The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought Part 6

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 enn.o.bling habits, rather than be allowed to degenerate into wrong and often degrading ones, Froebel arranged his charming set of finger-games for the mother to teach her babe while he is yet in her arms; thus establis.h.i.+ng the right activity before the wrong one can a.s.sert itself. In such little songs as the following:--

'This is the mother, good and dear; This the father, with hearty cheer; This is the brother, stout and tall; This is the sister, who plays with her doll; And this is the baby, the pet of all.

Behold the good family, great and small,'

the child is led to personify his fingers and to regard them as a small but united family over which he has control." (257 a. 14).

Miss Wiltse, who devotes a chapter of her little volume to "Finger-songs related to Family Life and the Imaginative Faculty," says:--

"The dawning consciousness of the child so turned to the family relations is surely better than the old nursery method of playing 'This little pig went to market'" (384. 45).

And from the father and mother the step to G.o.d is easy.

Dr. Brewer informs us that in the Greek and Roman Church the Trinity is symbolized by the thumb and first two fingers: "The thumb, being strong, represents the _Father_; the long, or second finger, _Jesus Christ_; and the first finger, the _Holy Ghost_, which proceedeth from the Father and the Son" (_Dict. of Phrase and Fable_, P. 299).

_Mother-G.o.d_.

The "Motherhood of G.o.d" is an expression that still sounds somewhat strangely to our ears. We have come to speak readily enough of the "Fatherhood of G.o.d" and the "Brotherhood of Man," but only a still small voice has whispered of the "Motherhood of G.o.d" and the "Sisterhood of Woman." Yet there have been in the world, as, indeed, there are now, mult.i.tudes 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-race must bend the All-Mother, _das Ewigweibliche._ Perhaps the greatest service that the Roman Catholic Church has rendered to mankind is the prominence given in its cult of the Virgin Mary to the mother-side of Deity. In the race's final concept of G.o.d, the embodiment of all that is pure and holy, there must surely be some overshadowing of a mother's tender love. With the "Father-Heart"

of the Almighty must be linked the "Mother-Soul." To some extent, at least, we may expect a harking back to the standpoint of the Buddhist Kalmuck, whose child is taught to pray: "O G.o.d, 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-G.o.ds," all the embodiments of motherhood, the joy of the _Magnificat_, the sacrosanct expression of the poet's truth:--

"Close to the mysteries of G.o.d 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 G.o.ddess Istar, "May thy heart be appeased as the heart of a mother who has borne children." The world is at its best when the last, holiest appeal is _ad matrem_. Professor O.T. Mason has eloquently stated the debt of the world's religions to motherhood (112.

12):--"The mother-G.o.ddess of all peoples, culminating in the apotheosis of the Virgin Mary, is an idea either originated by women, or devised to satisfy their spiritual cravings. So we may go through the pantheons of all peoples, finding counterparts of Rhea, mother-earth, G.o.ddess of fertility; Hera, queen of harvests, feeder of mankind; Hestia, G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess of widowhood, sending forth her son Horus, to avenge the death of his father, Osiris; as moon-G.o.ddess, keeping alive the light until the sun rises again to bless the world."

_The All-Mother._

In Polynesian mythology we find, dwelling in the lowest depths of Avaiki (the interior of the universe), the "Great Mother,"--the originator of all things, _Vari-ma-te-takere_, "the very beginning,"--and her pet child, Tu-metua, "Stick by the parent," her last offspring, inseparable from her. All of her children were born of pieces of flesh which she plucked off her own body; the first-born was the man-fish Vatea, "father of G.o.ds and men," whose one eye is the sun, the other the moon; the fifth child was Raka, to whom his mother gave the winds in a basket, and "the children of Raka are the numerous winds and storms which distress mankind. To each child is allotted a hole at the edge of the horizon, through which he blows at pleasure." In the songs the G.o.ds 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 Rarotonga, "mud," showing that "these people imagined that once the world was a 'chaos of mud,' out of which some mighty unseen agent, whom they called _Vari_, evolved the present order of things" (458. 3, 21).

Another "All-Mother" is she of whom our own poets have sung, "Nature,"

the source and sustainer of all.

_Mother-Nature_.

"So ubt Natur die Mutterpflicht," sang the poet Schiller, and "Mother Nature" is the key-word of those modern poets who, in their mystic philosophy, consciously or unconsciously, revive the old mythologies.

With primitive peoples the being, growing power of the universe was easily conceived as feminine and as motherly. Nature is the "great parent," the "gracious mother," of us all. In "Mother Nature," woman, the creator of the earliest arts of man, is recognized and personified, and in a wider sense even than the poet dreamt of: "One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."

Pindar declared that "G.o.ds and men are sons of the same mother," and with many savage and barbaric tribes, G.o.ds, men, animals, and all other objects, animate and inanimate, are akin(388.210). As Professor Robertson Smith has said: "The same lack of any sharp distinction between the nature of different kinds of visible beings appears in the old myths in which all kinds of objects, animate and inanimate, organic and inorganic, appear as cognate with one another, with men, and with the G.o.ds" (535.85). Mr. Hartland, speaking of this stage of thought, says: "Sun and moon, the wind and the waters, perform all the functions of living beings; they speak, they eat, they marry and have children"

(258.26). The same idea is brought out by Count D'Alviella: "The highest point of development that polytheism could reach, is found in the conception of a monarchy or divine family, embracing all terrestrial beings, and even the whole universe" (388.211). Mr. Frank Cus.h.i.+ng attributes like beliefs in the kins.h.i.+p of all existences to the Zuni Indians (388.66), and Mr. im Thurn to the Indians of Guiana (388.99).

This feeling of kins.h.i.+p to all that is, is beautifully expressed in the words of the dying Greek Klepht: "Do not say that I am dead, but say that I am married in the sorrowful, strange countries, that I have taken the flat stone for a mother-in-law, the black earth for my wife, and the little pebbles for brothers-in-law." (Lady Verney, _Essays_, II.

39.)

In the Trinity of Upper Egypt the second person was Mut, "Mother Nature." the others being Armin, the chief G.o.d, and their son, Khuns.

Among the Slavs, according to Mone, Ziwa is a nature-G.o.ddess, and the Wends regard her as "many-breasted Mother Nature," the producing and nouris.h.i.+ng power of the earth. Her consort is Zibog, the G.o.d 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 "b.a.s.t.a.r.d," 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 n.o.ble 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 ma.n.u.scripts of G.o.d.'

"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.

_Other Mother-G.o.ddesses_.

Among other "mother-G.o.ddesses" of ancient Italy we find _Maia Mater_, _Flora Mater_, both deities of growth and reproduction; _Lua Mater_, "the loosing mother," a G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess of child-birth, wors.h.i.+pped especially by married women, and to whom there was erected a temple at Caere.

The mother-G.o.ddesses of Germany are quite numerous. Among those minor ones cited by Grimm and Simrock, are: Haulemutter, Mutter Holle, the Klagemutter or Klagemuhmen, Pudelmutter (a name applied to the G.o.ddess Berchta), Etelmutter, Kornmutter, Roggenmutter, Mutterkorn, and the interesting Buschgroszmutter, "bush grandmother," as the "Queen of the Wood-Folk" is called. Here the mother-feeling has been so strong as to grant to even the devil a mother and a grandmother, who figure in many proverbs and folk-locutions. When the question is asked a Mecklenburger, concerning a social gathering: "Who was there?" he may answer: "The devil and his mother (_mom_)"; when a whirlwind occurs, the saying is: "The Devil is dancing with his grandmother."

In China the position of woman is very low, and, as Mr. Douglas points out: "It is only when a woman becomes a mother that she receives the respect which is by right due to her, and then the inferiority of her s.e.x disappears before the requirements of filial love, which is the crown and glory of China" (434. 125).

In Chinese cosmogony and mythology motherhood finds recognition. Besides the great Earth-Mother, we meet with Se-w.a.n.g-moo, the "Western Royal Mother," a G.o.ddess 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 wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ddess Pity, in the form of a woman holding a child in her arms."

Among the deities and semi-deities of the Andaman Islanders are _chanaelewadi_, the "mother of the race,"--Mother Elewadi; _chanaerep_, _chanacharia_, _chanateliu_, _cha.n.a.limi_, _chanajarangud_, all inventors and discoverers of foods and the arts. In the religious system of the Andaman Islanders, _Puluga-_, 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, _chanaaulola_ (Mother Freshwater Shrimp) and _chanapalak-_--(Mother Eel); by her he has a large family, all except the eldest being girls; these last, known as _moro-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 _chanaelewadi_ (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 _elewadi_" (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.