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236 common. I do not see that we can reject his testimony, though it concerns, I am convinced, not the Aryan invaders, but the original inhabitants of the isles. And there is something to bear out his statement. We know very little about the Picts, but the consensus of opinion is that they were a pre-Aryan people. And we have the succession recorded of the Pictist kings. From this we learn that the kingship descended through the mothers; that, in fact, a matriarchate existed. This in itself implies polyandry, and among wild tribes this did exist to a large extent. To the present day, in Tibet, a woman belongs to several men. In Ceylon she is the wife of perhaps three brothers; and when one husband visits her, he leaves his staff at the door to show that he is in possession. At the present day, in England, an illegitimate child bears the mother’s name; and although the father may be perfectly well known, he has no rights over his issue, nor over the property of the mother, which passes to her own offspring.

In my neighbourhood there is a high ridge of down, in a half-moon, in the lap of which lie several villages. In my boyhood it was quite possible to distinguish between the villagers of two of these. Those in one were