The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 3

_Mother-Land._

As we say in English most commonly "native city," so also we say "native land." Even Byron sings:--

"Adieu, adieu I my native sh.o.r.e Fades o'er the waters blue;

My native land--good night!"

and Fitz-Greene Halleck, in his patriotic poem "Marco Bozzaris," bids strike "For G.o.d, and your native land."

Scott's far-famed lines:--

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself has said, This is my own, my native land!"

and Smith's national hymn, "My country,'tis of thee," know no _mother-land_.

In the great _Century Dictionary_, the only ill.u.s.tration cited of the use of the word _mother-land_ is a very recent one, from the _Century Magazine_ (vol. xxix. p. 507).

Shakespeare, however, comes very near it, when, in _King John_ (V. ii.), he makes the b.a.s.t.a.r.d speak of "your dear Mother-England,"

--but this is not quite "mother-land."

In German, though, through the sterner influences which surrounded the Empire in its birth and reorganization, _Vaterland_ is now the word, _Mutterland_ was used by Kant, Wieland, Goethe, Herder, Uhland, etc. Lippert suggests an ingenious explanation of the origin of the terms _Mutterland_, _Vaterland_, as well as for the predominance of the latter and younger word. If, in primitive times, man alone could hold property,--women even and children were his chattels,--yet the development of agriculture and horticulture at the hands of woman created, as it were, a new species of property, property in land, the result of woman's toil and labour; and this new property, in days when "mother-right" prevailed, came to be called _Mutterland_, as it was essentially "mothers' land." But when men began to go forth to war, and to conquer and acquire land that was not "mothers' land," a new species of landed property,--the "land of the conquering father,"--came into existence (and with it a new theory of succession, "father-right"), and from that time forward "Vaterland" has extended its signification, until it has attained the meaning which it possesses in the German speech of to-day (492. 33, 36).

The inhabitants of the British colonies scattered all over the world speak of Britain as the "mother country," "Mother England"; and R. H.

Stoddard, the American poet, calls her "our Mother's Mother." The French of Canada term France over-sea "la mere patrie" (mother fatherland).

Even Livy, the Roman historian, wrote _terra quam matrem appellamus_,--"the land we call mother,"--and Virgil speaks of Apollo's native Delos as _Delum maternum_. But for all this, the proud Roman called his native land, not after his mother, but after his father, _patria_; so also in corresponding terms the Greek, [Greek: _patris_], etc. But the latter remembered his mother also, as the word _metropolis_, which we have inherited, shows. [Greek: _Maetropolis_] had the meanings: "mother-state" (whence daughter-colonies went forth); "a chief city, a capital, metropolis; one's mother-city, or mother-country." In English, _metropolis_ has been a.s.sociated with "mother-church," for a _metropolis_ or a _metropolitan_ city, was long one which was the seat of a bishopric.

Among the ancient Greeks the Cretans were remarkable for saying not [Greek: _patris_] (father-land), but [Greek: _maetris_]

(mother-land), by which name also the Messenians called their native land. Some light upon the loss of "mother-words" in ancient Greece may be shed from the legend which tells that when the question came whether the new town was to be named after Athene or Poseidon, all the women voted for the former, carrying the day by a single vote, whereupon Poseidon, in anger, sent a flood, and the men, determining to punish their wives, deprived them of the power of voting, and decided that thereafter children were not to be named after their mothers (115. 235).

In Gothic, we meet with a curious term for "native land, home,"

_gabaurths_ (from _gabairan_ "to bear"), which signifies also "birth." As an exemplification of the idea in the Sophoclean phrase "all-nourishing earth," we find that at an earlier stage in the history of our own English tongue _erd_ (cognate with our _earth_) signified "native land," a remembrance of that view of savage and uncivilized peoples in which _earth, land_ are "native country,"

for these are, in the true sense of the term, _Landesleute, homines_.

In the language of the Hervey Islands, in the South Pacific, "the place in which the placenta of an infant is buried is called the _ipukarea_, or _native soil_" (459. 26).

Our English language seems still to prefer "native city, native town, native village," as well as "native land," "mother-city" usually signifying an older town from which younger ones have come forth. In German, though _Vaterstadt_ in a.n.a.logy with _Vaterland_ seems to be the favorite, _Mutterstadt_ is not unknown.

Besides _Mutterland_ and _Mutterstadt_, we find in German the following:--

_Mutterboden_, "mother-land." Used by the poet Uhland.

_Muttergefilde_, "the fields of mother-earth." Used by Schlegel.

_Muttergrund_, "the earth," as productive of all things. Used by Goethe.

_Mutterhimmel_, "the sky above one's native land." Used by the poet Herder.

_Mutterluft_, "the air of one's native land."

_Mutterhaus_, "the source, origin of anything." Uhland even has:--

"Hier ist des Stromes Mutterhaus, Ich trink ihn frisch vom Stein heraus."

More far-reaching, diviner than "mother-land," is "mother-earth."

CHAPTER III.

THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (_Continued_).

To the child its mother should be as G.o.d.--_G. Stanley Hall_.

A mother is the holiest thing alive.--_Coleridge_.

G.o.d pardons like a mother, who kisses the offence into everlasting forgetfulness.--_Henry Ward Beecher_.

When the social world was written in terms of mother-right, the religious world was expressed in terms of mother-G.o.d.

There is nothing more charming than to see a mother with a child in her arms, and nothing more venerable than a mother among a number of her children.--_Goethe_.

_Mother-Earth_.

"Earth, Mother of all," is a world-wide G.o.ddess. Professor O.T. Mason, says: "The earth is the mother of all mankind. Out of her came they. Her traits, attributes, characteristics, they have so thoroughly inherited and imbibed, that, from any doctrinal point of view regarding the origin of the species, the earth may be said to have been created for men, and men to have been created out of the earth. By her nurture and tuition they grow up and flourish, and, folded in her bosom, they sleep the sleep of death. The idea of the earth-mother is in every cosmogony.

Nothing is more beautiful in the range of mythology than the conception of Demeter with Persephone, impersonating the maternal earth, rejoicing in the perpetual return of her daughter in spring, and mourning over her departure in winter to Hades" (389 (1894). 140).

Dr. D.G. Brinton writes in the same strain (409. 238): "Out of the earth rises life, to it it returns. She it is who guards all germs, nourishes all beings. The Aztecs painted her as a woman with countless b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the Peruvians called her '_Mama_ Allpa,' _mother_ Earth; in the Algonkin tongue, the words for earth, mother, father, are from the same root. _h.o.m.o, Adam, chamaigenes_, what do all these words mean but earth-born, the son of the soil, repeated in the poetic language of Attica in _anthropos_, he who springs up like a flower?"

Mr. W. J. McGee, treating of "Earth the Home of Man," says (502. 28):--

"In like manner, mankind, offspring of Mother Earth, cradled and nursed through helpless infancy by things earthly, has been brought well towards maturity; and, like the individual man, he is repaying the debt unconsciously a.s.sumed at the birth of his kind, by transforming the face of nature, by making all things better than they were before, by aiding the good and destroying the bad among animals and plants, and by protecting the aging earth from the ravages of time and failing strength, even as the child protects his fleshly mother. Such are the relations of earth and man."

The Roman babe had no right to live until the father lifted him up from "mother-earth" upon which he lay; at the baptism of the ancient Mexican child, the mother spoke thus: "Thou Sun, Father of all that live, and thou Earth, our Mother, take ye this child and guard it as your son"

(529. 97); and among the Gypsies of northern Hungary, at a baptism, the oldest woman present takes the child out, and, digging a circular trench around the little one, whom she has placed upon the earth, utters the following words: "Like this Earth, be thou strong and great, may thy heart be free from care, be merry as a bird" (392 (1891). 20). All of these practices have their a.n.a.logues in other parts of the globe.

In another way, infanticide is connected with "mother-earth." In the book of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xiv. 23) we read: "They slew their children in sacrifices." Infanticide--"murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange, and unnatural"--has been sheltered beneath the cloak of religion. The story is one of the darkest pages in the history of man. A priestly legend of the Khonds of India attributes to child-sacrifice a divine origin:--

"In the beginning was the Earth a formless ma.s.s of mud, and could not have borne the dwelling of man, or even his weight; in this liquid and ever-moving slime neither tree nor herb took root. Then G.o.d said: 'Spill human blood before my face!' And they sacrificed a child before Him. ...

Falling upon the soil, the b.l.o.o.d.y drops stiffened and consolidated it."

But too well have the Khonds obeyed the command: "And by the virtues of the blood shed, the seeds began to sprout, the plants to grow, the animals to propagate. And G.o.d commanded that the Earth should be watered with blood every new season, to keep her firm and solid. And this has been done by every generation that has preceded us."