The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought by Alexander F. Chamberlain (read full novel txt) 📖

are described in the books of classical mythology. Many times they are termed “mother of the gods” and “mother of men”; Cybele is sometimes represented as a woman advanced in pregnancy or as a woman with many breasts; 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 Prithîvî-mâtar, “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’sêt [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 Phædrus 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 classical poets call Nox “the mother of all things, of gods as well as men.” “The Night is Mother of the Day,” says Whittier, and the myth he revives is an old and widespread 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’atit zih, r’atit 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 goddess 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 assist 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 superstition 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):—

 

“My mother is the beauteous Sun, And my father, the bright Moon; My brothers are the many Stars, And my sisters the white Dawns.”

 

Jean Paul beautifully terms the sun “Sonne, du Mutterauge der Welt!” and Hölty sings: “Geh aus deinem Gezelt, Mutter des Tags hervor, und vergülde die wache Welt”; in another passage the last writer thus apostrophizes the sun: “Heil dir, Mutter des Lichts!” These terms “mother-eye of the world,” “mother of day,” “mother of light,” find analogues in other tongues. The Andaman Islanders have their chän-a bô-dô, “mother-sun” (498. 96), and certain Indians of Brazil call the sun coaraçy, “mother of the day or earth.” In their sacred language the Dakota Indians speak of the sun as “grandmother” and the moon as “grandfather.” The Chiquito Indians “used to call the sun their mother, and, at every eclipse of the sun, they would shoot their arrows so as to wound it; they would let loose their dogs, who, they thought, went instantly to devour the moon” (100. 289).

The Yuchi Indians called themselves “children of the sun.” Dr. Gatschet tells us: “The Yuchis believe themselves to be the offspring of the sun, which they consider to be a female. According to one myth, a couple of human beings were born from her monthly efflux, and from, these the Yuchis afterward originated.” Another myth of the same people says: “An unknown mysterious being once came down upon the earth and met people there who were the ancestors of the Yuchi Indians. To them this being (_Hi’ki_, or Ka’la hi’ki) taught many of the arts of life, and in matters of religion admonished them to call the sun their mother as a matter of worship” (389 (1893). 280).

 

Mother-Moon.

Shelley sings of

 

“That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon,”

 

and in other languages besides Latin the word for moon is feminine, and the lunar deity a female, often associated with childbirth. The moon-goddesses of the Orient—Diana (Juno), Astarte, Anahita, etc.—preside over the beginnings of human life. Not a few primitive peoples have thought of the moon as mother. The ancient Peruvians worshipped Mama-Quilla, “mother-moon,” and the Hurons regarded Ataensic, the mother or grandmother of Jouskeha, the sun, as the “creatress of earth and man,” as well as the goddess of death and of the souls of the departed (509. 363). The Tarahumari Indians of the Sierra of Chihuahua, Mexico, call the sun au-nau-ru-a-mi, “high father,” and the moon, je-ru-a-mi, “high mother.” The Tupi Indians of Brazil term the moon jacy, “our mother,” and the same name occurs in the Omagua and other members of this linguistic stock. The Muzo Indians believe that the sun is their father and the moon their mother

(529. 95).

 

Horace calls the moon siderum regina, and Apuleius, regina coeli, and Milton writes of

 

“mooned Ashtaroth, Heaven’s queen and mother both.”

 

Froebel’s verses, “The Little Girl and the Stars,” are stated to be based upon the exclamation of the child when seeing two large stars close together in the heavens, “Father-Mother-Star,” and a further instance of like nature is cited where the child applied the word “mother” to the moon.

 

Mother-Fire.

An ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, taught that the world was created from fire, the omnipotent and omniscient essence, and with many savage and barbaric peoples fire-worship has nourished or still flourishes. The Indie Aryans of old produced fire by the method of the twirling stick, and in their symbolism “the turning stick, Pramanta, was the father of the god of fire; the immovable stick was the mother of the adorable and luminous Agni [fire]”—a concept farreaching in its mystic and mythological relations (100. 564).

According to Mr. Gushing the Zuñi Indians term fire the “Grandmother of Men.”

In their examination of the burial-places of the ancient Indian population of the Salado River Valley in Arizona, the Hemenway Exploring Expedition found that many children were buried near the kitchen hearths. Mr.