BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Mitnv^ W. Sage 1S9X A /42.^^4 i%.LIpfJ^ (TO Child and childhood in folk-thought (The olin 3 1924 029 909 441 The date showswhen«nsjvolun«w^ , ^^"^ rrTTHQMTuSE RULES. OUN LIBRARY-- C^IV'V AT!ON DATE DUE ii^ um^ gJ..S«.^*>^» :g;,V'''>'' ' ' poolk' laii;-;'uago of Adica. in antliropos, ho who springs op like a tlowor i* " Mr. W. ,1. Mclioo, iroaliug of "Earth tlio llonu< of Man,'" says (M'J. L'S): — " In liko niauuin-. mankind, offspring: of IMolhoi- I'larlh, oradlod and nui'sod tlirouL;h lu'lploss infancy by thini;s oarllily, has boon lu'0Ui;lit well towards maturity ; and, like the iudividu;il man, he is repaying: the debt uueonseiously assumed at the birth of his kiiul, by trausformini^ the faee of nature, by making; all things better than they were before, by aiding the good a,nd destroying the bad anunig ajiimals and plants, and by proteeting the aging earth from the ravages of tiiwe a\ul failing strength, even as tho ehild protects his tleslily mother. Sueh are the relations of earth and man." The Konuin babe had no right to live until the father lifted him up friMu '•mother-earth "' upon which he lay; at. the baptism of the ancient Mexican ehild, the mother spoke thus: "Thou Sun. Father of all that live, and thou Ivtrth, our Mother, take ye this child and guard it as your son " (^.M'>.l. 'M) ; and among the tiypsies of northern Hungary, at a baptism, the oldest woman present takes the ehild out, and, digging a eireular trench around the little one, whom she has placed upon the earth, utters the follow- ing words; " Like this Karth, be thou strong and great, may thy heart be free from care, be merry as a bird" (^;!',ll.' (18;11). L'0\ aIi of these practices have their analogues in other jiartsof tl\e globe. In another way, infanticide is eonnecled with "mother-earth." In the book of the "Wisdom of Solomon" (xiv. L'.'i) we read; "They slew their children in sacritiees." Infanticide — " nuu-der most foul, as in the best it is. but this most foul, strange, and unnatiiral" — has been sheltered beneath the elo;ik of religion. The story is one of the darkest pages in tlie history of man. A priestly legend of the Khonds of India attributes to ehild-saeriliee a divine origin : — - " In the beginning was the l'';irth a formless nuiss of mud, a.nd could not have borne the dwelling of man, or even his weight; in this liquid and over-moving slime neither tree nor herb took root 30 The OMld in Folk-Thought. Then God said : ' Spill human blood before my face ! ' And they sacrificed a child before Him. . . . Falling upon the soil, the bl(5ody 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 gener- ation that has preceded us." More than once " the mother, with her boys and girls, and per- haps even a little child in her arms, were immolated together," — for sometimes the wretched children, instead of being immedi- ately sacrificed, were allowed to live until they had offspring whose sad fate was determined ere their birth. In the work of Eeclus may be read the fearful tale of the cult of " Pennou, the terrible earth-deity, the bride of the great Sun-God " (523. 316). In Tonga the paleness of the moon is explained by the follow- ing 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 forth- with squeezed it into a ball and tossed it into the heavens, where it became the sun." But Tongariti, 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 nether- world." It became the moon, which is so pale by reason of " the blood having all drained out and decomposition having com- menced," before Tonga-iti threw his half up into the sky (458. 45). With other primitive peoples, too, the gods were infanti- cidal, 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). Lore of Motherhood. 31 And last of all, when tte ineluctable struggle of death is over, man returns to the " mother-earth " — dust to dust. One of the hymns of the Eig-Veda has these beautiful words, forming part of the funeral ceremonies of the old Hindus : — " Approach thou uow 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, 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 in- stances 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 moun- tains, 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, terroeJUii, Landesleute." MilUer and Brinton have much to say of the American earth- goddesses, Toci, " our mother," and goddess of childbirth among the 32 The Child in Folk-Thought. ancient Mexicans (509. 494) ; tlie 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 Shaw- nees, 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 Kome are Demeter, Ceres, Tellus, Ehea, Terra, Ops, Cybele, Bona Dea, Bona Mater, Magna Mater, Gsea, Ge, whose attributes and cere- monies 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 Heriha, 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 tjt's6t [the first Lore of Motherhood. 33 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: '1 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, Monies Idborcibant et parturitur ridi- culus 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 Ger- many 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 JSfox "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 Eoman of 34 The Child in Folk-Thought. old. As Bachofen (6. 16, 219) remarks : " Das Mutterthum ver- bindet sich mit der Idee der den Tag aus sicli gebierenden Nacht, wie das Vaterreeht 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 phi- losophy. Yet night is not always figured as a woman. James Ferguson, the Scotch poet, tells us how " Auld Daddy Darkness creeps frae liis 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 Christmas was modrorneht, " 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 gdvdm gdnitrl, "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 beina; 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" (HI. 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). Ijore of Motherhood. 35 Mother-Days. In Kussia ■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 Sla^ vonic 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 repre- sented 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. 1. 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 I 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 I " 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, liosy 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 36 The Child in Folk-Thought. 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 hright 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 Holty sings : " Geh aus deinem Gezelt, Mutter des Tags herror, und vergiilde 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 clidn-a bd-dd, " mother-sun " (498. 96), and certain Indians of Erazil call the sun coara^y, " mother of the day or earth." In their sacred lan- guage 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 devou.r 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. Accord- ing to one myth, a couple of human beings were born from her monthly ef&ux, and from these the Yuchis afterward originated." Another myth of the same people says : " An unknown myste- rious being once came down upon the earth and met people there who were the ancestors of the Yuchi Indians. To them this being (Jli'Jci, 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 orbfed maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the moon," Lore of Motherhood. 37 and in other languages besides Latin the word for moon is femi- nine, and the lunar deity a female, often associated with child- birth. 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-Orini, " 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." rroebel'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, " Pather-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 omni- scient essence, and with many savage and barbaric peoples fire- worship has flourished 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 ador- able and luminous Agni [fire] " — a concept far-reaching in its mystic and mythological relations (100. 564). According to Mr. Gushing the Zuni Indians term fire the « Grandmother of Men." 38 The Child in Folic -Thought. In their examination of the burial-places of the ancient Indian population of the Salado Kiver Valley in Arizona, the Hemenway Exploring Expedition found that many children were buried near the kitchen hearths. Mr. Gushing offers the following explana- tion of this custom, which finds analogies in various parts of the world : " The matriarchal grandmother, or matron of the house- hold 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 noiirished, sustained, and increased" (501. 149). Boeder 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, for Tule-ema, [the] Fire Mother " (645. II. 285). In a Mongolian wedding-song there is an invocation of " Mother Ut, Queen of Eire," 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 daugh- ters" (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 exist- ences, 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 con- tinued : " Take this, for on it thou must live, grow, become strong, and flourish. Throxigh 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, " Goddess, Mother of Water, fill this child with thy power and virtue " (326. I. 263). Lore of Motherhood. 39 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. 62-64). 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 Eig-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 Brahmanas we are told that from the water arose an egg, from which came forth after a year Pragapati, the creator (510. 248). Variants of this myth of the cosmic egg are found in other quarters of the globe. Motlier-Ocean. The Chinchas of Peru looked upon the sea as the chief deity and the mother of all things, and the Peruvians worshipped MamorCocJia, " mother sea" (609. 368), from which had come forth everything, even animals, giants, and the Indians themselves. Associated with Mama-Cocha was the god Vira-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 searborn 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 Fore- head," recorded by Day, the hero pleads: "0 mother Ocean, please make way for me, or else I die " (426. 260), and passes on in safety. The poet Swinburne calls the sea "fair, white 40 The Child in Folk-Thought. mother," " green-girdled mother," " great, sweet mother, mother and lover of men, the sea." Mother-River. According to Eussian 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 : " Mother Volga, thou great Eiver ! 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 ! " (620. 217-220). In the Mahabharata, the great Sanskrit epic. King Santanu 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, Bhishma; 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 called hdhat sdssin, " 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 chil- dren'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). Lore of Motherhood. 41 An interesting legend of the Indians of the Pueblos of Arizona and New Mexico is recorded by Miiller (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 de- scended the people who built the " Casas Grandes." Dr. Pewkes cites a like myth of the Hopi or Tusayan Indians in which ap- pears kd-lajan-wiiq-ti, " the spider woman," a character possessing certain attributes of the Earth-Mother. Speaking of certain ceremonies in which Cd-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 Eees. This is why, at the present time, the Pawnees have the best and largest corn, the Eees 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). 42 The Child in Folk-Thought. In India there is a regular cult of the holy basil (Ocymum sanc- tum), or Tulast, as it is called, which appears to be a transformation of the goddess Lakshmi. It may be gathered for pious purposes only, and in so doing the following prayer is offered : " Mother Tulasl, be thou propitious. If I gather thee with care, be mer- ciful unto me. Tulasl, 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." The Tulasl opens 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 the Tulasl, obtains the privilege of ascend- ing to the palace of Vishnu, surrounded by ten millions of parents " (448. 244). In Denmark, there is a popular belief that in the elder (Sam- bucus) there lives a spirit or being known as the " elder-mother " (hylde-moer), or "elder-woman" (Mlde-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 jimiper, " Fran 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 : " mother kachiri, please make way for me, or else I die," and the wood opens to let him pass through (426. 250). Lore of Motherhood. 43 Perliaps 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 Eemembrance (393. 215). Mother-TJiumb. Our word thumb signifies 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, " the biggest, or thickest finger is called 'father, mother, or old ' " (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 Chickasaw ilbak-ishke, Hichiti ilb-iki, while the Muskogees call the "thumb." the "mother of fingers." It is worthy of note, that, in the Baka'iri language of Brazil, the thumb is called " father," and the little finger, " child," or " little one " (536. 406). In Samoa the " thumb " is named limorinatua, " forefather of the hand," and the " first finger " limortama, " child of the hand." In the Tshi language of Western Africa a finger is known as ensah-tsiorabbah, " 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, oyorubi, ' 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 " (423 a). 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 the rdle of mother and children. Eroebel 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." 44 The OUld in Folk -Thought. " Das ist die Mutter lieb und gut, Das ist der Vater mit frohem Muth ; Das ist der Bruder lang und grosz ; Das ist die Sohwester mit Puppclien im Sehoosz ; 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 degrad- ing 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 : — ' Tliis is the mother, good and dear ; This the father, with hearty cheer ; This is the brotlier, stout and tall ; This is the sister, who plays with her doll ; And this is the hahy, 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 " ringer-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 Chilrch the Trinity is symbolized by the thumb and first two fingers : "The thumb, being strong, represents the Father; the long, or second finger, Jesus Christ; and the first finger, the Holy Ghost, which proceedeth from the Father and the Son " {Diet, 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 Lore of Motherhood. 45 enough of the "Fatherhood of God" and the "Brotherhood of Man," but only a still small voice has whispered of the "Mother- hood 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 ease Upon his mother's breast ; No storm, no dark, the baby sees Invade 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-raee must bend the All-Mother, das Ewig- weibliche. Perhaps the greatest service that the Eoman 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 : " 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 mother- hood, the joy of the Magnificat, 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 46 The Child in Folk -Thought. appeal is ad matrem. Professor 0. 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 apo- theosis 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 Ehea, 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-morte-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 Eaka, to whom his mother gave the winds in a basket, and " the children of Raka are the numerous winds and storms which distress man- kind. 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 word Vari, " beginning," signifies, on the island of Earotonga, "mud," showing that "these people imagined that once the world was a ' chaos of mud,' out of which some mighty unseen agent, whom they called Vari, evolved the present order of things " (458. 3, 21). Lore of Motherhood. 47 Another "All-Mother" is she of whom our own poets have sung, " Nature," the source and sustainer of all. Mother-Nature. " So ilbt ISTatur 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 Eobertson Smith has said : "The same lack of any sharp distinction between the nature of differ- ent 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 uni- verse " (388. 211). Mr. Frank Gushing 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 coun- tries, 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.) 48 The Child in Folk -Thought. In the Trinity of Upper Egypt the second person was Mut, " Mother Nature." the others being Amun, 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 the moderson of Low German the signification of " bas- tard," 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, took The child upon her knee. Saying, ' Here is a story-book Thy 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 away With 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. Lore of Motherhood. 49 Other Mother-Goddesses. Among other "mother-goddesses" of ancient Italy we find Maia Mater, Flora Mater, both deities of growth and reproduc- tion; Lua Mater, "the loosing mother," a goddess of death; Acca Larentia, the mother of the Lares {Acca perhaps = 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 Caere. The mother-goddesses of Germany are quite numerous. Among those minor ones cited by Grimm and Simrock, are : Haulemutter, Mutter HoUe, the Klagemiitter or Klagemuhmen, Pudelmutter (a name applied to the goddess Berchta), Etelmutter, Kornmutter, ErOggenmutter, 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 (mom) " ; when a whirlwind occurs, the saying is : " The Devil is dancing with his grandmother." In Chiaa 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 recog- nition. 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 goddess Pity, in the form of a woman holding a child in her arms." 50 The Child in Folk-Thought. Among the deities and semi-deities of tlie Andaman Islanders are chdn-a-Hewadi, the "mother of the race," — Mother E-lewadi; chdn-a-erep, clidn'a-chd-rid, chdn-a-te-liu, chdn-a Ivmi, chdn-a-jdra- ngud, all inventors and discoverers of foods and the arts. In the religious system of the Andaman Islanders, Pu-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, chdn-a-du-lola (Mother Fresh- water Shrimp) and chdn-a-pd-lak- (Mother Eel) ; by her he has a large family, all except the eldest being girls ; these last, known as md-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 was chdn-a-5-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 her e-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 liistory of the mother-influence. Our ideas of morality, justice, order, all these are simply mother-ideas. The mother began our culture in that epoch in which, like the man, she was autodidactic. 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). Lore of Motherhood. 51 The history of civilization is the story of the mother, a story that stales not with repetition. Eichter, in his Levana, 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 forgot- ten ere we can forget the warmest heart. You wish, woman, to be ardently loved, and forever, even till death. Be, then, the mothers of your children." Tennyson La The Foresters uses 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 woman sanctum aliquid et provi- diim, as indeed the Modern German Weib (cognate with our wife) also declares, the original signification of the word being "the animated, the inspirited." CHAPTER IV. The Child's Teibute to the Father. 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 malses ns free. — Carlyle. To you your father should be as a goi.. — 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, like mother, is a very old word, and goes back, wij;li the cognate terms in Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Indo- Aryan speech, to the primitive Indo-European language, and, like mother, it is of uncertain etymology. An English preacher of the twelfth century sought to derive the word from the Anglo-Saxon /Man, "to feed," making the "father'' to be the "feeder" or "nourisher," and some more modern attempts at explanation are hardly better. This ety- mology, 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" is fshishap (in the Modoc dialect, p'tishap), meaning " feeder, nour- isher," from a radical tshi, which signifies " to give somebody liquid food (as milk, water)." Whether there is any real connec- tion between our word pap, — with its cognates in other lan- guages, — which signifies "food for infants," as well as "teat, breast," and the child-word papa, "father," is doubtful, and the same may be said of the attempt to find a relation between teat, 52 Xiore of Fatherhood. 53 tit, etc., and the widespread child-words for "father," tat, dad. Wedgewood (Introd. to Dictionary), however, maintained that: " Words formed of the simplest articulations, ma and pa, 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 " mama means in one tongue mother, in another /ai/ter, in a third, uncle; dada in one language father, in a second nurse, in another breast; tata in one language father, in another son," etc. The primitive Indo-European p-tr, Skeat takes to be formed, with the agent-suffix tr, from the radi- cal pd, " to protect, to guard," — the father having been originally looked upon as the " protector," or " guarder." Max Miiller, who offers the same derivation, remarks : " The father, as begetter, was called in Sanskrit ganitdr, as protector and supporter of his posterity, however, pitdr. Tor this reason, in the Veda both names together are used in order to give the complete idea of 'father.' In like manner, mdtar, 'mother,' is joined with ganit, ' genetrix,' and this shows that the word mdtar must have soon lost its etymological signification and come to be a term of re- spect and caress. With the oldest Indo-Europeans, mdtar meant ' maker,' from md, ' 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, pre- sumably the oldest of the Teutonic dialects, the most common word for "father" is atta, still seen in the name of the far-famed leader of the Huns, Attila, i.e. " little father," and in the atti of modern Swiss dialects. To the same root attach themselves Sanskrit atta, "mother, elder sister"; Ossetic ddda, "little father (Vaterchen) " ; Greek irra, Latin atta, "father"; Old Slavonic oti^ci, "little father"; Old Irish aite, "foster-father." Atta be- longs to the category of "nature-words" or "nursery-words" of which our dad (daddy ) is also a member. 54 The Child in Folk -Thought. Another member is the widespread papa, pa. Our word papa, Skeat thiaks, is borrowed, through the French, from Latin papa, found as a Eoman cognomen. This goes back in all probability to ancient Greek, for, in the Odyssey (vi. 67), Nausicaa addresses her father as irainra. ^tXe, " dear papa." 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" signi- fies " maker," and the same thing occurs elsewhere among primi- tive 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 lan- guages of British Columbia, the words used by males and by females are, respectively: hun, qat; Me'u, inistm; 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 Tsim- shian, Kwakiutl, Nootka, Ntlakyapamuq, four Indian languages of British Columbia, the words for " father," when addressed, are respectively d'bo, dts, no' we, pap, and for "father" in other cases, riEgud'at, au'mp, nuwe'kso, sk-a'tsa. Here, again, it will be noticed that the words used in address seem shorter and more primitive in character. In the Chinantec language of Mexico, fluh signifies at the same time " father " and " man." In Gothic aba means both " father " and "husband" (492. S3). 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 called great 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 Lore- of Fatherhood. 55 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 illustra- tion from many primitive languages, will be found in Wester- marek (166. 86-94). Father-Right. Of the Eoman 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 Kome the pater- familias and the patria potestas are 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 rep- resented the family in their domestic worship ; and when, after his death, he was laid by the side of his ancestors in the com- mon 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 organ- ized according to father-right consists of the father and his chil- dren. 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 chil- dren of the sisters of the same father, etc. With every wife the relationship ceases every time " (127. I. 24). 56 The Child in Folk-ThougJit. 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, Eomans), 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 inheri- tance 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, but vice versd. 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 North America (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 allow- ing 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 Lore of Fatherhood. bl in the world, — indeed, we have it also in English, and Shake- speare 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 dis- covery 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 im wittingly by their own children, or children have been slain imawares by their parents. Father-King. In his interesting study of " Eoyalty and Divinity " (75), Dr. von Held has pointed out many resemblances between the primi- tive concepts " King " and " God." Both, it would seem, stand in close connection with " Father." To quote from Dr. von Held : " Fathership (Vaterschaft, patriarcJia), lordship (Herrentum), and kingship (Konigtum) are, therefore (like rex and ^acnXevi), ideas not only linguistically, but, to even a greater degree really, cog- nate, 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 em- pire," his millions of subjects being his "children"; and the ancient Romans had no nobler title for their emperor than pater patriae, the "father of his country," an appellation bestowed in these later days upon the immortal first President of the United States. In the YSjnavalkya, one of the old Sanskrit law-books, the king is bidden to be " towards servants and subjects as a father " (76. 122), and even Mirabeau and Gregoire, in the first months of the S bates-General, termed the king "le p6re 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 peo- ple." The name pater patriae was not borne by the Csesars 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 in- scribed the same title upon the base of the statue erected to 58 The Child in Folk -Thought. Andrea Doria. One of the later Byzantine Emperors, Androni- cus Paleeologus, 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 mean- ing of Attila, the name of the far-famed leader of the " Huns," in the dark ages of Europe, and of hatyuslika, 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 Prance 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 Kafl&r 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 the paterfamilias in ancient Latium (100. 469, 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 Lore of Fatherhood. 59 state, and then the father appears not only as father, but also as king" (76.119). 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 Caesar Augustus, Pater et Princeps, the natural development from Ovid's virque paterque gregis. The Romans called their senators patres, and we now speak of the " city fathers," aldermen, eldermen, in older English, and the "fathers" of many a primitive people are its rulers and legis- lators. 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 as Pater stoicorum, of Herodotus as Pater historioe, and even of the host of an inn as Pater cence, we speak of " father- ing" an idea, a plot, and the like, and denominate "father," the pioneer scientists, inventors, sages, poets, chroniclers of the race. From pater the Romans derived patrimonium, patrimony, " what was inherited from the father," an interesting contrast to matri- monium; patronus, "patron, defender, master of slaves"; patria (terra), " fatherland," — Ovid uses paterna terra, and Horace speaks of paternum 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 responsi- bility 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 Mtiller speaks to the same effect : " If we trace religion back to the family, the father or head of the family is ipso facto the priest. When fami- lies grew into clans, and clans into tribes and confederacies, a 60 The cum in Folk -Thought. 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 ovsrn 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 Eomance languages of Europe the descendants of the Latin pater (French pire, Spanish padre, Italian padre, etc.) are used to denote the same personage. In Russian an endearing term for " priest " is batyu- shka, " father dear " ; the word for a village-priest, sometimes used disrespectfully, is pop. This latter name is identical with the title of the head of the great Catholic Church, the " Holy Father," at Eome, viz. papa, signifying literally " papa, father," given in the early days of Latin Christianity, and the source of our word Pope and its cognates in the various tongues of modern Europe. The head of an abbey we call an abbot, a name coming, through the Church-Latin abbas, from the Syriac abba, " father " ; here again recurs the correlation of priest and father. It is interesting to note that both the words pnpa and abba, 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 a pater 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). Father-God. Shakespeare has aptly said, in the words which Theseus ad- dresses to the fair Hermia : — " To you your father should be as a god ; One that composed your beauties, yea, and one To whom you are but as a form in wax, By him imprinted, and within his power To leave the figure or disfigure it," Lore of Fatherhood. 61 and widespread indeed, in the childhood of the race, has been the belief in the Fatherhood of God. Concerning the first parents of human kind the ancient Hebrew Scripture declares : " And God created man in His own image," and long centuries afterwards, in his memorable oration to the wise men of Athens upon Mars' Hill, the Apostle Paul quoted with approval the words of the Greek poet, Cleanthes, who had said : " For we are all His off- spring." Epictetus, appealing to a master on behalf of his slaves, asked : " Wilt thou not remember over whom thou rulest, that they are thy relations, thy brethren by nature, the offspring of Zeus ? " (388. 210). At the battle of Kadshu, Eameses II., of Egypt, abandoned by his soldiers, as a last appeal, exclaimed : " I will call upon thee, my father Amon ! " (388. 209). Many prophets and preachers have there been who taught to men the doctrine of " God, the Father," but last and best of all was the " Son of Man," the Christ, who taught his disciples the world-heard prayer : " Our Father, who art in Heaven," who pro- claimed that "in my Father's house are many mansions," and whose words in the agony of Gethsemane were : " Abba, Father, all things are possible unto Thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what Thou wilt." Between the Buddhist Kalmucks, with whom the newly married couple reverently utter these words : " I incline myself this first time to my Lord God, who is my father and my mother " (518. I. 423), and the deistic philosophers of to-day there is a vast gulf, as there is also between the idea of Deity among the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala, where the words for God atom and achalom signify respectively "begetter of children," and "begetter of sons," and the modern Christian concept of God, the Father, with His only begotten Son, the Saviour of the world. The society of the gods of human creation has everywhere been modelled upon that of man. He was right who said Olympus was a Greek city and Zeus a Greek father. According to D'Al- viella : " 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. The divine monarch or father, however, might still be no more than the first among his peers. For the supreme god to become 62 The Child in Folk-Thought. the Only God, lie must rise above all beings, superhuman as well as human, not only in his power, but in his very nature " (388. 211). Though the mythology of our Teutonic forefathers knew of the "All-Father," — the holy Odin, — it is from those children-loving people, the Hebrews, that our Christian conception of " God the Father," with some modifications, is derived. As Professor Rob- ertson Smith has pointed out, among the Semites we find the idea of the tribal god as father strongly developed : " But in heathen religions the fatherhood of the gods is a physical fatherhood. Among the Greeks, for example, the idea that the gods fashioned men out of clay, as potters fashion images, is relatively modern. The older conception is that the races of men have gods for their ancestors, or are the children of the earth, the common mother of gods and men, so that men are really of the same stock or kin of the gods. That the same conception was familiar to the older Semites appears from the Bible. Jeremiah describes idolaters as saying to a stock, Thou art my father ; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth. In the ancient poem, Num. xxi. 29, the Moa- bites are called the sons and daughters of Chemosh, and, at a much more recent date, the prophet Malachi calls a heathen woman, ' the daughter of a strange god'" (535. 41^3). Professor Smith cites also the evidence furnished by genealogies and personal names : " The father of Solomon's ally, Hiram, King of Tyre, was called Abibaal, ' my father is Baal ' ; Ben-Hadad, of Damascus, is ' the son of the god Hadad ' ; in Aramasan we find names like Barlaha, ' son of God,' Barba'shmm, ' son of the Lord of Heaven,' Barate, ' son of Ate,' etc." We have also that pas- sage in Genesis which tells how the " sons of God saw the daugh- ters of men that were fair ; and they took them wives of all which they chose" (vi. 2), while an echo of the same thought dwells with the Polynesians, who term illegitimate children tamarika na te Atua, " children of the gods " (458. 121). D'Alviella further remarks : " Presently these family relations of the gods were extended till they embraced the whole creation, and especially mankind. The confusion between the terms for creating and begetting, which still maintained itself in half-developed lan- guages, must have led to a spontaneous fusion of the ideas of creator and father." But there is another aspect of this question. Of the Amazulu Callaway writes : " Speaking generally, the head Lore of Fatherhood. 63 of each house is worshipped by the children of that house ; for they do not know the ancients who are dead, nor their laud-giving names, nor their names. But their father whom they knew is the head by whom they begin and end in their prayer, for they know him best, and his love for his children ; they remember his kind- ness to them whilst he was living ; they compare his treatment of them whilst he was living, support themselves by it, and say, ' He will treat us in the same way now he is dead. We do not know why he should regard others beside us ; he will regard us only.' " Of these people it is true, as they themselves say : " Our father is a great treasure to us, even when he is dead " (417. 144). Here we pass over to ancestor worship, seen at its height in China, whose great sage, Confucius, taught : " The great object of marriage is to beget children, and especially sons, who may perform the required sacrifices at the tombs of their parents " (434. 126). In this connection, the following passage from Max Miiller is of interest : " How religious ideas could spring from the percep- tion of something infinite or immortal in our parents, grand- parents, and ancestors, we can see even at the present day. Among the Zulus, for instance, UnTculunkulu or Okidukulu, which means the great-great-grandfather, has become the name of God. It is true that each family has its own UnTculunkulu, and that his name varies accordingly. But there is also an Unkulunkulu of all men {unkulunkulu wabantu bonke), and he comes very near to being a father of all men. Here also we can watch a very natural pro- cess of reasoning. A son would look upon his father as his progen- itor ; he would remember his father's father, possibly his father's grandfather. But beyond that his own experience could hardly go, and therefore the father of his own great-grandfather, of whom he might have heard, but whom he had never seen, would naturally assume the character of a distant unknown being ; and, if the human mind ascended still further, it would almost by necessity be driven to a father of all fathers, that is to a creator of mankind, if not of the world " (510. 156). Again we reach the " Father " of Pope's " Universal Prayer " — " Father of all ! in every age, In every clime adored. By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovab, Jove, or Lord," 64 The Child in Folk -Thought. having started from the same thought as the Hebrews in the infancy of their race. An Eastern legend of the child Abraham has crystallized the idea. It is said that one morning, while with his mother in the cave in which they were hiding from JSTimrod, he asked his mother, " Who is my God ? " and she replied, "It is I." "And who is thy God?" he inquired farther. "Thy father" (547. 69). Hence also we derive the declaration of DuVair, " Nous devons tenir nos peres comme des dieux en terre," and the statement of another French writer, of whom Westermarck says : "Bodin wrote, in the later part of the sixteenth century, that, though the monarch commands his subjects, the master his dis- ciples, the captain his soldiers, there is none to whom nature has given any command except the father, ' who is the true image of the great sovereign God, universal father of all things ' " (166. 238). Father-Sky. " Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky," sang the poet Herbert, unconsciously renewing an ancient myth. As many cosmologies tell. Day and Dawn were born of the em- braces of Earth and Sky. Ushas, Eos, Aurora, is the daughter of heaven, and one story of the birth is contained in the Maori myth of Papa and Eangi. Ushas, Max Mtiller tells us, " has two par- ents, heaven and earth, whose lap she fills with light" (510. 431). Erom Rangi, " Father-Sky," and Papa, " Mother-Earth," say the Maoris of New Zealand, sprang all living things; and, in like manner, the Chinese consider the Sky or Heaven, — Yang, the masculine, procreative, active element, — to be the " father of all things," while the Earth, — Yu, the feminine, conceiving, passive element, — is the " mother of all things." From the union of these two everything in existence has arisen, and consequently resembles the one or the other (529. 107). Among the primitive Aryans, the Sky, or Heaven God, was called " Father," as shown by the Sanskrit Dyaus Pitdr, Greek Zeu's irarrip, Latin Jupiter, all of which names signify " sky father." Dyaus is also called janitdr, " producer, father," and Zeus, the "eternal father of men," the "father of gods and men, the ruler and preserver of the world." In the Vedic hymns are invo- Lore of Fatherhood. 65 cations of Dyaus (Sky), as "our Father," and of Prithivi (Earth), as " our Mother " (388. 210). Dyaus symbolizes the "bright sky"; from the same primitive Indo-European root come the Latin words dies (day), deus or di-vus (god); the dark sombre vault of heaven is Varuna, the Greek Ouparos, Latin Uranus. Other instances of the bridal of earth and sky, — of " mother earth," and " father sky," — are found among the tribes of the Baltic, the Lapps, the Finns (who have Ukko, "Father Heaven," Akka, "Mother Earth"), and other more barbaric peoples. In Ashanti, the new deity, which the introduction of Christian- ity has added to the native pantheon, is called Nana Nyanlcupon, " Grandfather-sky " (438. 24). The shaman of the Buryats of Alarsk prays to "Father Heaven " ; in the Altai Mountains the prayer is to "Father Yulgen, thrice exalted, Whom the edge of the moon's axe shuns, Who uses the hoof of the horse. Thou, Yulgen, hast created all men, Who are stirring round about us, Thou, Yulgen, hast endowed us with all cattle ; Let us not fall into sorrow ! Grant that we may resist the evil one ! " (504. 70, 77). We too have recollections of that " Father-Sky," whom our far- off ancestors adored, the bright, glad, cheerful sky, the " ancestor of all." Max Muller has summed up the facts of our inheritance in brief terms : — " Remember that this Dyaush Pitar is the same as the Greek Zeis IlaT-^p, and the Latin Jupiter, and you will see how this one word shows us the easy, the natural, the almost inevitable transi- tion from the conception of the active sky as a purely physical fact, to the Father-Sky with all his mythological accidents, and lastly to that Father in heaven whom ^Eschylus meant when he burst out in his majestic prayer to Zeus, whosoever he is" (510. 410). Unnumbered centuries have passed, but the " witchery of the soft blue sky " has still firm hold upon the race, and we are, as of old, children of " our Father, who art in Heaven." 66 The Child in Folk -Thought. Father-Sea. Montesinos tells us that Viracocha, " searfoam," the Peruvian god of the sea, was regarded as the source of all life and the ori- gin of all things, — world-tiller, world-animator, he was called (609. 316). Xenophanes of Kolophon, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century B.C., taught that "the mighty sea is the father of clouds and winds and rivers." In Greek mythology Oceanus is said to be the father of the principal rivers of earth. Neptune, the god of the sea, — " Father Neptune," he is sometimes called, • — ■ had his analogue in a deity whom the Libyans looked upon as "the first and greatest of the gods." To Neptune, as the "Father of Streams," the Romans erected a temple in the Campus Martius and held games and feasts in his honour. The sea was also spoken of as pater csquoreus. Father-River. The name " Father of Waters " is assigned, incorrectly perhaps, to certain American Indian languages, as an appellation of the Mississippi. From Macaulay's " Lay of Horatius," we all know "O Tiber, Father Tiber, To wliom the Romans pray," and " Father Thames " is a favourite epithet of the great English river. Father-Frost. In our English nursery-lore the frost is personified as a mis- chievous boy, "Jack Frost," to whose pranks its vagaries are due. In old Norse mythology we read of the terrible "Frost Giants," offspring of Ymir, born of the ice of Niflheim, which the warmth exhaled from the sun-lit land of Muspelheim caused to drop off into the great Ginnunga-gap, the void that once was where earth is now. In his "Frost Spirit" Whittier has pre- served something of the ancient grimness. We speak commonly of the " Frost-King," whose fetters bind the earth in winter. In Eussia the frost is called '' Father Frost," and is personified as a white old man, or " a mighty smith who forges strong chains Lore of Fatherhood. 67 with which to bind the earth and the waters," and on Christmas Eve " the oldest man in each family takes a spoonful of kissel (a sort of pudding), and then, having put his head through the win- dow, cries: 'Frost, Frost, come and eat kissel! Frost, Frost, do not kill our oats! Drive our flax and hemp deep into the ground'" (520. 223-230). Quite different is the idea contained in Grimm's tale of " Old Mother Frost," — the old woman, the shaking of whose bed in the making causes the feathers to fly, and "then it snows on earth." Father-Fire. Fire has received worship and apotheosis in many parts of the globe. The Muskogee Indians of the southeastern United States " gave to fire the highest Indian title of honour, grandfather, and their priests were called 'fire-makers'" (529. 68). The ancient Aztecs called the god of fire " the oldest of the gods, Huehueteotl, and also ' our Father,' Tata, as it was believed that from him all things were derived." He was supposed " to govern the genera- tive proclivities and the sexual relations," and he was sometimes called Xiuhtecutli, " ' God of the Green Leaf,' that is, of vegetable fecundity and productiveness." He was worshipped as " the life- giver, the active generator of animate existence," — the " primal element and the immediate source of life" (413). These old Americans were in accord with the philosopher, Heraclitus of Ephesus, who held that "fire is the element, and all things were produced in exchange for fire " ; and Heraclitus, in the fragments in which he speaks of " God," the " one wise," that which " knows all things," means " Fire." In the rites of the ISTagualists occurs a "baptism by fire," which was "celebrated on the fourth day after the birth of the child, during which time it was deemed essential to keep the fire burning in the house, but not to permit any of it to be carried out, as that would bring bad luck to the child," and, in the work of one of the Spanish priests, a protest is made : " ISTor must the lying-in women and their assistants be permitted to speak of Fire as the father and mother of all things, and the author of nature ; because it is a common saying with them that Fire is present at the birth and death of every creat- ure." It appears also that the Indians who followed this strange 68 The Child in Folk-Thought. cult were wont to speak of " what the Fire said and how the Fire wept" (413.45^6). Among various other peoples, fire is regarded as auspicious to children ; its sacred character is widely recognized. In the Zend- Avesta, the Bible of the ancient Persians, whose religion survives in the cult of the Parsees, now chiefly resident in Bombay and its environs, we read of Ahura-Mazda, the " Wise Lord," the " Father of the pure world," the " best thing of all, the source of light for the world." Purest and most sacred of all created things was fire, light (421. 32). In the Sar Dar, one of the Parsee sacred books, the people are bidden to " keep a continual fire in the house dur- ing a woman's pregnancy, and, after the child is born, to burn a lamp [or, better, a fire] for three nights and days, so that the demons and fiends may not be able to do any damage and harm." It is said that when Zoroaster, the founder of the ancient religion of Persia, was born, " a demon came at the head of a hundred and fifty other demons, every night for three nights, to slay him, but they were put to flight by seeing the fire, and were consequently unable to hurt him" (258. 96). In ancient Rome, among the Lithuanians on the shores of the Baltic, in Ireland, in England, Denmark, Germany, "while a child remained unbaptized," it was, or is, necessary "to burn a light in the chamber." And in the island of Lewis, off the northwestern coast of Scotland, "fire used to be carried round women before they were churched, and children before they were christened, both night and morning ; and this was held effectual to preserve both mother and infant from evil spirits, and (in the case of the infant) from being changed." In the Gypsy mountain villages of Upper Hungary, during the baptism of a child, the women kindle in the hut a little fire, over which the mother with the baptized infant must step, in order that milk may not fail her while the child is being suckled (392. II. 21). In the East Indies, the mother with her new-born child is made to pass between two fires. Somewhat similar customs are known to have existed in northern and western Europe ; in Ireland and Scotland espe- cially, where children were made to pass through or leap over the fire. Lore of Fatherhood. 69 To Moloch ("King"), their god of fire, the Phcenicians used to sacrifice the first-born of their noblest families. A later devel- opment of this cult seems to have consisted in making the child pass between two fires, or over or through a fire. This " baptism of fire " or " purification by fire," was in practice among the ancient Aztecs of Mexico. To the second water-baptism was added the fire-baptism, in which the child was drawn through the fire four times (609. 653). Among the Tarahumari Indians of the Mexican Sierra Madre, the medicine-man " cures " the infant, " so that it may become strong and healthy, and live a long life." The ceremony is thus described by Lumholtz : " A big fire of corn-cobs, or of the branches of the mountain-cedar, is made near the cross [outside the house], and the baby is carried over the smoke three times towards each cardinal-point, and also three times backward. The motion is first toward the east, then toward the west, then south, then north. The smoke of the corn-cobs assures him of success in agriculture. With a fire-brand the medicine-man makes three crosses on the child's forehead, if it is a boy, and four, if a girl " (107. 298). Among certain South American tribes the child and the mother are " smoked " with tobacco (326. II. 194). With marriage, too, fire is associated. In Yucatan, at the be- trothal, the priest held the little fingers of bridegroom and bride to the fire (509. 504), and in Germany, the maiden, on Christmas night, looks into the hearth-fire to discover there the features of her future husband (392. IV. 82). Eademacher (130 a) has called attention to the great importance of the hearth and the fireplace in family life. In the Black Forest the stove is invoked in these terms : " Dear oven, I beseech thee, if thou hast a wife, I would have a man " (130 a. 60). Among the White Eussians, before the wedding, the house of the bridegroom and that of the bride are "cleansed from evil spirits," by burning a heap of straw in the middle of the living-room, and at the beginning of the ceremo- nies, after they have been elevated upon a cask, as "Prince" and « Princess," the guests, with the wedding cake and two tapers in their hand's, go round the cask three times, and with the tapers held crosswise burn them a little on the neck, the forehead, and the temples, so that the hair is singed away somewhat. At 70 The Child in Folk-ThovgU. church the wax tapers are of importance: if they burn brightly and clearly, the young couple will have a happy, merry married life ; if feeble, their life will be a quiet one ; if they flicker, there will be strife and quarrels betv/een them (392 (1891). 161). Writing of Manabozho, or Michabo, the great divinity of the Algonkian tribes of the Great Lakes, Dr. D. G. Brinton says: " Michabo, giver of life and light, creator and preserver, is no apotheosis of a prudent chieftain, still less the fabrication of an idle fancy, or a designing priestcraft, but, in origin, deeds, and name, the not unworthy personification of the purest conceptions they possessed concerning the Father of All " (409. 469). To Agni, fire, light, "in whom are all the gods," the ancient Hindu prayed: "Be unto us easy of access, as a father to his son " (388. 210), and later generations of men have seen in light the embodiment of God. As Max Milller says, "We ourselves also, though we may no longer use the name of Morning-Light for the Infinite, the Beyond, the Divine, still find no better ex- pression than Light when we speak of the manifestations of God, whether in nature or in our mind" (510. 434). In the Christian churches of to-day hymns of praise are sung to God as " Father of Light and Life," and their neophytes are bidden, as of old, to " walk as Children of Light." Father-Sun. At the naming of the new-born infant in ancient Mexico, the mother thus addressed the Sun and the Earth: "Thou Sun, Father of all that live, and thou Earth, our Mother, take ye this child, and guard it as your son." A common aflftrmation with them was : " By the life of the Sun, and of our Lady, the Earth " (529. 97). Many primitive tribes have the custom of holding the new- born child up to the sun. Not a few races and peoples have called themselves " children of the sun." The first of the Incas of Peru — a male and a female — were children of the Sun "our Father," who, "seeing the pitiable condition of mankind, was moved to compassion, and sent to them, from Heaven, two of his children, a son and a daughter, to teach them how to do him honour, and pay him divine Lore of Fatherhood. 71 •worsliip " ; they were also instructed by the sun in all the need- ful arts of life, which they taught to men (529. 102). When the " children of the Sun " died, they were said to be " called to the home of the Sun, their Father " (100. 479). The Comanche Indians, who worship the sun with dances and other rites, call him taab-apa, "Father Sun," and the Sarcees speak of the sun as " Our Father," and of the earth as " Our Mother " (412. 122, 72). With the Piute Indians "the sun is the father and ruler of the heavens. He is the big chief. The moon is his wife, and the stars are their children. The sun eats his children whenever he can catch them. They fall before him, and are all the time afraid when he is passing through the heavens. When he (their father) appears in the morning, you see all the stars, his chil- dren, fly out of sight, — go away back into the blue of the above, — and they do not wake to be seen again until he, their father, is about going to his bed " (485. I. 130). Dr. Eastman says of the Sioux Indians : " The sun was re- garded as the father, and the earth as the mother, of all things that live and grow ; but. as they had been married a long time and had become the parents of many generations, they were called the great-grandparents " (518 (1894). 89). Widespread over the earth has been, and still is, the worship of the sun; some mythologists, indeed, would go too far and explain almost every feature of savage and barbarous religion as a sun-myth or as smacking of heliolatry. Imagery and figurative language borrowed from the considerar tion of the aspect and functions of the great orb of day have found their way into and beautified the religious thought of every modern Christian community. The words of the poet Thomson : " Prime cheerer light ! Of all material beings first and best ! y.ffliiY divine ! Nature's resplendent robe I Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt In unessential gloom ; and thou, O Sun ! Soul of surrounding worlds ! in whom best seen Shines out thy Maker ! " find briefer expression in the simple speech of the dying Turner : "The sun is God." 72 The Child in Folk-Thought. Father-Earth. Thougli in nearly every portion of the globe the apotheosis of earth is as a woman, we iind in America some evidences of a cult of the terrestrial Father-God. Concerning- the cave-worship of the Mexican aborigines, Dr. Brinton says (413. 38, 50) : " The intimate meaning of this cave-cult was the worship of the Earth. The Cave-G-od, the Heart of the Hills, really typified the Earth, the Soil, from whose dark recesses flow the limpid streams and spring the tender shoots of the food-plants as well as the great trees. To the native Mexican the Earth was the provider of food and drink, the common Father of All ; so that, to this day, when he would take a solemn oath, he stoops to the earth, touches it with his hand, and repeats the solemn formula : ' Cuix amo ne- chitla in toteotzin ? Does not our Great God see me ? ' " Father- Wind. Dr. Berendt, when travelling through the forests of Yucatan, heard his Maya Indian guide exclaim in awe-struck tones, as the roar of a tornado made itself heard in the distance : He catal nohoch yiJcal nohoch tat, "Here comes the mighty wind of the Great Father." As Dr. Brinton points out, this belief has ana- logues all over the world, in the notion of the wind-bird, the master of breath, and the spirit, who is father of all the race, for we learn also that "the whistling of the wind is called, or at- tributed to, tat acme, words which mean ' Father Strong-Bird ' " (411. 175). The cartography of the Middle Ages and the epochs of the great maritime discoveries has made us familiar with the wind- children, offspring of the wind-father, from whose mouths came the breezes and the storms, and old Boreas, of whom the sailors sing, has traces of the fatherhood about him. More than one people has believed that God, the Father, is Spirit, breath, wind. Other Father-Gods. The ancient Romans applied the term Pater to many of their gods beside the great Jove. Vulcan was called Lemnus Pater, the "Lemnian Father"; Bacchus, Pater LencBus; Janus, the Lore of Fatherhood. 73 " early god of business," is termed by Horace, Matutinus Pater, " Early-morning Father " ; Mars is Mars Pater, etc. The Guarayo Indians, of South America, prayed for rain and bountiful har- vests to "Tamoi, the grandfather, the old god in heaven, who was their first ancestor and had taught them agriculture " (100. 288). The Abipones, of Paraguay, called the Pleiades their " Grand- father " and " Creator." When the constellation was invisible, they said: "Our Grandfather, Keebet, is ill" (509. 274, 284). In his account of the folk-lore of Yucatan, Dr. Brinton tells us that the giant-beings known as Hhalamoh, or balams, are some- times " affectionately referred to as yum balam, or ' Father Balam.' " The term yum is practically the equivalent of the Latin pater, and of the "father," employed by many primitive peoples in address- ing, or speaking of, their great male divinities (411. 176). In his acute exposition of the philosophy of the Zuni Indians, Mr. Gushing tells us (424. 11) that " all beings, whether deistic and supernatural, or animistic and mortal, are regarded as belong- ing to one system; and that they are likewise believed to be related by blood seems to be indicated by the fact that human beings are spoken of as the 'children of men,' while all other beings are referred to as 'the Fathers,' the 'All-Fathers (A-ta- tchu),' and 'Our Fathers.'" The "Priest of the Bow," when travelling alone through a dangerous country, offers up a prayer, which begins: "Si! This day. My Fathers, ye Animal Beings, although this country be filled with enemies, render me precious" (424. 41). The hunter, in the ceremonial of the "Deer Medi- cine," prays : " Si ! This day. My Father, thou Game Animal, even though thy trail one day and one night hast (been made) round about; however, grant unto me one step of my earth-mother. Wanting thy life-blood, wanting that flesh, hence I address to thee good fortune, address to thee treasure," etc. When he has stricken down the animal, " before the ' breath of life ' has left the fallen deer (if it be such), he places its fore feet back of its horns, and, grasping its mouth, holds it firmly, closely, while he applies his lips to its nostrils and breathes as much wind into them as possible, again inhaling from the lungs of the dying animal into his own. Then, letting go, he exclaims: 'Ah! Thanks, my father, my child. Grant unto me the seeds of 74 The Child in Folh-Thought. earth ('daily bread') and tlie gift of water. Grant unto me the light of thy favour, do" (424. 36). Something of a like nature, perhaps, attaches to the bear- ceremonials among the Ainu and other primitive peoples of northeastern Asia, with whom that animal is held in great respect and reverence, approaching to deification. Of P6-shai-an-k'ia, "the God (Father) of the Medicine Socie- ties, or sacred esoteric orders of the Zunis," Mr. Gushing tells us : "He is supposed to have appeared in human form, poorly clad, and therefore reviled by men; to have taught the ancestors of the Zuni, Taos, Oraibi, and Coqonino Indians their agricultural and other arts; their systems of worship by means of plumed and painted prayer-sticks ; to have organized their medicine so- cieties, and then to have disappeared toward his home in Shi-pa- pu-li-ma (from shi-pa-a = mist, vapour ; u-lin, surrounding ; and i-nwMia = sitting-place of ; ' The mist-enveloped city '), and to have vanished beneath the world, whence he is said to have departed for the home of the Sun. He is still the conscious auditor of the prayers of his children, the invisible ruler of the spiritual Shi-pa- pu-li-ma, and of the lesser gods of the medicine orders, the prin- cipal ' Finisher of the Paths of oui Lives.' He is, so far as any identity can be established, the 'Montezuma' of popular and usually erroneous Mexican tradition" (424. 16). Both on the lowest steps of civilization and on the highest, we meet with this passing over of the Father into the Son, this participation of God in the affairs and struggles of men. CHAPTER V. The Name Child. Liebe Kinder haben viele Namen [Dear chndren haye many names]. — German Proverb. Child or boy, my darling, which you will. — Swiribwne. Men ever had, and ever will have, leave To coin new words well-suited to the age. Words are like leaves, some wither every year, And every year a younger race succeeds. — Roscommon. Child and its Synonyms. OtJE word child — the good old English term; for both hahe and infant are borrowed — simply means the " product of the womb " (compare Gothic Mlthei, " womb "). The Lowland-Scotch dialect still preserves an old word for " child " in bairn, cognate with Anglo-Saxon beam, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, and Gothic bam (the Gothic had a diminutive bamilo, " baby "), Sanskrit bhama, which signifies " the borne one," " that which is born," from the primitive Indo-European root bhr, " to bear, to carry in the womb," whence our " to bear " and the German " ge-baren." Son, which finds its cognates in all the principal Aryan dialects, except Latin, and perhaps Celtic, — the Greek dJos is for o-uios, and is the same word, — a widespread term for " male child, or descend- ant," originally meant, as the Old Irish suth, " birth, fruit," and the Sanskrit sA, " to bear, to give birth to," indicate, " the fruit of the womb, the begotten " — an expression which meets us time and again in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. The words offspring, issue, seed, used in higher diction, explain themselves and find analogues all over the world. To a like category belong Sanskrit gdrbha, "brood of birds, child, shoot"; Pali gabbha, "womb, em- bryo, child"; Old High German chilburra, "female lamb"; Gothic 75 76 The Child in Folh-Thought. kalbd, " female lamb one year old " ; German Kalb ; English calf; Greek 8eA<^us, " womb " ; whence dSsA^o's, " brother," literally " born of the same womb." Here we see, in the words for their young, the idea of the kinship of men and animals in which the primitive races believed. The "brought forth" or "born" is also the sig- nification of the Niskwalli Indian ba'-ba-ad, "infant" ; de-bad-da, "infant, son"; Maya al, "son or daughter of a woman" ; Cakchi- quel 4:ahol, " son," and like terms in many other tongues. Both the words in our language employed to denote the child before birth are borrowed. Embryo, with its cognates in the modern tongues of Europe, comes from the Greek tfifipvov, " the fruit of the womb before delivery ; birth ; the embryo, foetus ; a lamb newly born, a kid." The word is derived from kv, " within " ; and Ppvw, " I am full of anything, I swell or teem with " ; in a transitive sense, " I break forth." The radical idea is clearly "swelling," and cog- nates are found in Greek Ppvov, " moss " ; and German Kraut, "plant, vegetable." Foetus comes to us from Latin, where it meant " a bearing, offspring, fruit ; bearing, dropping, hatching, ■ — of animals, plants, etc. ; fruit, produce, offspring, progeny, brood." The immediate derivation of the word is from/e^o, "I breed," whence also effetus, " having brought forth young, worn out by bearing, effete." Feto itself is from an old verb feuere, " to generate, to produce," possibly related to fui and our be. The radi- cal signification of foetus then is "that which is bred, or brought to be " ; and from the same root fe are derived feles, " cat " (the fruitful animal) ; fe-num, " hay " ; fe-cundus, " fertile " ; fe-lix, "happy" (fruitful). The corresponding verb in Greek is (fivetv, " to grow, to spring forth, to come into being," whence the follow- ing : c^vo-is, " a creature, birth, nature," — nature is " all that has had birth " ; kjivtov, " something grown, plant, tree, creature, child " ; 4>vXrj, ^ZAov, " race, clan, tribe," — the " aggregate of those born in a certain way or place"; <^vs, "son"; <^u