
nised its existence was proved and it was described more or less 
correctly by the man who took the greatest pains to misinterpret 
it, McLennan, who wrote of this institution among the Kalmucks, 
the Circassians, the Samoyeds and three peoples in India: the 
Waralis, the Magars and the Munniporees.© Recently it was 
described by Maxim Kovalevsky, who discovered it among the 
Pshavs, Khevsurs, Svanetians and other Caucasian tribes.? Here we 
shall confine ourselves to a few brief notes on the occurrence of 
the gens among Celts and Teutons. 

The oldest Celtic laws that have come down to our day show the 
gens still in full vitality. In Ireland it is alive, at least instinctively in 
the national consciousness, to this day, now that the English have 
forcibly torn it apart. It was still in full bloom in Scotland in the 
middle of the last century, and here, too, it succumbed only to the 
arms, laws and courts of the English. 

The old Welsh laws, written several centuries before the English 
conquest,’'° not later than the eleventh century, still show 
communal field agriculture for whole villages, be it only as an 
exceptional remnant of a former universal custom. Every family 
had five acres for its own cultivation; another plot was at the same 
time cultivated in common and its yield divided. Judging by the 
Irish and Scottish analogies there cannot be any doubt that these 
village communities represent gentes or subdivisions of gentes, 
even if a reinvestigation of the Welsh laws, which I cannot 
undertake for lack of time (my notes are from 1869''’), may not 
directly corroborate this. What, however, the Welsh sources, and 
the Irish with them, do prove directly is that among the Celts 

pairing marriage had not yet given way by any means to 
monogamy in the eleventh century. In Wales, marriage did not 
become indissoluble, or rather did not cease to be subject to notice 
of dissolution, until after seven years. Even if only three nights 
were lacking to make up the seven years, a married couple could 
still separate. Then their property was divided between them; the 
woman divided, the man made his choice. The furniture was 
divided according to certain very funny rules. If the marriage was 
dissolved by the man, he had to return the woman’s dowry and a 
few other articles; if the woman initiated the dissolution, she 
received less. Of the children the man was given two, the woman 
one, namely, the middle child. If the woman married again after 
her divorce, and her first husband fetched her back, she was 
obliged to follow him, even if she already had one foot in the new 
conjugal bed. But if two people had lived together for seven years, 
they were considered man and wife, even if they had not 
previously been formally married. Chastity among girls before 
marriage was by no means strictly observed, nor was it demanded; 
the regulations governing this subject are of an extremely 
frivolous nature and in no way conform to bourgeois morals. If a 
woman committed adultery, her husband had a right to beat 
her—this was one of three cases when he could do so without 
incurring a penalty—but after that he could not demand any 
other redress, for 

“the same offence shall either be atoned for or avenged, but not both”.4 

The reasons that entitled a woman to a divorce without 
detriment to her rights at the settkement were of a very diverse 
nature: the man’s foul breath was sufficient. The redemption 
money to be paid to the tribal chief or king for the right of the 
first night (gobr merch, hence the medieval name marcheta, French 
marquette) plays a conspicuous part in the legal code. The women 
had the right to vote at the popular assemblies. Add to this that 
similar conditions are shown to have existed in Ireland; that 
temporary marriages were also quite the custom there, and that 
the women were assured of well-defined generous privileges in 
case of separation, even to the point of remuneration for domestic 
services; that a “first wife’? existed by the side of others, and in 
dividing an inheritance no distinction was made between children 
born in or out of wedlock—and we have a picture of the pairing 
marriage compared with which the form of marriage valid in 

North America seems strict; but this is not surprising in the 
eleventh century for a people which in Caesar’s time were still 
living in group marriage. 

The Irish gens (sept; the tribe was called clainne, clan) is 
confirmed and described not only by the ancient law-books, but 
also by the English jurists of the seventeenth century who were 
sent across for the purpose of transforming the clan lands into 
domains of the King of England. Up to this time, the land had 
been the common property of the clan or gens, except where the 
chiefs had already converted it into their private domains. When a 
gentile died, and a household thus ceased to exist, the gentile chief 
(called caput cognationis by the English jurists) redistributed the 
whole land among the remaining households. This distribution 
must in general have taken place according to rules such as were 
observed in Germany. We still find a few villages—very numerous 
forty or fifty years ago—with fields held in so-called rundale. 
Each of the peasants, individual tenants on the soil that once was 
the common property of the gens but had been seized by the 
English conquerors, pays rent for his plot, but all the arable and 
meadow land is combined and shared out, according to situation 
and quality, in strips, or ‘‘Gewanne”, as they are called on the 
Mosel, and each one receives a share of each Gewann. Moorland 
and pastures are used in common. As recently as fifty years ago, 
redivision was still practised occasionally, sometimes annually. The 
map of such a rundale village looks exactly like that of a German 
community of farming households on the Mosel or in the Hoch- 
wald. The gens also survives in the “ractions”. The Irish 
peasants often divide into parties that seem to be founded on 
absolutely absurd and senseless distinctions and are quite incom- 
prehensible to Englishmen and appear to have no other purpose 
than to rally for the popular sport of solemnly beating the life out 
of one another. They are artificial reincarnations, later substitutes 
for the broken-up gentes that in their own peculiar way 
demonstrate the continuation of the inherited gentile instinct. 
Incidentally, in some areas members of the same gens still live 
together on what is practically their old territory. During the 
thirties, for instance, the great majority of the inhabitants of the 
county of Monaghan had only four surnames, that is, were 
descended from four gentes, or clans.* 

* During a few days that I spent in Ireland,!!8 I again realised to what extent 
the rural population there is still living in the conceptions of the gentile period. 
The landlord, whose tenant the peasant is, is still considered by the latter as a sort 
of clan chief who has to supervise the cultivation of the soil in the interest of 

The downfall of the gentile order in Scotland dates from the 
suppression of the rebellion of 1745.''? Precisely what link in this 
order the Scottish clan represents remains to be investigated; no 
doubt it is a link. Walter Scott’s novels bring the clan in the 
Highlands of Scotland vividly before our eyes. It is, as Morgan 
says, 

“an excellent type of the gens in organisation and in spirit, and an 
extraordinary illustration of the power of the gentile life over its members.... We 
find in their feuds and blood revenge, in their localisation by gentes, in their use of 
lands in common, in the fidelity of the clansman to his chief and of the members 
of the clan to each other, the usual and persistent features of gentile society... 
Descent was in the male line, the children of the males remaining members of the 
clan, while the children of its female members belonged to the clans of their 
respective fathers”’.? 

That mother right used to be in force in Scotland is proved by 
the fact that in the royal family of the Picts, according to Beda,” 
inheritance in the female line prevailed. We even see evidence of 
the punaluan family preserved among the Scots as well as the 
Welsh until the Middle Ages in the right of the first night, which 
the chief of the clan or the king, as the last representative of the 
former common husbands, could claim with every bride, unless 
redeemed.° 

all, is entitled to tribute from the peasant in the form of rent, but also has to as- 
sist the peasant in emergencies. Likewise, everyone in more comfortable circum- 
stances is considered under obligation to help his poorer neighbours whenever 
they are in distress. Such assistance is not charity; it is what the poor clansman is 
entitled to by right from his rich fellow clansman or clan chief. This explains 
why political economists and jurists complain of the impossibility of inculcating 
the idea of modern bourgeois property into the minds of the Irish peasants. Pro- 
perty that has only rights, but no duties, is absolutely beyond the ken of the Irish- 
man. No wonder that Irishmen with such naive gentile conceptions, who are sud- 
denly cast into the great cities of England and America, among a population with 
entirely different moral and legal standards, easily become utterly confused in 
their views of morals and justice, lose all hold and often are bound to suc- 
cumb en masse to demoralisation. [Note to the 1891 edition.] 

* *K * 

That the Germans were organised in gentes up to the time of 
the migration of peoples’”° is indisputable. Evidently they settled 
in the area between the Danube, Rhine, Vistula and the northern 
seas only a few centuries before our era; the Cimbri and 
Teutons were still in full migration, and the Suebi did not settle 
down until Caesar’s time. Caesar expressly states that they settled 
down in gentes and kinships (gentibus cognationibusque),* and in the 
mouth of a Roman of the Julia gens the word gentibus has a 
definite meaning that cannot possibly be misconstrued. This holds 
good for all Germans; even the settling of the conquered Roman 
provinces” appears still to have proceeded in gentes. The 
Alamannian Law confirms that the people settled on the 
conquered land south of the Danube in gentes (genealogiae); 
genealogia is used in exactly the same sense as Mark or village 
community * was used later. Recently Kovalevsky has expressed 

* Mark in German means land originally belonging in common to the 
inhabitants of a village or district. The fields and meadows were divided among 
heads of families, but in early times they were subject to further periodic division 
(this still exists in several villages on the Mosel); each person’s portion soon became 
his own property, but it was still subject to the rules of cultivation for the 
community. The pastures, woodland and the other uncultivated land remained, 
and in many cases are still today, common property. The collectivity of the 
interested parties determines the method of field cultivation and the use of 
.common land. The constitution of the Mark is the oldest constitution among the 
German people and it is the foundation on which all their medieval institutions 
were built. [ Engels’ note to the 1885 Italian edition] 

the view that these genealogiae were large household communities 
among which the land was divided, and from which the village 
communities developed only later. The same may be true of the 
fara, the term which the Burgundians and Langobards—a Gothic 
and a Herminonian, or High German, tribe—applied to nearly, if 
not exactly, the same thing that in the Alamannian book of laws is 
called genealogia. Whether this really represents the gens or the 
household community is a matter that must be further investi- 
gated. 

Linguistic records leave us in doubt as to whether all the 
Germans had a common term for gens, and if so, what term. 
Etymologically, the Greek genos, the Latin gens, corresponds to the 
Gothic kuni, Middle High German ktinne, and is used in the same 
sense. We are led back to the time of mother right by the fact that 
the terms for “woman” are derived from the same root: Greek 
gyné, Slav zena, Gothic qvino, Old Norse kona, kuna— Among 
Langobards and Burgundians we find, as stated, the term fara, 
which Grimm derives from the hypothetical root fisan, to beget. I 
should prefer to trace it to the more obvious root faran [fahren], 
to wander, return, a term which designates a certain well-defined 
section of the nomadic train, composed, it almost goes without 
saying, of relatives; a term, which, in the course of centuries of 
wandering, first to the East and then to the West, was gradually 
applied to the gentile community itself.—Further, there is the 
Gothic sibja, Anglo-Saxon sib, Old High German sippia, sippa, 
[Sippe], kinsfolk. Old Norse has only the plural sifjar, relatives; 
the singular occurs only as the name of a goddess, Sif.— Finally, 
another expression occurs in the Hildebrand Song’” where 
Hildebrand asks Hadubrand, 

“who is your father among the men of the people ... or what is your kin?” (eddo 
huélihhes cnuosles du sis). 

If there was a common German term for gens, it might well 
have been the Gothic kuni; this is not only indicated by its identity 
with the corresponding term in kindred languages, but also by the 
fact that the word kuning, Konig, which originally signified chief of 
gens or tribe, is derived from it. Sibja, kinsfolk, does not appear 
worthy of consideration; in Old Norse, at least, sifjar signified not 
only relatives by blood, but also by marriage; hence it comprises 
the members of at least two gentes; thus sif cannot have been the 
term for gens. 

Among the Germans, as among the Mexicans and Greeks, the 
horsemen as well as the wedge-like columns of infantry were 

grouped in battle array by gentes. If Tacitus says: by families and 
kinships,* the indefinite expression he uses is explained by the fact 
that in his time the gens had long ceased to be a living association 
in Rome. 

Of decisive significance is a passage in Tacitus where he says: 
The mother’s brother regards his nephew as his son; some even 
hold that the blood tie between the maternal uncle and the 
nephew is more sacred and close than that between father and 
son, so that when hostages are demanded the sister’s son is 
considered a better pledge than the natural son of the man whom 
they desire to place under bond. Here we have a living survival of 
the mother-right, and hence original, gens, and it is described as 
something which particularly distinguishes the Germans.* If a 
member of such a gens gave his own son as a pledge for a solemn 
obligation he had undertaken, and if this son became the victim of 
his father’s breach of contract, that was for the father to settle with 
himself. If the son of a sister was sacrificed, however, then the 
most sacred gentile law was violated. The next of kin, who was 
bound above all others to protect the boy or young man, was 
responsible for his death; he should either have refrained from 
giving the boy as a pledge, or have kept the contract. If we had no 
other trace of gentile organisation among the Germans, this one 
passage would be sufficient proof.‘ 

Still more decisive, as it comes about eight hundred years later, 
is a passage in the Old Norse song about the twilight of the gods 
and the end of the world, the Véluspa.'** In this “Vision of the 
Seeress”, in which, as Bang and Bugge have now shown, also 

* The Greeks know only in the mythology of the Heroic Age the special 
intimacy of the bond between the maternal uncle and his nephew, originating from 
the time of mother right and found among many peoples. According to Diodorus 
(IV, 34), Meleager kills the sons of Thestius, the brothers of his mother Althaea. 
The latter regards this deed as such a heinous crime that she curses the murderer, 
her own son, and prays for his death. It is related that ‘the gods fulfilled her wish 
and ended Meleager’s life”. According to the same Diodorus (IV, 44), the 
Argonauts under Heracles landed in Thracia and there found that Phineus, at the 
instigation of his second wife, shamefully maltreats his two sons by his first, 
deserted wife, Cleopatra, the Boreade. But among the Argonauts there are also 
some Boreadi, the brothers of Cleopatra, the maternal uncles, therefore, of the 
maltreated boys. They at once come to their nephews’ aid, set them free and kill 
their guards.» 

elements of Christianity are interwoven, the description of the 
period of universal depravity and corruption preceding the 
cataclysm contains this passage: 

Broedhr munu berjask ok at bonum verdask, munu systrungar sifjum spilla. 

“Brothers will wage war against one another and become each other’s slayers, 
and sisters’ children will break the bonds of kinship.” 

Systrungar means son of the mother’s sister, and in the poet’s 
eyes, the repudiation by such of blood relationship caps the climax 
of the crime of fratricide. The climax lies in systrungar, which 
emphasises the kinship on the maternal side. If the term 
syskina-born, brother’s and _ sister’s children, or  syskina-synir, 
brother’s and sister’s sons, had been used, the second line would 
not have been a crescendo as against the first but a weakening 
diminuendo. Thus, even in the time of the Vikings, when the 
Véluspa was composed, the memory of mother right was not yet 
obliterated in Scandinavia. 

For the rest, in Tacitus’ time, at least among the Germans with 
whom he was more familiar,” mother right had already given way 
to father right: the children were the heirs of the father; in the 
absence of children, the brothers and the paternal and maternal 
uncles were the heirs. The admission of the mother’s brother to 
inheritance is connected with the preservation of the above- 
mentioned custom, and also proves how recent father right was 
among the Germans at that time. We find traces of mother right 
even well into the Middle Ages. In this period fatherhood seems 
to have been open to some suspicion, especially among serfs, and 
when a feudal lord demanded the return of a fugitive serf from a 
city, it was required, for instance, in Augsburg, Basle and 
Kaiserslautern, that the fact of his serfdom should be established 
by the oaths of six of his immediate blood relatives, exclusively on 
his mother’s side (Maurer, Städteverfassung, I, p. 381). 

Another relic of mother right, then only in its initial stage of 
decay, was the respect the Germans had for the female sex, from 
the Roman standpoint almost inexplicable. Virgins of noble family 
were regarded as the best hostages guaranteeing the keeping of 
contracts with Germans. In battle, nothing spurred their courage 
so much as the horrible thought that their wives and daughters 
might be captured and carried into slavery. They regarded the 
woman as being holy and a prophetess, and they heeded her 
advice even in the most important matters. Veleda, the Bructerian 

priestess on the Lippe River, was the moving spirit of the whole 
Batavian insurrection, in which Civilis, at the head of Germans 
and Belgians, shook the foundations of Roman rule in Gaul.’” 
The women appear to have held undisputed sway in the house. 
They, with the old men and children, had, of course, to do all the 
work, for the men went hunting, drank or loafed around. So