variant that has the wider distribution –– India, Greece, Latvia, Germany ––
and the stronger claim to represent a common Indo-European tradition.
If there was such a tradition, what was its status? Was the svayam
̇
vara
anything more than a literary motif? Kim McCone has written that it ‘hardly
looks like a real institution’. ‘In firmly patrilinear societies like those of
ancient Ireland, Greece or India, not to mention the ancestral Indo-
Europeans themselves, it would be strange indeed if the all-important king-
ship were left literally in the gift of a mere woman.’^80 He suspects that it all
goes back to an archetypal sovereignty myth in which the woman who chose
her consort was Sovereignty herself.
The German evidence may suggest an alternative explanation: that the
myths reflect, not a historical method of aristocratic match-making for life,
but a popular seasonal custom in which a girl chose a beau for the summer.
We found reason in Chapter 5 to think that certain features of the mythology
surrounding the Daughter of the Sun, including her wedding, were a pro-
jection of earthly festivities. We saw too that the competing suitors of Helen,
her wedding, and her abduction, fitted into that model. Helen is the one bride
in Greek myth who is said to have chosen her husband by putting a garland
on him.
The myths of suitors running races for the hand of the Danaids or Pene-
lope likewise make excellent sense in terms of ritual sports. We recall that at
some places in Germany young men raced on foot to the Maypole, the winner
becoming May King and partner to the May Queen.
The sword in the bedIt is a widespread motif that a couple sleep together for one or several nights
with a sword laid between them as a guarantor of chastity. The purpose is the
avoidance of adultery or incest, or the deliberate postponement of sexual
relations till a prescribed period has elapsed or a task has been achieved, or to
satisfy others that no coition has occurred.^81
The best-known example is the Norse legend of how Sigurd slept chastely
with Brynhild, laying his sword between them.^82 According to the Vo ̨lsunga
saga they slept in this way for three nights. The same period is specified in the
(^80) McCone (1990), 111.
(^81) Cf. Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer (4th edn., Berlin 1875–8), i. 232–5; B. Heller,
Romania 36 (1907), 36–49; 37 (1908), 162 f.; J. Bolte–G. Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder-
und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (Leipzig 1913–18), i. 554 f.
(^82) Brot af Sigurðarkviðu 19; Sigurðarkviða in skamma 68. Cf. Detter–Heinzel (1903), ii. 445;
Gering–Sijmons (1927–31), ii. 231 f.
436 11. King and Hero