The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 4

More than once "the mother, with her boys and girls, and perhaps even a little child in her arms, were immolated together,"--for sometimes the wretched children, instead of being immediately sacrificed, were allowed to live until they had offspring whose sad fate was determined ere their birth. In the work of Reclus may be read the fearful tale of the cult of "Pennou, the terrible earth-deity, the bride of the great Sun-G.o.d" (523.

315).

In Tonga the paleness of the moon is explained by the following legend: Vatea (Day) and Tonga-iti (Night) each claimed the first-born of Papa (Earth) as his own child. After they had quarrelled a great deal, the infant was cut in two, and Vatea, the husband of Papa, "took the upper part as his share, and forthwith squeezed it into a ball and tossed it into the heavens, where it became the sun." But Tonga-iti, in sullen humour, let his half remain on the ground for a day or two. Afterward, however, "seeing the brightness of Vatea's half, he resolved to imitate his example by compressing his share into a ball, and tossing it into the dark sky during the absence of the sun in Avaiki, or netherworld."

It became the moon, which is so pale by reason of "the blood having all drained out and decomposition having commenced," before Tonga-iti threw his half up into the sky (458. 45). With other primitive peoples, too, the G.o.ds were infanticidal, and many nations like those of Asia Minor, who offered up the virginity of their daughters upon the altars of their deities, hesitated not to slay upon their high places the first innocent pledges of motherhood.

The earth-G.o.ddess appears again when the child enters upon manhood, for at Brahman marriages in India, the bridegroom still says to the bride, "I am the sky, thou art the earth, come let us marry" (421. 29).

And last of all, when the ineluctable struggle of death is over, man returns to the "mother-earth"--dust to dust. One of the hymns of the Rig-Veda has these beautiful words, forming part of the funeral ceremonies of the old Hindus:--

"Approach thou now the lap of Earth, thy mother, The wide-extending Earth, the ever-kindly; A maiden soft as wool to him who comes with gifts, She shall protect thee from destruction's bosom.

"Open thyself, O Earth, and press not heavily; Be easy of access and of approach to him, As mother with her robe her child, So do thou cover him, O Earth!" (421. 31).

The study of the mortuary rites and customs of the primitive peoples of all ages of the world's history (548) reveals many instances of the belief that when men, "the common growth of mother-earth," at last rest their heads upon her lap, they do not wholly die, for the immortality of Earth is theirs. Whether they live again,--as little children are often fabled to do,--when Earth laughs with flowers of spring, or become incarnate in other members of the animate or inanimate creation, whose kinship with man and with G.o.d is an article of the great folk-creed, or, in the beautiful words of the burial service of the Episcopal Church, sleep "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection," all testifies that man is instinct with the life that throbs in the bosom of Earth, his Mother. As of old, the story ran that man grew into being from the dust, or sprang forth in G.o.d-like majesty, so, when death has come, he sinks to dust again, or triumphantly scales the lofty heights where dwell the immortal deities, and becomes "as one of them."

With the idea of the earth-mother are connected the numerous myths of the origin of the first human beings from clay, mould, etc., their provenience from caves, holes in the ground, rocks and mountains, especially those in which the woman is said to have been created first (509. 110). Here belong also not a few ethnic names, for many primitive peoples have seen fit to call themselves "sons of the soil, _terrae filii_, _Landesleute_."

Muller and Brinton have much to say of the American earth-G.o.ddesses, _Toci_, "our mother," and G.o.ddess of childbirth among the ancient Mexicans (509. 494); the Peruvian _Pachamama_, "mother-earth," the mother of men (509. 369); the "earth-mother" of the Caribs, who through earthquakes manifests her animation and cheerfulness to her children, the Indians, who forthwith imitate her in joyous dances (509. 221); the "mother-earth" of the Shawnees, of whom the Indian chief spoke, when he was bidden to regard General Harrison as "Father": "No, the sun yonder is my father, and the earth my mother; upon her bosom will I repose,"

etc. (509. 117).

Among the earth-G.o.ddesses of ancient Greece and Rome are Demeter, Ceres, Tellus, Rhea, Terra, Ops, Cybele, Bona Dea, Bona Mater, Magna Mater, Gaea, Ge, whose attributes and ceremonies are described in the books of cla.s.sical mythology. Many times they are termed "mother of the G.o.ds" and "mother of men"; Cybele is sometimes represented as a woman advanced in pregnancy or as a woman with many b.r.e.a.s.t.s; Rhea, or Cybele, as the hill-enthroned protectress of cities, was styled _Mater turrita_.

The ancient Teutons had their _Hertha_, or _Erdemutter_, the _Nertha_ of Tacitus, and fragments of the primitive earth-worship linger yet among the folk of kindred stock. The Slavonic peoples had their "earth-mother" also.

The ancient Indian Aryans worshipped Prithivi-matar, "earth-mother," and Dyaus pitar, "sky-father," and in China, Yang, Sky, is regarded as the "father of all things," while Yu, Earth, is the "mother of all things."

Among the ancient Egyptians the "earth-mother," the "parent of all things born," was Isis, the wife of the great Osiris. The natal ceremonies of the Indians of the Sia Pueblo have been described at great length by Mrs. Stevenson (538. 132-143). Before the mother is delivered of her child the priest repeats in a low tone the following prayer:--

"Here is the child's sand-bed. May the child have good thoughts and know its mother-earth, the giver of food. May it have good thoughts and grow from childhood to manhood. May the child be beautiful and happy. Here is the child's bed; may the child be beautiful and happy. Ashes man, let me make good medicine for the child. We will receive the child into our arms, that it may be happy and contented. May it grow from childhood to manhood. May it know its mother Ct'set [the first created woman], the Ko'pishtaia, and its mother-earth. May the child have good thoughts and grow from childhood to manhood. May it be beautiful and happy" (538.

134).

On the fourth morning after the birth of the child, the doctress in attendance, "stooping until she almost sits on the ground, bares the child's head as she holds it toward the rising sun, and repeats a long prayer, and, addressing the child, she says: 'I bring you to see your Sun-father and Ko'pishtaia, that you may know them and they you'" (538.

141).

_Mother-Mountain._

Though we are now accustomed, by reason of their grandeur and sublimity, to personify mountains as masculine, the old fable of Phaedrus about the "mountain in labour, that brought forth a mouse,"--as Horace has it, _Montes laborabant et parturitur ridiculus mus_,--shows that another concept was not unknown to the ancients. The Armenians call Mount Ararat "Mother of the World" (500. 39), and the Spaniards speak of a chief range of mountains as _Sierra Madre_. In mining we meet with the "mother-lode," _veta, madre_, but, curiously enough, the main shaft is called in German _Vaterschacht_.

We know that the Lapps and some other primitive peoples "transferred to stones the domestic relations of father, mother, and child," or regarded them as children of Mother-Earth (529. 64); "eggs of the earth" they are called in the magic songs of the Finns. In Suffolk, England, "conglomerate is called 'mother of stones,' under the idea that pebbles are born of it"; in Germany _Mutterstein_. And in litholatry, in various parts of the globe, we have ideas which spring from like conceptions.

_Mother-Night._

Milton speaks of the "wide womb of uncreate night," and some of the ancient cla.s.sical poets call _Nox_ "the mother of all things, of G.o.ds as well as men." "The Night is Mother of the Day," says Whittier, and the myth he revives is an old and wide-spread one. "Out of Night is born day, as a child comes forth from the womb of his mother," said the Greek and Roman of old. As Bachofen (6. 16, 219) remarks: "Das Mutterthum verbindet sich mit der Idee der den Tag aus sich gebierenden Nacht, wie das Vaterrecht dem Reiche des Lichts, dem von der Sonne mit der Mutter Nacht gezeugten Tage." Darkness, Night, Earth, Motherhood, seem all akin in the dim light of primitive philosophy. Yet night is not always figured as a woman. James Ferguson, the Scotch poet, tells us how

"Auld Daddy Darkness creeps frae his hole, Black as a blackamoor, blin' as a mole,"

and holds dominion over earth till "Wee Davie Daylicht comes keekin'

owre the hill" (230. 73).

An old Anglo-Saxon name for Christinas was _modra-neht,_ "mother's night."

_Mother-Dawn._

In Sanskrit mythology Ushas, "Dawn," is daughter of Heaven, and poetically she is represented as "a young wife awakening her children and giving them new strength for the toils of the new day."

Sometimes she is termed _gavam ganitri,_ "the mother of the cows,"

which latter mythologists consider to be either "the clouds which pour water on the fields, or the bright mornings which, like cows, are supposed to step out one by one from the stable of the night" (510.

431).

In an ancient Hindu hymn to Ushas we read:--

"She shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living being to go to his work. When the fire had to be kindled by men, she made the light by striking down darkness.

"She rose up, spreading far and wide, and moving everywhere. She grew in brightness, wearing her brilliant garment. The mother of the cows, the leader of the days, she shone gold-coloured, lovely to behold" (421.

29).

This daughter of the sky was the "lengthener of life, the love of all, the giver of food, riches, blessings." According to Dr. Brinton, the Quiche Indians of Guatemala speak of Xmucane and Xpiyacoc as being "the great ancestress and the great ancestor" of all things. The former is called _r'at.i.t zih, r'at.i.t zak,_ "primal mother of the sun and light" (411. 119).

_Mother-Days_.

In Russia we meet with the days of the week as "mothers." Perhaps the most remarkable of these is "Mother Friday," a curious product of the mingling of Christian hagiology and Slavonic mythology, of St. Prascovia and the G.o.ddess Siwa. On the day sacred to her, "Mother Friday" wanders about the houses of the peasants, avenging herself on such as have been so rash as to sew, spin, weave, etc., on a Friday (520. 206).

In a Wallachian tale appear three supernatural females,--the holy mothers Friday, Wednesday, and Sunday,--who a.s.sist the hero in his quest of the heroine, and in another Wallachian story they help a wife to find her lost husband.

"Mother Sunday" is said "to rule the animal world, and can collect her subjects by playing on a magic flute. She is represented as exercising authority over both birds and beasts, and in a Slovak story she bestows on the hero a magic horse" (520. 211). In Bulgaria we even find mother-months, and Miss Garnett has given an account of the superst.i.tion of "Mother March" among the women of that country (61.I. 330). William Miller, the poet-laureate of the nursery, sings of _Lady Summer_:--

"Birdie, birdie, weet your whistle!

Sing a sang to please the wean; Let it be o' Lady Summer Walking wi' her gallant train!

Sing him how her gaucy mantle, Forest-green, trails ower the lea, Broider'd frae the dewy hem o't Wi' the field flowers to the knee!

"How her foot's wi' daisies buskit, Kirtle o' the primrose hue, And her e'e sae like my laddie's, Glancing, laughing, loving blue!

How we meet on hill and valley, Children sweet as fairest flowers, Buds and blossoms o' affection, Rosy wi' the sunny hours" (230. 161).

_Mother-Sun_.

In certain languages, as in Modern German, the word for "sun" is feminine, and in mythology the orb of day often appears as a woman. The German peasant was wont to address the sun and the moon familiarly as "Frau Sonne" and "Herr Mond," and in a Russian folk-song a fair maiden sings (520. 184):--