Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/476

470 prevailing custom, are looked upon with a favourable eye.

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 Cosmus 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.

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.

Confronted with the facts just brought forward, the popular legend, reported by Cosmus 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 met on their way, are also mentioned more