THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER (Continued).
To the child its mother should be as God.—G. Stanley Hall.
A mother is the holiest thing alive.—Coleridge.
God 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-god.
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 goddess. 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 breasts; the Peruvians called her 'MamaAllpa,'motherEarth; in the Algonkin tongue, the words for earth, mother, father, are from the same root.Homo, Adam, chamaigenes, what do all these words mean but earth-born, the son of the soil, repeated in the poetic language of Attica inanthropos, 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 assumed 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 analogues 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 mass 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 God said: 'Spill human blood before my face!' And they sacrificed a child before Him. … Falling upon the soil, the bloody 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 God 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."
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-God" (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 gods 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-goddess 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 God 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 god-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-goddesses,Toci, "our mother," and goddess of childbirth among the ancient Mexicans (509. 494); the PeruvianPachamama, "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-goddesses 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 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 styledMater turrita.
The ancient Teutons had theirHertha, orErdemutter, theNerthaof 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 asSierra Madre. In mining we meet with the "mother-lode,"veta, madre, but, curiously enough, the main shaft is called in GermanVaterschacht.
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 GermanyMutterstein. 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 callNox"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 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 wasmodra-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 termedgavam 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 calledr'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 ofLady Summer:—
"Birdie, birdie, weet your whistle!Sing a sang to please the wean;Let it be o' Lady SummerWalking wi' her gallant train!Sing him how her gaucy mantle,Forest-green, trails ower the lea,Broider'd frae the dewy hem o'tWi' 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 theirchän-a bô-dô, "mother-sun" (498. 96), and certain Indians of Brazil call the suncoaraçy, "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, orKa'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 worshippedMama-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 sunau-nau-ru-a-mi, "high father," and the moon,je-ru-a-mi, "high mother." The Tupi Indians of Brazil term the moonjacy, "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 moonsiderum 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 far-reaching in its mystic and mythological relations (100. 564).
According to Mr. Gushing the Zuñi Indians term fire the "Grandmother ofMen."
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. Cushing offers the following explanation of this custom, which finds analogies in various parts of the world: "The matriarchal grandmother, or matron of the household deities, is the fire. It is considered the guardian, as it is also, being used for cooking, the principal 'source of life' of the family. The little children being considered unable to care for themselves, were placed, literally, under the protection of the family fire that their soul-life might be nourished, sustained, and increased" (501. 149). Boecler tells us that the Esthonian bride "consecrates her new home and hearth by an offering of money cast into the fire, or laid on the oven, forTule-ema, [the] Fire Mother" (545. II. 285). In a Mongolian wedding-song there is an invocation of "Mother Ut, Queen of Fire," who is said to have come forth "when heaven and earth divided," and to have issued "from the footsteps of Mother-Earth." She is further said to have "a manly son, a beauteous daughter-in-law, bright daughters" (484. 38).
Mother-Water.
The poet Homer and the philosopher Thales of Miletus agreed in regarding water as the primal element, the original of all existences, and their theory has supporters among many primitive peoples. At the baptism festivals of their children, the ancient Mexicans recognized the goddess of the waters. At sunrise the midwife addressed the child, saying, among other things: "Be cleansed with thy mother, Chalchihuitlicue, the goddess of water." Then, placing her dripping finger upon the child's lips, she continued: "Take this, for on it thou must live, grow, become strong, and flourish. Through it we receive all our needs. Take it." And, again, "We are all in the hands of Chalchihuitlicue, our mother"; as she washed the child she uttered the formula: "Bad, whatever thou art, depart, vanish, for the child lives anew and is born again; it is once more cleansed, once more renewed through our mother Chalchihuitlicue." As she lifted the child up into the air, she prayed, "O Goddess, Mother of Water, fill this child with thy power and virtue" (326. I. 263).
In their invocation for the restoration of the spirit to the body, the Nagualists,—a native American mystic sect,—of Mexico and Central America, make appeal to "Mother mine, whose robe is of precious gems,"i.e.water, regarded as "the universal mother." The "robe of precious stones" refers to "the green or vegetable life" resembling the green of precious stones. Another of her names is the "Green Woman,"—a term drawn from "the greenness which follows moisture" (413. 52-54).
The idea of water as the source of all things appears also in the cosmology of the Indie Aryans. In one of the Vedic hymns it is stated that water existed before even the gods came into being, and the Rig-veda tells us that "the waters contained a germ from which everything else sprang forth." This is plainly a myth of the motherhood of the waters, for in the Brâhmanas we are told that from the water arose an egg, from which came forth after a year Pragâpati, the creator (510. 248). Variants of this myth of the cosmic egg are found in other quarters of the globe.
Mother-Ocean.
The Chinchas of Peru looked upon the sea as the chief deity and the mother of all things, and the Peruvians worshippedMama-Cocha, "mother sea" (509. 368), from which had come forth everything, even animals, giants, and the Indians themselves. Associated withMama-Cochawas the godVira-Cocha, "sea-foam." In Peru water was revered everywhere,—rivers and canals, fountains and wells,—and many sacrifices were made to them, especially of certain sea-shells which were thought to be "daughters of the sea, the mother of all waters." The traditions of the Incas point to an origin from Lake Titicaca, and other tribes fabled their descent from fountains and streams (412. 204). Here belong, doubtless, some of the myths of the sea-born deities of classical mythology as well as those of the water-origin of the first of the human race, together with kindred conceits of other primitive peoples.
In the Bengalese tale of "The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead," recorded by Day, the hero pleads: "O mother Ocean, please make way for me, or else I die" (426. 250), and passes on in safety. The poet Swinburne calls the sea "fair, white mother," "green-girdled mother," "great, sweet mother, mother and lover of men, the sea."
Mother-River.
According to Russian legend "the Dnieper, Volga, and Dvina used once to be living people. The Dnieper was a boy, and the Volga and Dvina his sisters." The Russians call their great river "Mother Volga," and it is said that, in the seventeenth century, a chief of the Don Cossacks, inflamed with wine, sacrificed to the mighty stream a Persian princess, accompanying his action with these words: "O Mother Volga, thou great River! much hast thou given me of gold and of silver, and of all good things; thou hast nursed me and nourished me, and covered me with glory and honor. But I have in no way shown thee my gratitude. Here is somewhat for thee; take it!" (520. 217-220).
In the Mahábhárata, the great Sanskrit epic, King Sántanu is said to have walked by the side of the river one day, where "he met and fell in love with a beautiful girl, who told him that she was the river Ganges, and could only marry him on condition he never questioned her conduct. To this he, with a truly royal gallantry, agreed; and she bore him several children, all of whom she threw into the river as soon as they were born. At last she bore him a boy, Bhíshma; and her husband begged her to spare his life, whereupon she instantly changed into the river Ganges and flowed away" (258. 317). Similar folk-tales are to be met with in other parts of the world, and the list of water-sprites and river-goddesses is almost endless. Greater than "Mother Volga," is "Mother Ganges," to whom countless sacrifices have been made. In the language of the Caddo Indians, the Mississippi is calledbáhat sássin, "mother of rivers."
Mother-Plant.
The ancient Peruvians had their "Mother Maize,"Mama Cora, which they worshipped with a sort of harvest-home having, as Andrew Lang points out, something in common with the children's last sheaf, in the north-country (English and Scotch) "kernaby," as well as with the "Demeter of the threshing-floor," of whom Theocritus speaks (484. 18).
An interesting legend of the Indians of the Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico is recorded by Muller (509. 60). Ages ago there dwelt on the green plains a beautiful woman, who refused all wooers, though they brought many precious gifts. It came to pass that the land was sore distressed by dearth and famine, and when the people appealed to the woman she gave them maize in plenty. One day, she lay asleep naked; a rain-drop falling upon her breast, she conceived and bore a son, from whom are descended the people who built the "Casas Grandes." Dr. Fewkes cites a like myth of the Hopi or Tusayan Indians in which appearskó-kyan-wüq-ti, "the spider woman," a character possessing certain attributes of the Earth-Mother. Speaking of certain ceremonies in whichCá-li-ko, the corn-goddess, figures, he calls attention to the fact that "in initiations an ear of corn is given to the novice as a symbolic representation of mother. The corn is the mother of all initiated persons of the tribe" (389 (1894). 48).
Mr. Lummis also speaks of "Mother Corn" among the Pueblos Indians: "A flawless ear of pure white corn (type of fertility and motherhood) is decked out with a downy mass of snow-white feathers, and hung with ornaments of silver, coral, and the precious turquoise" (302. 72).
Concerning the Pawnee Indians, Mr. Grinnell tells us that after the separation of the peoples, the boy (medicine-man) who was with the few who still remained at the place from which the others had departed, going their different ways, found in the sacred bundle—the Shekinah of the tribe—an ear of corn. To the people he said: "We are to live by this, this is our Mother." And from "Mother Corn" the Indians learned how to make bows and arrows. When these Indians separated into three bands (according to the legend), the boy broke off the nub of the ear and gave it to the Mandans, the big end he gave to the Pawnees, and the middle to the Rees. This is why, at the present time, the Pawnees have the best and largest corn, the Rees somewhat inferior, and the Mandans the shortest of all—since they planted the pieces originally given them (480 (1893). 125).
The old Mexicans had in Cinteotl a corn-goddess and deity of fertility in whose honour even human sacrifices were made. She was looked upon as "the producer," especially of children, and sometimes represented with a child in her arms (509. 491).
In India there is a regular cult of the holy basil (Ocymum sanetum), orTulasî, as it is called, which appears to be a transformation of the goddess Lakshmî. It may be gathered for pious purposes only, and in so doing the following prayer is offered: "MotherTulasî, be thou propitious. If I gather thee with care, be merciful unto me. OTulasî, mother of the world, I beseech thee." This plant is worshipped as a deity,—the wife of Vishnu, whom the breaking of even a little twig grieves and torments,—and "the pious Hindus invoke the divine herb for the protection of every part of the body, for life and for death, and in every action of life; but above all, in its capacity of ensuring children to those who desire to have them." To him who thoughtlessly or wilfully pulls up the plant "no happiness, no health, no children." TheTulasîopens the gates of heaven; hence on the breast of the pious dead is placed a leaf of basil, and the Hindu "who has religiously planted and cultivated theTulasî, obtains the privilege of ascending to the palace of Vishnu, surrounded by ten millions of parents" (448. 244).
In Denmark, there is a popular belief that in the elder (Sambucus) there lives a spirit or being known as the "elder-mother" (hylde-moer), or "elder-woman" (hilde-qvinde), and before elder-branches may be cut this petition is uttered: "Elder-mother, elder-mother, allow me to cut thy branches." In Lower Saxony the peasant repeats, on bended knees, with hands folded, three times the words: "Lady Elder, give me some of thy wood; then will I also give thee some of mine, when it grows in the forest" (448. 318-320). In Huntingdonshire, England, the belief in the "elder-mother" is found, and it is thought dangerous to pluck the flowers, while elder-wood, in a room, or used for a cradle, is apt to work evil for children. In some parts of England, it is believed that boys beaten with an elder stick will be retarded in their growth; in Sweden, women who are about to become mothers kiss the elder. In Germany, a somewhat similar personification of the juniper, "Frau Wachholder," exists. And here we come into touch with the dryads and forest-sprites of all ages, familiar to us in the myths of classic antiquity and the tales of the nursery (448. 396).
In a Bengalese tale, the hero, on coming to a forest, cries: "O motherkachiri, please make way for me, or else I die," and the wood opens to let him pass through (426. 250).
Perhaps the best and sweetest story of plant mythology under this head is Hans Christian Andersen's beautiful tale of "The Elder-Tree Mother,"—the Dryad whose name is Remembrance (393. 215).
Mother-Thumb.
Our wordthumbsignifies literally "thick or big finger," and the same idea occurs in other languages. With not a few primitive peoples this thought takes another turn, and, as in the speech of the Karankawas, an extinct Indian tribe of Texas, "thebiggest, orthickestfinger is called 'father,mother, orold'" (456. 68). The Creek Indians of the Southeastern United States term the "thumb"ingi itchki, "the hand its mother," and a like meaning attaches to the Chickasawilbak-ishke, Hichitiilb-iki, while the Muskogees call the "thumb," the "mother of fingers." It is worthy of note, that, in the Bakaïri language of Brazil, the thumb is called "father," and the little finger, "child," or "little one" (536. 406). In Samoa the "thumb" is namedlima-matua, "forefather of the hand," and the "first finger"lima-tama, "child of the hand." In the Tshi language of Western Africa a finger is known asensah-tsia-abbah, "little child of the hand," and in some other tongues of savage or barbaric peoples "fingers" are simply "children of the hand."
Professor Culin in his notes of "Palmistry in China and Japan," says: "The thumb, called in Japanese,oya-ubi, 'parent-finger,' is for parents. The little finger, called in Japanese,ko-ubi, 'child-finger,' is for children; the index-finger is for uncle, aunt, and elder brother and elder sister. The third finger is for younger brother and younger sister" (423a). A short little finger indicates childlessness, and lines on the palm of the hand, below the little finger, children. There are very many nursery-games and rhymes of various sorts based upon the hand and fingers, and in not a few of these the thumb and fingers play therôleof mother and children. Froebel seized upon this thought to teach the child the idea of the family. His verses are well-known:—
"Das ist die Groszmama,Das ist der Groszpapa,Das ist der Vater,Das ist die Mutter,Das ist's kleine Kindchen ja;Seht die ganze Familie da.Das ist die Mutter lieb und gut,Das ist der Vater mit frohem Muth;Das ist der Bruder lang und grosz;Das ist die Schwester mit Puppchen im Schoosz;Und dies ist das Kindchen, noch klein und zart,Und dies die Familie von guter Art."
Referring to Froebel's games, Elizabeth Harrison remarks:—
"In order that this activity, generally first noticed in the use of the hands, might be trained into right and ennobling habits, rather than be allowed to degenerate into wrong and often degrading ones, Froebel arranged his charming set of finger-games for the mother to teach her babe while he is yet in her arms; thus establishing the right activity before the wrong one can assert itself. In such little songs as the following:—
'This is the mother, good and dear;This the father, with hearty cheer;This is the brother, stout and tall;This is the sister, who plays with her doll;And this is the baby, the pet of all.Behold the good family, great and small,'
the child is led to personify his fingers and to regard them as a small but united family over which he has control." (257 a. 14).
Miss Wiltse, who devotes a chapter of her little volume to "Finger-songs related to Family Life and the Imaginative Faculty," says:—
"The dawning consciousness of the child so turned to the family relations is surely better than the old nursery method of playing 'This little pig went to market'" (384. 45).
And from the father and mother the step to God is easy.
Dr. Brewer informs us that in the Greek and Roman Church the Trinity is symbolized by the thumb and first two fingers: "The thumb, being strong, represents theFather; the long, or second finger,Jesus Christ; and the first finger, theHoly Ghost, which proceedeth from the Father and the Son" (Dict. of Phrase and Fable, P. 299).
Mother-God.
The "Motherhood of God" is an expression that still sounds somewhat strangely to our ears. We have come to speak readily enough of the "Fatherhood of God" and the "Brotherhood of Man," but only a still small voice has whispered of the "Motherhood of God" and the "Sisterhood of Woman." Yet there have been in the world, as, indeed, there are now, multitudes to whom the idea of Heaven without a mother is as blank as that of the home without her who makes it. If over the human babe bends the human mother who is its divinity,—
"The infant lies in blessed easeUpon his mother's breast;No storm, no dark, the baby seesInvade his heaven of rest.He nothing knows of change or death—Her face his holy skies;The air he breathes, his mother's breath—His stars, his mother's eyes,"—
so over the infant-race must bend the All-Mother,das Ewigweibliche.Perhaps the greatest service that the Roman Catholic Church has rendered to mankind is the prominence given in its cult of the Virgin Mary to the mother-side of Deity. In the race's final concept of God, the embodiment of all that is pure and holy, there must surely be some overshadowing of a mother's tender love. With the "Father-Heart" of the Almighty must be linked the "Mother-Soul." To some extent, at least, we may expect a harking back to the standpoint of the Buddhist Kalmuck, whose child is taught to pray: "O God, who art my father and my mother."
In all ages and over the whole world peoples of culture less than ours have had their "mother-gods," all the embodiments of motherhood, the joy of theMagnificat, the sacrosanct expression of the poet's truth:—
"Close to the mysteries of God art thou,My brooding mother-heart,"
the recognition of that outlasting secret hope and love, of which the Gospel writer told in the simple words: "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother," and faith in which was strong in the Mesopotamians of old, who prayed to the goddess Istar, "May thy heart be appeased as the heart of a mother who has borne children." The world is at its best when the last, holiest appeal isad matrem. Professor O.T. Mason has eloquently stated the debt of the world's religions to motherhood (112. 12):—"The mother-goddess of all peoples, culminating in the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, is an idea either originated by women, or devised to satisfy their spiritual cravings. So we may go through the pantheons of all peoples, finding counterparts of Rhea, mother-earth, goddess of fertility; Hera, queen of harvests, feeder of mankind; Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home, of families and states, giving life and warmth; Aphrodite, the beautiful, patron of romantic love and personal charms; Hera, sovereign lady, divine caciquess, embodiment of queenly dignity; Pallas Athene, ideal image of that central inspiring force that we learn at our mother's knee, and that shone in eternal splendour; Isis, the goddess of widowhood, sending forth her son Horus, to avenge the death of his father, Osiris; as moon-goddess, keeping alive the light until the sun rises again to bless the world."
The All-Mother.
In Polynesian mythology we find, dwelling in the lowest depths of Avaiki (the interior of the universe), the "Great Mother,"—the originator of all things,Vari-ma-te-takere, "the very beginning,"—and her pet child, Tu-metua, "Stick by the parent," her last offspring, inseparable from her. All of her children were born of pieces of flesh which she plucked off her own body; the first-born was the man-fish Vatea, "father of gods and men," whose one eye is the sun, the other the moon; the fifth child was Raka, to whom his mother gave the winds in a basket, and "the children of Raka are the numerous winds and storms which distress mankind. To each child is allotted a hole at the edge of the horizon, through which he blows at pleasure." In the songs the gods are termed "the children of Vatea," and the ocean is sometimes called "the sea of Vatea." Mr. Gill tells us that "the Great Mother approximates nearest to the dignity of creator"; and, curiously enough, the wordVari, "beginning," signifies, on the island of Rarotonga, "mud," showing that "these people imagined that once the world was a 'chaos of mud,' out of which some mighty unseen agent, whom they calledVari, evolved the present order of things" (458. 3, 21).
Another "All-Mother" is she of whom our own poets have sung, "Nature," the source and sustainer of all.
Mother-Nature.
"So übt Natur die Mutterpflicht," sang the poet Schiller, and "Mother Nature" is the key-word of those modern poets who, in their mystic philosophy, consciously or unconsciously, revive the old mythologies. With primitive peoples the being, growing power of the universe was easily conceived as feminine and as motherly. Nature is the "great parent," the "gracious mother," of us all. In "Mother Nature," woman, the creator of the earliest arts of man, is recognized and personified, and in a wider sense even than the poet dreamt of: "One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."
Pindar declared that "gods and men are sons of the same mother," and with many savage and barbaric tribes, gods, men, animals, and all other objects, animate and inanimate, are akin(388.210). As Professor Robertson Smith has said: "The same lack of any sharp distinction between the nature of different kinds of visible beings appears in the old myths in which all kinds of objects, animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic, appear as cognate with one another, with men, and with the gods" (535.85). Mr. Hartland, speaking of this stage of thought, says: "Sun and moon, the wind and the waters, perform all the functions of living beings; they speak, they eat, they marry and have children" (258.26). The same idea is brought out by Count D'Alviella: "The highest point of development that polytheism could reach, is found in the conception of a monarchy or divine family, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even the whole universe" (388.211). Mr. Frank Cushing attributes like beliefs in the kinship of all existences to the Zuni Indians (388.66), and Mr. im Thurn to the Indians of Guiana (388.99).
This feeling of kinship to all that is, is beautifully expressed in the words of the dying Greek Klepht: "Do not say that I am dead, but say that I am married in the sorrowful, strange countries, that I have taken the flat stone for a mother-in-law, the black earth for my wife, and the little pebbles for brothers-in-law." (Lady Verney,Essays, II. 39.)
In the Trinity of Upper Egypt the second person was Mut, "MotherNature." the others being Armin, the chief god, and their son, Khuns.
Among the Slavs, according to Mone, Ziwa is a nature-goddess, and the Wends regard her as "many-breasted Mother Nature," the producing and nourishing power of the earth. Her consort is Zibog, the god of life (125. II. 23).
Curiously reminiscent of the same train of ideas which has given to themodersonof Low German the signification of "bastard," is our own equivalent term "natural son."
Poets and orators have not failed to appeal to "Mother Nature" and to sing her panegyrics, but there is perhaps nothing more sweet and noble than the words of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme," and the verses of Longfellow:—
"And Nature, the old nurse, tookThe child upon her knee,Saying, 'Here is a story-bookThy Father has—written for thee.
"'Come wander with me,' she said,'Into regions yet untrod;And read what is still unread,In the manuscripts of God.'
"And he wandered away and awayWith Nature, the dear old nurse,Who sang to him, night and day,The rhymes of the universe.
"And whenever the way seemed long,Or his heart began to fail,She—would sing a more wonderful song,Or tell a more marvellous tale."
Through the long centuries Nature has been the mother, nurse, and teacher of man.
Other Mother-Goddesses.
Among other "mother-goddesses" of ancient Italy we findMaia Mater,Flora Mater, both deities of growth and reproduction;Lua Mater, "the loosing mother," a goddess of death;Acca Larentia, the mother of the Lares (Accaperhaps =Atta, a child-word for mother, as Lippert suggests);Mater matuta, "mother of the dawn," a goddess of child-birth, worshipped especially by married women, and to whom there was erected a temple at Cære.
The mother-goddesses of Germany are quite numerous. Among those minor ones cited by Grimm and Simrock, are: Haulemutter, Mutter Holle, the Klagemütter or Klagemuhmen, Pudelmutter (a name applied to the goddess Berchta), Etelmutter, Kornmutter, Roggenmutter, Mutterkorn, and the interesting Buschgroszmutter, "bush grandmother," as the "Queen of the Wood-Folk" is called. Here the mother-feeling has been so strong as to grant to even the devil a mother and a grandmother, who figure in many proverbs and folk-locutions. When the question is asked a Mecklenburger, concerning a social gathering: "Who was there?" he may answer: "The devil and his mother (möm)"; when a whirlwind occurs, the saying is: "The Devil is dancing with his grandmother."
In China the position of woman is very low, and, as Mr. Douglas points out: "It is only when a woman becomes a mother that she receives the respect which is by right due to her, and then the inferiority of her sex disappears before the requirements of filial love, which is the crown and glory of China" (434. 125).
In Chinese cosmogony and mythology motherhood finds recognition. Besides the great Earth-Mother, we meet with Se-wang-moo, the "Western Royal Mother," a goddess of fairy-land, and the "Mother of Lightning," thunder being considered the "father and teacher of all living beings." Lieh-tze, a philosopher of the fifth century B.C., taught: "My body is not my own; I am merely an inhabitant of it for the time being, and shall resign it when I return to the 'Abyss Mother'" (434. 222, 225, 277).
In the Flowery Kingdom there is also a sect "who worship the goddessPity, in the form of a woman holding a child in her arms."
Among the deities and semi-deities of the Andaman Islanders arechän·a·ê·lewadi, the "mother of the race,"—Mother E·lewadi;chän·a·erep,chän·a·châ·riâ,chän·a·te·liu,chän·a·li·mi,chän·a·jär·a·ngûd, all inventors and discoverers of foods and the arts. In the religious system of the Andaman Islanders,Pû·luga-, the Supreme Being, by whom were created "the world and all objects, animate and inanimate, excepting only the powers of evil," and of whom it is said, "though his appearance is like fire, yet he is (nowadays) invisible," is "believed to live in a large stone house in the sky with a wife whom he created for himself; she is green in appearance, and has two names,chän·a·àu·lola(Mother Freshwater Shrimp) andchän·a·pâ·lak-—(Mother Eel); by her he has a large family, all except the eldest being girls; these last, known asmô·ro-win—(sky-spirits or angels), are said to be black in appearance, and, with their mother, amuse themselves from time to time by throwing fish and prawns into the streams and sea for the use of the inhabitants of the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman waschän·a·ê·lewadi(Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after herê·lewadi" (498. 96):
Quite frequently we find that primitive peoples have ascribed the origin of the arts or of the good things of life to women whom they have canonized as saints or apotheosized into deities.
We may close our consideration of motherhood and what it has given the world with the apt words of Zmigrodzki:—
"The history of the civilization (Kulturgeschichte) of our race, is, so to speak,the history of the mother-influence. Our ideas of morality, justice, order, all these are simplymother-ideas. The mother began our culture in that epoch in which, like the man, she wasautodidactic. In the epoch of the Church Fathers, the highly educated mother saved our civilization and gave it a new turn, and only the highly educated mother will save us out of the moral corruption of our age. Taken individually also, we can mark the ennobling, elevating influence which educated mothers have exercised over our great men. Let us strive as much as possible to have highly accomplished mothers, wives, friends, and then the wounds which we receive in the struggle for life will not bleed as they do now" (174. 367).
The history of civilization is the story of the mother, a story that stales not with repetition. Richter, in hisLevana, makes eloquent appeal:—
"Never, never has one forgotten his pure, right-educating mother! On the blue mountains of our dim childhood, towards which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who marked out for us from thence our life; the most blessed age must be forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, O woman, to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death. Be, then, the mothers of your children."
Tennyson inThe Forestersuses these beautiful words: "Every man for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour." Herein lies the whole philosophy of life. The ancient Germans were right, who, as Tacitus tells us, saw in womansanctum aliquid et providum, as indeed the Modern GermanWeib(cognate with ourwife) also declares, the original signification of the word being "the animated, the inspirited."
If the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its roof still screens us; and with a father, we have as yet a prophet, priest, and king, and an obedience that makes us free.—Carlyle.
To you your father should be as a god.—Shakespeare.
Our Father, who art in Heaven.—Jesus.
Father of all! in every age,In every clime adored,By saint, by savage, and by sage,Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.—Pope.
Names of the Father.
Father, likemother, is a very old word, and goes back, with the cognate terms in Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Indo-Aryan speech, to the primitive Indo-European language, and, likemother, it is of uncertain etymology.
An English preacher of the twelfth century sought to derive the word from the Anglo-Saxonfédan, "to feed," making the "father" to be the "feeder" or "nourisher," and some more modern attempts at explanation are hardly better. This etymology, however incorrect, as it certainly is, in English, does find analogies in the tongues of primitive peoples. In the language of the Klamath Indians, of Oregon, the word for "father" ist'shishap(in the Modoc dialect,p'tishap), meaning "feeder, nourisher," from a radicaltshi, which signifies "to give somebody liquid food (as milk, water)." Whether there is any real connection between our wordpap,—with its cognates in other languages,—which signifies "food for infants," as well as "teat, breast," and the child-wordpapa, "father," is doubtful, and the same may be said of the attempt to find a relation betweenteat, tit, etc., and the widespread child-words for "father,"tat,dad. Wedgewood (Introd. toDictionary), however, maintained that: "Words formed of the simplest articulations,maandpa, are used to designate the objects in which the infant takes the earliest interest,—the mother, the father, the mother's breast, the act of taking or sucking food." Tylor also points out how, in the language of children of to-day, we may find a key to the origin of a mass of words for "father, mother, grandmother, aunt, child, breast, toy, doll," etc. From the limited supply of material at the disposal of the early speakers of a language, we can readily understand how the same sound had to serve for the connotation of different ideas; this is why "mamameans in one tonguemother, in anotherfather, in a third,uncle;dadain one languagefather, in a secondnurse, in anotherbreast;tatain one languagefather, in anotherson," etc. The primitive Indo-Europeanp-tr, Skeat takes to be formed, with the agent-suffixtr, from the radicalpâ, "to protect, to guard,"—the father having been originally looked upon as the "protector," or "guarder." Max Müller, who offers the same derivation, remarks: "The father, as begetter, was called in Sanskritganitár, as protector and supporter of his posterity, however,pitár. For this reason, in the Veda both names together are used in order to give the complete idea of 'father.' In like manner,mâtar, 'mother,' is joined withganit, 'genetrix,' and this shows that the wordmâtarmust have soon lost its etymological signification and come to be a term, of respect and caress. With the oldest Indo-Europeans,mâtarmeant 'maker,' frommâ, 'to form.'"
Kluge, however, seems to reject the interpretation "protector, defender," and to see in the word a derivative from the "nature-sound"pa. So also Westermarck (166. 86-94). In Gothic, presumably the oldest of the Teutonic dialects, the most common word for "father" isatta, still seen in the name of the far-famed leader of the Huns,Attila, i.e. "little father," and in theättiof modern Swiss dialects. To the same root attach themselves Sanskritatta, "mother, elder sister"; Osseticädda, "little father (Väterchen)"; Greekårra, Latinatta, "father"; Old Slavonicotí-ci, "little father"; Old Irishaite, "foster-father."Attabelongs to the category of "nature-words" or "nursery-words" of which ourdad(daddy) is also a member.
Another member is the widespreadpapa, pa.Our wordpapa, Skeat thinks, is borrowed, through the French, from Latinpapa, found as a Roman cognomen. This goes back in all probability to ancient Greek, for, in the Odyssey (vi. 57), Nausicaa addresses her father as [Greek: pappa phile], "dearpapa." The Papa of German is also borrowed from French, and, according to Kluge, did not secure a firm, place in the language until comparatively late in the eighteenth century.
In some of the Semitic languages the word for "father" signifies "maker," and the same thing occurs elsewhere among primitive people (166. 91).
As with "mother," so with "father"; in many languages a man (or a boy) does not employ the same term as a woman (or a girl). In the Haida, Okanak'en, and Kootenay, all Indian languages of British Columbia, the words used by males and by females are, respectively:kun, qat; lEe'u, mistm; tito, so.
In many languages the word for "father," as is also the case with "mother," is different when the parent is addressed from that used when he is spoken of or referred to. In the Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Ntlakyapamuq, four Indian languages of British Columbia, the words for "father" when addressed, are respectivelya'bo, ats, no'we, pap,and for "father" in other cases,nEgua'at, au'mp, nuwe'k'so, ska'tsa.Here, again, it will be noticed that the words used in address seem shorter and more primitive in character.
In the Chinantee language of Mexico,nuhsignifies at the same time "father" and "man." In Gothicabameans both "father" and "husband" (492. 33). Here belongs also perhaps the familiar "father" with which the New England housewife was wont to address her husband.
With many peoples the name "father" is applied to others than the male parent of the child. The following remarks of McLennan, regarding the Tamil and Telugu of India, will stand for not a few other primitive tribes: "All the brothers of a father are usually called fathers, but, in strictness, those who are older than the father are calledgreat fathers, and those who are younger,little fathers. With the Puharies, all the brothers of a father are equally fathers to his children." In Hawaii, the term "male parent" "applied equally to the father, to the uncles, and even to distant relations." In Japan, the paternal uncle is called "little father" and the maternal uncle "second little father" (100. 389, 391).
A lengthy discussion of these terms, with a wealth of illustration from many primitive languages, will be found in Westermarck (166. 86-94).
Father-Right.
Of the Roman family it has been said: "It was a community comprising men and things. The members were maintained by adoption as well as by consanguinity. The father was before all things the chief, the general administrator. He was called father even when he had no son; paternity was a question of law, not one of persons. The heir is no more than the continuing line of the deceased person; he was heir in spite of himself for the honour of the defunct, for the lares, the hearth, the manes, and the hereditary sepulchre" (100. 423). In ancient Rome thepaterfamiliasand thepatina potestasare seen in their extreme types. Letourneau remarks further: "Absolute master, both of things and of people, the paterfamilias had the right to kill his wife and to sell his sons. Priest and king in turn, it was he who represented the family in their domestic worship; and when, after his death, he was laid by the side of his ancestors in the common tomb, he was deified, and helped to swell the number of the household gods" (100. 433).
Post thus defines the system of "father-right":—
"In the system of 'father-right' the child is related only to the father and to the persons connected with him through the male line, but not with his mother and the persons connected with him through the female line. The narrowest group organized according to father-right consists of the father and his children. The mother, for the most part, appears in the condition of a slave to the husband. To the patriarchal family in the wider sense belong the children of the sons of the father, but not the children of his daughters; the brothers and sisters of the same father, but not those merely related to the same mother; the children of the brother of the same father, but not the children of the sisters of the same father, etc. With every wife the relationship ceases every time" (127. I. 24).
The system of father-right is found scattered over the whole globe. It is found among the Indo-European peoples (Aryans of Asia, Germans, Slavs, Celts, Romans), the Mongol-Tartar tribes, Chinese, Japanese, and some of the Semitic nations; in northern Africa and scattered through the western part of the continent, among the Kaffirs and Hottentots; among some tribes in Australia and Polynesia and the two Americas (the culture races).
The position of the father among those peoples with whom strict mother-right prevails is thus sketched by Zmigrodski (174.206):—
"The only certain thing was motherhood and the maternal side of the family,—mother, daughter, granddaughter, that was the fixed stem continuing with certainty. Father, son, grandson, were only the leaves, which existed only until the autumnal wind of death tore them away, to hurl them into the abyss of oblivion. In that epoch no one said, 'I am the son of such a father and the grandson of such a grandfather,' but 'I am the son of such a mother and the grandson of such a grandmother.' The inheritance went not to the son and grandson, but to the daughter and to the granddaughter, and the sons received a dowry as do the daughters in our society of to-day. In marriage the woman did not assume the name of the man, butvice versa.The husband of a woman, although the father of her children, was considered not so near a relative of them as the wife's brother, their uncle."
Dr. Brinton says, concerning mother-right among the Indians of NorthAmerica (412. 48):—
"Her children looked upon her as their parent, but esteemed their father as no relation whatever. An unusually kind and intelligent Kolosch Indian was chided by a missionary for allowing his father to suffer for food. 'Let him go to his own people,' replied the Kolosch, 'they should look after him.' He did not regard a man as in any way related or bound to his paternal parent."
In a certain Polynesian mythological tale, the hero is a young man, "the name of whose father had never been told by his mother," and this has many modern parallels (115. 97). On the Gold Coast of West Africa there is a proverb, "Wise is the son that knows his own father" (127.1. 24), a saying found elsewhere in the world,—indeed, we have it also in English, and Shakespeare presents but another view of it when he tells us: "It is a wise father that knows his own child."
In many myths and folk-and fairy-tales of all peoples the discovery by the child of its parent forms the climax, or at least one of the chief features of the plot; and we have also those stories which tell how parents have been killed unwittingly by their own children, or children have been slain unawares by their parents.
Father-King.
In his interesting study of "Royalty and Divinity" (75), Dr. von Held has pointed out many resemblances between the primitive concepts "King" and "God." Both, it would seem, stand in close connection with "Father." To quote from Dr. von Held: "Fathership (Vaterschaft,patriarcha), lordship (Herrentum), and kingship (Konigtum) are, therefore (likerexand [Greek:Basileus]), ideas not only linguistically, but, to even a greater degree really, cognate, having altogether very close relationship to the word and idea 'God.' Of necessity they involve the existence and idea of a people, and therefore are related not only to the world of faith, but also to that of intellect and of material things."
The Emperor of China is the "father and mother of the empire," his millions of subjects being his "children"; and the ancient Romans had no nobler title for their emperor thanpater patrice, the "father of his country," an appellation bestowed in these later days upon the immortal first President of the United States.
In the Yajnavalkya, one of the old Sanskrit law-books, the king is bidden to be "towards servants and subjects as a father" (75. 122), and even Mirabeau and Gregoire, in the first months of the States-General, termed the king "le pere de tous les Franqais," while Louis XII. and Henry IV. of France, as well as Christian III. of Denmark, had given to them the title "father of the people." The namepater patricewas not borne by the Caesars alone, for the Roman Senate conferred the title upon Cicero, and offered it to Marius, who refused to accept it. "Father of his Country" was the appellation of Cosmo de' Medici, and the Genoese inscribed the same title upon the base of the statue erected to Andrea Doria. One of the later Byzantine Emperors, Andronicus Palæologus, even went so far as to assume this honoured title. Nor has the name "Father of the People" been confined to kings, for it has been given also to Gabriel du Pineau, a French lawyer of the seventeenth century.
The "divinity that doth hedge a king" and the fatherhood of the sovereign reach their acme in Peru, where the Inca was king, father, even god, and the halo of "divine right" has not ceased even yet to encircle the brows of the absolute monarchs of Europe and the East.
Landesvater(Vater des Volkes) is the proudest designation of the German Kaiser. "Little Father" is alike the literal meaning ofAttila, the name of the far-famed leader of the "Huns," in the dark ages of Europe, and ofbatyushka, the affectionate term by which the peasant of Russia speaks of the Czar.
Nana, "Grandfather," is the title of the king of Ashanti in Africa, and "Sire" was long in France and England a respectful form of address to the monarch.
Some of the aboriginal tribes of America have conferred upon the President of the United States the name of the "Great Father at Washington," the "Great White Father," and "Father" was a term they were wont to apply to governors, generals, and other great men of the whites with whom they came into contact.
The father as head of the family is the basis of the idea of "father-king." This is seen among the Matchlapis, a Kaffir tribe, where "those who own a sufficient number of cattle to maintain a family have the right to the title of chief"; this resembles the institution of thepater familiasin ancient Latium (100. 459,533).
Dr. von Held thus expresses himself upon this point: "The first, and one may say also the last, naturally necessary society of man is the family in the manifold forms out of which it has been historically developed. Its beginning and its apex are, under given culture-conditions, the man who founds it, the father. What first brought man experientially to creation as a work of love was fatherhood. This view is not altered by the fact that the father, in order to preserve, or, what is the same, to continue to produce, to bring up, must command, force, punish. If the family depends on no higher right, it yet appears as the first state, and then the father appears not only as father, but also as king" (75. 119).
The occurrence to-day of "King" as a surname takes us back to a time when the head of the family enjoyed the proud title, which the Romans conferred upon Cæsar Augustus,Pater et Princeps, the natural development from Ovid'svirque paterque gregis.
The Romans called their senatorspatres, and we now speak of the "city fathers," aldermen, _elder_men, in older English, and the "fathers" of many a primitive people are its rulers and legislators. The term "father" we apply also to those who were monarchs and chiefs in realms of human activity other than that of politics. Following in the footsteps of the Latins, who spoke of Zeno asPater stoicorum, of Herodotus asPater historioe, and even of the host of an inn asPater cenoe, we speak of "fathering" an idea, a plot, and the like, and denominate "father," the pioneer scientists, inventors, sages, poets, chroniclers of the race.
Frompaterthe Romans derivedpatrimonium, patrimony, "what was inherited from the father," an interesting contrast tomatrimonium;patronus, "patron, defender, master of slaves";patria(terra), "fatherland,"—Ovid usespaterna terra, and Horace speaks ofpaternum flumen;patricius, "of fatherly dignity, high-born, patrician," etc. Word after word in the classic tongues speaks of the exalted position of the father, and many of these have come into our own language through the influence of the peoples of the Mediterranean.
Father-Priest.
Said Henry Ward Beecher: "Look at home, father-priest, mother-priest; your church is a hundred-fold heavier responsibility than mine can be. Your priesthood is from God's own hands." The priesthood of the father is widespread. Mr. Gomme tells us: "Certainly among the Hindus, the Greeks, the Romans, and, so late down as Tacitus, the Germans, the house-father was priest and judge in his own clan" (461.104). Max Müller speaks to the same effect: "If we trace religion back to the family, the father or head of the family isipso factothe priest. When families grew into clans, and clans into tribes and confederacies, a necessity would arise of delegating to some heads of families the performance of duties which, from having been the spontaneous acts of individuals, had become the traditional acts of families and clans" (510.183). Africa, Asia, America, furnish us abundant evidence of this. Our own language testifies to it also. We speak of the "Fathers of the Church,"—patres, as they were called,—and the term "Father" is applied to an ecclesiastic of the Roman Catholic Church, just as in the Romance languages of Europe the descendants of the Latinpater(Frenchpere, Spanishpadre, Italianpadre, etc.) are used to denote the same personage. In Russian an endearing term for "priest" isbatyushka, "father dear"; the word for a village-priest, sometimes used disrespectfully, ispop. This latter name is identical with the title of the head of the great Catholic Church, the "Holy Father," at Rome, viz.papa, signifying literally "papa, father," given in the early days of Latin Christianity, and the source of our wordPopeand its cognates in the various tongues of modern Europe. The head of an abbey we call anabbot, a name coming, through the Church-Latinabbas, from the Syriacabba, "father"; here again recurs the correlation of priest and father. It is interesting to note that both the wordspapaandabba, which we have just discussed, and which are of such importance in the history of religion, are child-words for "father," bearing evidence of the lasting influence of the child in this sphere of human activity. Among the ancient Romans we find apater patratus, whose duty it was to ratify treaties with the proper religious rites. Dr. von Held is of opinion that, "in the case of a special priesthood, it is not so much the character of its members as spiritual fathers, as their calling of servants of God, of servants of a Father-God, which causes them to be termed fathers, papas" (75. 120).