THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE TO THE MOTHER.
A good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.--_English Proverb_.
The first poet, the first priest, was the first mother.
The first empire was a woman and her children.--_O. T. Mason_.
When society, under the guidance of the "fathers of the church," went
almost to destruction in the dark ages, it was the "mothers of the
people" who saved it and set it going on the new right path.
--_Zmigrodski_ (adapted).
The story of civilization is the story of the mother.
--_Zmigrodski_.
One mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers.
--_Laws of Manu_.
If the world were put into one scale, and my mother into the other, the
world would kick the beam.--_Lord Langdale_.
_Names of the Mother_.
In _A Song of Life_,--a book in which the topic of sex is treated
with such delicate skill,--occurs this sentence: "The motherhood of
mammalian life is the most sacred thing in physical existence" (120.
92), and Professor Drummond closes his _Lowell Institute Lectures on
the Evolution of Man_ in the following words: "It is a fact to which
too little significance has been given, that the whole work of organic
nature culminates in the making of Mothers--that the animal series end
with a group which even the naturalist has been forced to call the
_Mammalia_. When the savage mother awoke to her first tenderness, a
new creative hand was at work in the world" (36. 240). Said Henry Ward
Beecher: "When God thought of Mother, he must have laughed with
satisfaction, and framed it quickly,--so rich, so deep, so divine, so
full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception," and it was unto
babes and sucklings that this wisdom was first revealed. From their lips
first fell the sound which parents of later ages consecrated and
preserved to all time. With motherhood came into the world song,
religion, the thought of immortality itself; and the mother and the
child, in the course of the ages, invented and preserved most of the
arts and the graces of human life and human culture. In language,
especially, the mother and the child have exercised a vast influence. In
the names for "mother," the various races have recognized the debt they
owe to her who is the "fashioner" of the child, its "nourisher" and its
"nurse." An examination of the etymologies of the words for "mother" in
all known languages is obviously impossible, for the last speakers and
interpreters of many of the unwritten tongues of the earth are long
since dead and gone. How primitive man--the first man of the
race--called his mother, we can but surmise. Still, a number of
interesting facts are known, and some of these follow.
The word _mother_ is one of the oldest in the language; one of the
very few words found among all the great branches of the widely
scattered Aryan race, bearing witness, in ages far remote, before the
Celt, the Teuton, the Hellene, the Latin, the Slav, and the Indo-Iranian
were known, to the existence of the family, with the _mother_
occupying a high and honourable place, if not indeed the highest place
of all. What the etymological meaning was, of the primitive Aryan word
from which our _mother_ is descended, is uncertain. It seems,
however, to be a noun derived, with the agent-suffix _-t-r_, from
the root _ma_, "to measure." Skeat thinks the word meant originally
"manager, regulator [of the household]," rejecting, as unsupported by
sufficient evidence, a suggested interpretation as the "producer."
Kluge, the German lexicographer, hesitates between the "apportioner,
measurer," and the "former [of the embryo in the womb]." In the language
of the Klamath Indians of Oregon, _p'gishap_, "mother," really
signifies the "maker."
The Karankawas of Texas called "mother," _kaninma_, the "suckler,"
from _kanin_, "the female breast." In Latin _mamma_, seems to
signify "teat, breast," as well as "mother," but Skeat doubts whether
there are not two distinct words here. In Finnish and some other
primitive languages a similar resemblance or identity exists between the
words for "breast" and "mother." In Lithuanian, _móte_--cognate
with our _mother_--signifies "wife," and in the language of the
Caddo Indians of Louisiana and Texas _sássin_ means both "wife" and
"mother." The familiar "mother" of the New England farmer of the "Old
Homestead" type, presents, perhaps, a relic of the same thought. The
word _dame_, in older English, from being a title of respect for
women--there is a close analogy in the history of _sire_--came to
signify "mother." Chaucer translates the French of the _Romaunt of the
Rose_, "Enfant qui craint ni père ni mère Ne pent que bien ne le
comperre," by "For who that dredeth sire ne dame Shall it abie in bodie
or name," and Shakespeare makes poor Caliban declare: "I never saw a
woman, But only Sycorax, my dam." Nowadays, the word _dam_ is
applied only to the female parent of animals, horses especially. The
word, which is one with the honourable appellation _dame_, goes
back to the Latin _domina_, "mistress, lady," the feminine of
_dominus_, "lord, master." In not a few languages, the words for
"father" and "mother" are derived from the same root, or one from the
other, by simple phonetic change. Thus, in the Sandeh language of
Central Africa, "mother" is _n-amu_, "father," _b-amu_; in the
Cholona of South America, _pa_ is "father," _pa-n_, "mother";
in the PEntlate of British Columbia, "father" is _mãa_, "mother,"
_tãa_, while in the Songish _mãn_ is "father" and _tan_
"mother" (404. 143).
Certain tongues have different words for "mother," according as it is a
male or a female who speaks. Thus in the Okanak·ên, a Salish dialect of
British Columbia, a man or a boy says for "mother," _sk'õi_, a
woman or a girl, _tõm_; in Kalispelm the corresponding terms for
"my mother" are _isk'õi_ and _intoop_. This distinction,
however, seems not to be so common as in the case of "father."
In a number of languages the words for "mother" are different when the
latter is addressed and when she is spoken of or referred to. Thus in
the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Çatloltq, three British Columbia tongues, the
two words for "mother" are respectively _ât_, _abóuk_;
_ãt_, _abEmp_; _nikH_, _tãn_. It is to be noted,
apparently, that the word used in address is very often simpler, more
primitive, than the other. Even in English we find something similar in
the use of _ma_ (or _mama_) and _mother_.
In the Gothic alone, of all the great Teutonic dialects,--the language
into which Bishop Wulfila translated the Scriptures in the fourth
century,--the cognate equivalent of our English _mother_ does not
appear. The Gothic term is _aithiei,_ evidently related to
_atta,_ "father," and belonging to the great series of nursery
words, of which our own _ma, mama,_ are typical examples. These are
either relics of the first articulations of the child and the race,
transmitted by hereditary adaptation from generation to generation, or
are the coinages of mother and nurse in imitation of the cries of
infancy.
These simple words are legion in number and are found over the whole
inhabited earth,--in the wigwam of the Redskin, in the tent of the nomad
Bedouin, in the homes of cultured Europeans and Americans. Dr. Buschmann
studied these "nature-sounds," as he called them, and found that they
are chiefly variations and combinations of the syllables _ab, ap, am,
an, ad, at, ba, pa, ma, na, da, ta,_ etc., and that in one language,
not absolutely unrelated to another, the same sound will be used to
denote the "mother" that in the second signifies "father," thus
evidencing the applicability of these words, in the earliest stages of
their existence, to either, or to both, of the parents of the child
(166. 85). Pott, while remarking a wonderful resemblance in the names
for parents all over the world, seeks to establish the rather doubtful
thesis that there is a decided difference in the nature of the words for
"father" and those for "mother," the former being "man-like, stronger,"
the latter "woman-like, mild" (517. 57).
Some languages apparently do not possess a single specialized word for
"mother." The Hawaiian, for example, calls "mother and the sisters of
the mother" _makua wahine,_ "female parent," that being the nearest
equivalent of our "mother," while in Tonga, as indeed with us to-day,
sometimes the same term is applied to a real mother and to an adopted
one (100. 389). In Japan, the paternal aunt and the maternal aunt are
called "little mother." Similar terms and appellations are found in
other primitive tongues. A somewhat extended discussion of names for
"mother," and the questions connected with the subject, will be found in
Westermarck (166. 85). Here also will be found notices of the names
among various peoples for the nearest relatives of the mother and
father. Incidentally it is worth noting that Westermarck controverts
Professor Vambéry's opinion that the Turko-Tartar words for "mother,"
_ana_, _ene_, originally meant "nurse" or "woman" (from the
root _an_, _en_), holding that exactly the reverse is the
fact, "the terms for _mother_ being the primitive words." He is
also inclined to think that the Aryan roots _pa_, "to protect, to
nourish," and _ma_, "to fashion," came from _pa_, "father,"
and _ma_, "mother," and not _vice versâ_. Mr. Bridges, the
missionary who has studied so well the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego,
states that "the names _imu_ and _dabi_--father and
mother--have no meaning apart from their application, neither have any
of their other very definite and ample list of terms for relatives,
except the terms _macu_ [cf. _magu_, "parturition"] and
_macipa_ [cf. _cipa_, "female"], son and daughter." This
statement is, however, too sweeping perhaps (166. 88).
According to Colonel Mallery, the Ute Indians indicate "mother" by
placing the index finger in the mouth (497a. 479). Clark describes the
common Indian sign as follows: "Bring partially curved and compressed
right hand, and strike with two or three gentle taps right or left
breast, and make sign for _female_; though in conversation the
latter is seldom necessary. Deaf mutes make sign for _female_, and
cross hands as in their sign for _baby_, and move them to front and
upwards" (420. 262). Somewhat similar is the sign for "father": "Bring
the compressed right hand, back nearly outwards, in front of right or
left breast, tips of fingers few inches from it; move the hand, mostly
by wrist action, and gently tap the breast with tips of fingers two or
three times, then make sign for _male_. Some Indians tap right
breast for 'father,' and left for 'mother.' Deaf-mutes make sign for
_male_, and then holding hands fixed as in their sign for
_baby_, but a little higher, move the hands to front and upwards"
(420. 167).
Interesting is the following statement of Mr. Codrington, the well-known
missionary to the Melanesians:--
"In Mota the word used for 'mother' is the same that is used for the
division [tribe?] _veve_, with a plural sign _ra veve_. And it
is not that a man's kindred are so called after his mother, but that his
mother is called his kindred, as if she were the representative of the
division to which he belongs; as if he were not the child of a
particular woman, but of the whole kindred for whom she brought him into
the world." Moreover, at Mota, in like fashion, "the word for 'consort,'
'husband,' or 'wife,' is in a plural form _ra soai_, the word used
for members of a body, or the component parts of a canoe" (25. 307-8).
_Mother-Right_.
Since the appearance of Bachofen's famous book on the matriarchate,
"mother-right," that system of society in which the mother is paramount
in the family and the line of inheritance passes through her, has
received much attention from students of sociology and primitive
history.
Post thus defines the system of mother-right:--
"The matriarchate is a system of relationship according to which the
child is related only to his mother and to the persons connected with
him through the female line, while he is looked upon as not related to
his father and the persons connected with him through the male line.
According to this system, therefore, the narrowest family circle
consists not, as with us to-day, of father, mother, and child, but of
mother, mother's brother, and sister's child, whilst the father is
completely wanting, and the mother's brother takes the father's place
with the sister's children. The real father is not the father of his own
children, but of his nephews and nieces, whilst the brother of his wife
is looked upon as father to his children. The brothers and sisters of
the mother form with her a social group, to which belong also the
children of the sisters, the children of the daughters of the sisters,
etc., but not the children of the brothers, the children of the sisters'
sons, etc. With every husband the relationship ceases" (127. I. 13-14).
The system of mother-right prevails widely over the whole globe; in some
places, however, only in fragmentary condition. It is found amongst
nearly all the native tribes of America; the peoples of Malaysia,
Melanesia, Australia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Dravidian tribes of
India; in Africa it is found in the eastern Sahara, the Soudan, the east
and west coast, and in the centre of the continent, but not to the
exclusion, altogether, of father-right, while in the north the intrusion
of Europeans and the followers of Islam has tended to suppress it.
Traces of its former existence are discovered among certain of the
ancient tribes of Asia Minor, the old Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Romans,
Teutons, the Aryans of India, the Chinese, Japanese, etc.
Mother-right has been recognized by many sociologists as a system of
family relationship, perhaps the most widespread, perhaps the most
primitive of all. Dr. Brinton says:--
"The foundation of the gentile system, as of any other family life, is
... the mutual affection between kindred. In the primitive period this
is especially between children of the same mother, not so much because
of the doubt of paternity, as because physiologically and obviously, it
is the mother in whom is formed, and from whom alone proceeds, the
living being" (412. 47).
Professor O. T. Mason, in the course of his interesting address on
"Woman's Share in Primitive Culture," remarks (112. 10):--
"Such sociologists as Morgan and McLennan affirm that the primitive
society had no family organization at all. They hypothecate a condition
in which utter promiscuity prevailed. I see no necessity for this. There
is some organization among insects. Birds mate and rear a little family.
Many animals set up a kind of patriarchal horde. On the other hand, they
err greatly who look among savages for such permanent home life as we
enjoy. Marriages are in groups, children are the sons and daughters of
these groups; divorces are common. The fathers of the children are not
known, and if they were, they would have no authority on that account.
The mother never changes her name, the children are named after her, or,
at least, are not named after the father. The system of gentes prevails,
each gens consisting of a hypothetical female ancestress, and all her
descendants through females. These primitive men and women, having no
other resort, hit upon this device to hold a band of kin together. Here
was the first social tie on earth; the beginning of the state. The first
empire was a woman and her children, regardless of paternity. This was
the beginning of all the social bonds which unite us. Among our own
Indians mother-right was nearly universal. Upon the death of a chief
whose office was hereditary, he was succeeded, not by his son, but by
the son of a sister, or an aunt, or a niece; all his property that was
not buried with him fell to the same parties, could not descend to his
children, since a child and the father belonged to different gentes."
McLennan has discussed at some length the subject of kinship in ancient
Greece (115. 193-246), and maintains that "the system of double kinship,
which prevailed in the time of Homer, was preceded by a system of
kinship through females only," referring to the cases of Lycaon,
Tlepolemus, Helen, Arnaeus, Glaucus, and Sarpedon, besides the evidence
in the _Orestes_ of Euripides, and the _Eumenides_ of
Aeschylus. In the last, "the jury are equally divided on the plea [that
Orestes was not of kin to his mother, Clytemnestra, whom he had killed,
--"Do you call _me_ related by blood to my mother?"], and Orestes
gains his cause by the casting vote of Athene." According to tradition,
"in Greece, before the time of Cecrops, children always bore the name of
their mothers," in marked contrast to tha state of affairs in Sparta,
where, according to Philo, "the marriage tie was so loose that men lent
their wives to one another, and cared little by whom children were
begotten, provided they turned out strong and healthy."
We have preserved for us, by Plutarch and others, some of the opinions
of Greek philosophers on the relation of the father and the mother to
the child. Plato is represented as calling "mind the conception, idea,
model, and _father_; and matter the mother, _nurse_, or seat
and region capable of births." Chrysippus is said to have stated: "The
foetus is nourished in the womb like a plant; but, being born, is
refrigerated and hardened by the air, and its spirit being changed it
becomes an animal," a view which, as McLennan points out, "constitutes
the mother the mere nurse of her child, just as a field is of the seed
sown in it."
The view of Apollo, which, in the council of the gods, influenced Athene
to decide for Orestes, is this:--
"The bearer of the so-called offspring is not _the mother_ of it,
but only the nurse of the newly conceived foetus. It is the male who is
the author of its being; while she, as a stranger, for a stranger,
preserves the young plant for those for whom the god has not blighted it
in the bud. And I will show you a proof of this assertion; one
_may_ become a father without a mother. There stands by a witness
of this in the daughter of Olympian Zeus, who was not even nursed [much
less engendered or begotten] in the darkness of the womb" (115. 211).
"This is akin to the wild discussion in the misogynistic Middle Ages
about the possibility of _lucina sine concubitu_. The most recent
and most scholarly discussion of all questions involved in
"mother-right" will be found people in the world; for it stands on
record that the five companies (five hundred men) recruited from the
Iroquois of New York and Canada during our civil war stood first on the
list among all the recruits of our army for height, vigour, and
corporeal symmetry" (412. 82). And it was this people too who produced
Hiawatha, a philosophic legislator and reformer, worthy to rank with
Solon and Lycurgus, and the founder of a great league whose object was
to put an end to war, and unite all the nations in one bond of
brotherhood and peace.
Among the Choctaw-Muskogee tribes, women-chiefs were also known; the
Yuchis, Chetimachas, had "Queens"; occasionally we find female rulers
elsewhere in America, as among the Winnebagos, the Nah-ane, etc.
Scattered examples of gynocracy are to be found in other parts of the
world, and in their later development some of the Aryan races have been
rather partial to women as monarchs, and striking instances of a like
predilection are to be met with among the Semitic tribes,--Boadicea,
Dido, Semiramis, Deborah are well-known cases in point, to say nothing
of the Christian era and its more enlightened treatment of woman.
The fate of women among those peoples and in those ages where extreme
exaltation of the male has been the rule, is sketched by Letourneau in
his chapter on _The Condition of Women_ (100. 173-185); the
contrast between the Australians, to whom "woman is a domestic animal,
useful for the purposes of genesic pleasure, for reproduction, and, in
case of famine, for food," the Chinese, who can say "a newly-married
woman ought to be merely as a shadow and as an echo in the house," the
primitive Hindus, who forbade the wife to call her husband by name, but
made her term him "master, lord," or even "god," and even some of our
modern races in the eye of whose law women are still minors, and the
Iroquois, is remarkable. Such great differences in the position and
rights of women, existing through centuries, over wide areas of the
globe, have made the study of comparative pedagogy a most important
branch of human sociology. The mother as teacher has not been, and is
not now, the same the world over.
As men holding supreme power have been termed "father," women have in
like manner been called "mother." The title of the queen-mother in
Ashanti is _nana,_ "Grandmother" (438. 259), and to some of the
Indian tribes of Canada Queen Victoria is the "Great White Mother," the
"Great Mother across the Sea." In Ashanti the "rich, prosperous, and
powerful" are termed _oman enna,_ "mothers of the tribe," and are
expected to make suitably large offerings to the dead, else there will
be no child born in the neglectful family for a certain period (438.
228).
With the Romans, _mater_ and its derivative _matrona,_ came to
be applied as titles of honour; and beside the rites of the
_parentalia_ we find those of the _matronalia_ (492. 454).
In the ancient Hebrew chronicles we find mention of Deborah, that
"mother in Israel."
With us, off whose tongues "the fathers," "forefathers," "ancestors"
(hardly including ancestresses) and the like rolled so glibly, the
"Pilgrim Fathers" were glorified long before the "Pilgrim Mothers," and
hardly yet has the mother of the "father of his country" received the
just remembrance and recognition belonging to her who bore so noble and
so illustrious a son. By and by, however, it is to be hoped, we shall be
free from the reproach cast upon us by Colonel Higginson, and wake up to
the full consciousness that the great men of our land have had mothers,
and proceed to re-write our biographical dictionaries and encyclopædias
of life-history.
In Latin _mater,_ as does _mother_ with us, possessed a wide
extent of meaning, "mother, parent, producer, nurse, preparer, cause,
origin, source," etc. _Mater omnium artium necessitas,_ "Necessity
is the mother of invention," and similar phrases were in common use, as
they are also in the languages of to-day. Connected with _mater_ is
_materia,_ "matter,"--_mother_-stuff, perhaps,--and from it
is derived _matrimonium,_ which testifies concerning primitive
Roman sociology, in which the mother-idea must have been prominent,
something we cannot say of our word _marriage,_ derived ultimately
from the Latin _mas,_ "a male."
Westermarck notes the Nicaraguans, Dyaks, Minahassers, Andaman
Islanders, Pádam, Munda Kols, Santals, Moors of the Western Soudan,
Tuaregs, Teda, among the more or less primitive peoples with whom woman
is held in considerable respect, and sometimes, as among the Munda Kols,
bears the proud title "mistress of the house" (166. 500, 501). As
Havelock Ellis remarks, women have shown themselves the equals of men as
rulers, and most beneficial results have flowed from their exercise of
the great political wisdom, and adaptation to statecraft which seems to
belong especially to the female sex. The household has been a
training-school for women in the more extended spheres of human
administrative society.
_Alma Mater._
The college graduate fondly calls the institution from which he has
obtained his degree _Alma Mater_, "nourishing, fostering,
cherishing mother," and he is her _alumnus_ (foster-child,
nourished one). For long years the family of the benign and gracious
mother, whose wisdom was lavished upon her children, consisted of sons
alone, but now, with the advent of "sweeter manners, purer laws,"
daughters have come to her also, and the _alumnae_, "the sweet
girl-graduates in their golden hair," share in the best gifts their
parent can bestow. To Earth also, the term _Alma Mater_ has been
applied, and the great nourishing mother of all was indeed the first
teacher of man, the first university of the race.
_Alma, alumnus, alumna_, are all derived from _alo_, "I
nourish, support." From the radical _al_, following various trains
of thought, have come: _alesco_, "I grow up"; _coalesco_, "I
grow together"; _adolesco_, "I grow up,"--whence _adolescent_,
etc.; _obsolesco_, "I wear out"; _alimentum_, "food";
_alimonium_, "support"; _altor, altrix_, "nourisher";
_altus_, "high, deep" (literally, "grown"); _elementum_,
"first principle," etc. Connected With _adolesco_ is
_adultus_, whence our _adult_, with the radical of which the
English word _old_ (_eld_) is cognate. From the root
_al_, "to grow, to make to grow, to nourish," spring also the Latin
words _prôles_, "offspring," _suboles_, "offspring, sprout,"
_indôles_, "inborn or native quality."
_"Mother's Son."_
The familiar expression "every mother's son of us" finds kin in the
Modern High German _Muttersohn, Mutterkind_, which, with the even
more significant _Muttermensch_ (human being), takes us back to the
days of "mother-right." Rather different, however, is the idea called up
by the corresponding Middle Low German _modersone_, which means
"bastard, illegitimate child."
_Lore of Motherhood_
A synonym of _Muttermensch_ is _Mutterseele_, for soul and man
once meant pretty much, the same. The curious expression
_mutterseelenallein_, "quite alone; alone by one's self," is given
a peculiar interpretation by Lippert, who sees in it a relic of the
burial of the dead (soul) beneath the hearth, threshold, or floor of the
house; "wessen Mutter im Hause ruht, der kann daheim immer nur mit
seiner Mutterseele selbander allein sein." Or, perhaps, it goes back to
the time when, as with the Seminoles of Florida, the babe was held over
the mouth of the mother, whose death resulted from its birth, in order
that her departing spirit might enter the new being.
In German, the "mother-feeling" makes its influence felt in the
nomenclature of the lower brute creation. As contrasted with our English
female donkey (she-donkey), mare, ewe, ewe-lamb, sow, doe-hare (female
hare), queen-bee, etc., we find _Mutteresel_, "mother-donkey ";
_Mutterpferd_, "mother-horse"; _Mutterschaf_, "mother-sheep";
_Mutterlamm_, "mother lamb"; _Mutterschwein_, "mother swine";
_Mutterhase_, "mother-hare"; _Mutterbiene_, "mother-bee."
Nor is this feeling absent from the names of plants and things
inanimate. We have _Mutterbirke_, "birch"; _Mutterblume_,
"seed-flower"; _Mutternelke_, "carnation"; _Mutternagelein_
(our "mother-clove"); _Mutterholz_. In English we have "mother of
thyme," etc. In Japan a triple arrangement in the display of the
flower-vase--a floral trinity--is termed _chichi_, "father";
_haha_, "mother"; _ten_, "heaven" (189. 74).
In the nursery-lore of all peoples, as we can see from the fairy-tales
and child-stories in our own and other languages, this attribution of
motherhood to all things animate and inanimate is common, as it is in
the folk-lore and mythology of the adult members of primitive races now
existing.
_Mother Poet._
The arts of poetry, music, dancing, according to classic mythology, were
presided over by nine goddesses, or Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne,
goddess of memory, "Muse-mother," as Mrs. Browning terms her. The
history of woman as a poet has yet to be written, but to her in the
early ages poetry owed much of its development and its beauty. Mr. Vance
has remarked that "among many of the lowest races the only love-dances
in vogue are those performed by the women" (545a. 4069). And Letourneau
considers that "there are good grounds for supposing that women may have
especially participated in the creation of the lyric of the erotic
kind." Professor Mason, in the course of his remarks upon woman's labour
in the world in all ages, says (112. 12):--
"The idea of a _maker_, or creator-of-all-things found no congenial
soil in the minds of savage men, who manufactured nothing. But, as the
first potters, weavers, house-builders were women, the idea of a divine
creator as a moulder, designer, and architect originated with her, or
was suggested by her. The three Fates, Clotho, who spins the thread of
life; Lachesis, who fixes its prolongation; and Atropos, who cuts this
thread with remorseless shears, are necessarily derived from woman's
work. The mother-goddess of all peoples, culminating in the apotheosis
of the Virgin Mary, is an idea, either originated by women, or devised
to satisfy their spiritual cravings."
And we have, besides the goddesses of all mythologies, personifying
woman's devotion, beauty, love. What shall we say of that art, highest
of all human accomplishments, in the exercise of which men have become
almost as gods? The old Greeks called the singer [Greek: poiaetaes],
"maker," and perhaps from woman the first poets learned how to worship
in noble fashion that great _maker_ of all, whose poem is the
universe. Religion and poetry have ever gone hand in hand; Plato was
right when he said: "I am persuaded, somehow, that good poets are the
inspired interpreters of the gods." Of song, as of religion, it may
perhaps be said: _Dux foemina facti_.
To the mother beside the cradle where lies her tender offspring, song is
as natural as speech itself to man. Lullabies are found in every land;
everywhere the joyous mother-heart bursts forth into song. The German
proverb is significant: "Wer ein saugendes Kind hat, der hat eine
singende Frau," and Fischer, a quaint poet of the sixteenth century, has
beautifully expressed a like idea:--
"Wo Honig ist, da sammlen sieb die Fliegen, Wo Kinder sind, da singt man
um die Wiegen."
Ploss, in whose book is to be found a choice collection of lullabies
from all over the globe, remarks: "The folk-poetry of all peoples is
rich in songs whose texts and melodies the tender mother herself
imagined and composed" (326. II. 128).
The Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco devotes an interesting chapter of her
_Essays in the Study of Folk-Song_ to the subject of lullabies. But
not cradle-songs alone have sprung from woman's genius. The world over,
dirges and funeral-laments have received their poetical form from the
mother. As name-giver, too, in many lands, the mother exercised this
side of her imaginative faculty. The mother and the child, from whom
language received its chief inspiration, were also the callers forth of
its choicest and most creative form.
_Mother-Wit._
"An ounce o' mother-wit is worth a pound o' clergy," says the Scotch
proverb, and the "mother-wit," _Muttergeist_ and _Mutterwitz_,
that instructive common-sense, that saving light that make the genius
and even the fool, in the midst of his folly, wise, appear in folk-lore
and folk-speech everywhere. What the statistics of genius seem to show
that great men owe to their mothers, no less than fools, is summed up by
the folk-mind in the word _mother-wit_. Jean Paul says: "Die Mütter
geben uns von Geiste Wãrme und die Vãter Licht," and Goethe, in a
familiar passage in his _Autobiography_, declares:--
"Vom Vater hab'ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes Führen;
Vom Mütterchen die Frobnatur,
Und Lust zu fabulieren."
Shakespeare makes Petruchio tell the shrewish Katherine that his "goodly
speech" is "_extempore_ from my mother-wit," and Emerson calls
"mother-wit," the "cure for false theology." Quite appropriately
Spenser, in the _Faerie Queene_, speaks of "all that Nature by her
mother-wit could frame in earth." It is worth noting that when the
ancient Greeks came to name the soul, they personified it in Psyche, a
beautiful female, and that the word for "soul" is feminine in many
European languages.
Among the Teton Indians, according to the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, the
following peculiar custom exists: "Prior to the naming of the infant is
the ceremony of the transfer of character; should the infant be a boy, a
brave and good-tempered man, chosen beforehand, takes the infant in his
arms and breathes into his mouth, thereby communicating his own
disposition to the infant, who will grow up to be a brave and
good-natured man. It is thought that such an infant will not cry as much
as infants that have not been thus favoured. Should the infant be a
girl, it is put into the arms of a good woman, who breathes into its
mouth" (433. 482).
Here we have _father_-wit as well as _mother_-wit.
_Mother-Tongue_.
Where women have no voice whatever in public affairs, and are
subordinated to the uttermost in social and family matters, little that
is honourable and noble is named for them. In East Central Africa, a Yao
woman, asked if the child she is carrying is a boy or a girl, frequently
replies: "My child is of the sex that does not speak" (518. XLIII. 249),
and with other peoples in higher stages of culture, the "silent woman"
lingers yet. _Taceat mulier in ecclesiâ_ still rings in our ears
to-day, as it has rung for untold centuries. Though the poet has said:--
"There is a sight all hearts beguiling--
A youthful mother to her infant smiling,
Who, with spread arms and dancing feet,
And cooing voice, returns its answer sweet,"
and mothers alone have understood the first babblings of humanity, they
have waited long to be remembered in the worthiest name of the language
they have taught their offspring.
The term _mother-tongue_, although Middle English had
"birthe-tonge," in the sense of native speech, is not old in our
language; the _Century Dictionary_ gives no examples of its early
use. Even immortal Shakespeare does not know it, for, in _King Richard
II._, he makes Mowbray say:--
"The language I have learned these forty years
(My native English) now must I forego."
The German version of the passage has, however, _mein mütterliches
Englisch_.
Cowper, in the _Task_, does use "mother-tongue," in the connection
following:--
"Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother-tongue."
_Mother-tongue_ has now become part and parcel of our common
speech; a good word, and a noble one.
In Modern High German, the corresponding _Mutterzunge_, found in
Sebastian Franck (sixteenth century) has gradually given way to
_Muttersprache_, a word whose history is full of interest. In
Germany, as in Europe generally, the esteem in which Latin was held in
the Middle Ages and the centuries immediately following them, forbade
almost entirely the birth or extension of praiseworthy and endearing
names for the speech of the common people of the country. So long as men
spoke of "hiding the beauties of Latin in homely German words," and a
Bacon could think of writing his chief work in Latin, in order that he
might be remembered after his death, it were vain to expect aught else.
Hence, it does not surprise us to learn that the word
_Muttersprache_ is not many centuries old in German. Dr. Lübben,
who has studied its history, says it is not to be found in Old High
German or Middle High German (or Middle Low German), and does not appear
even in Luther's works, though, judging from a certain passage in his
_Table Talk_, it was perhaps known to him. It was only in the
seventeenth century that the word became quite common. Weigand states
that it was already in the _Dictionarium latino-germanicum_
(Zurich, 1556), and in Maaler's _Die Teutsch Spraach_ (Zurich,
1561), in which latter work (S. 262 a) we meet with the expressions
_vernacula lingua_, _patrius sermo_, _landspraach_,
_muoterliche spraach_, and _muoterspraach_ (S. 295 c). Opitz
(1624) uses the word, and it is found in Schottel's _Teutsche
Haupt-Sprache_ (Braunschweig, 1663). Apparently the earliest known
citation is the Low German _modersprake_, found in the introduction
of Dietrich Engelhus' (of Einbeck) _Deutsche Chronik_ (1424).
Nowadays _Muttersprache_ is found everywhere in the German
book-language, but Dr. Lübben, in 1881, declared that he had never heard
it from the mouth of the Low German folk, with whom the word was always
_lantsprake, gemene sprake_. Hence, although the word has been
immortalized by Klaus Groth, the Low German Burns, in the first poem of
his _Quickborn:_--
"Min Modersprak, so slicht un recht,
Du ole frame Red!
Wenn blot en Mund 'min Vader' seggt,
So klingt mi't as en Bed,"
and by Johann Meyer, in his _Ditmarscher Gedichte:_--
"Vaderhus un Modersprak!
Lat mi't nöm'n un lat mi't rop'n;
Vaderhus, du belli Sted,
Modersprak, da frame Red,
Schönres klingt der Nix tohopen,"
it may be that _modersprak_ is not entirely a word of Low German
origin; beautiful though it is, this dialect, so closely akin to our own
English, did not directly give it birth. Nor do the corresponding terms
in the other Teutonic dialects,--Dutch _moederspraak, moedertaal_,
Swedish _modersmål_, etc.,--seem more original. The Romance
languages, however, offer a clue. In French, _langue mère_ is a
purely scientific term of recent origin, denoting the root-language of a
number of dialects, or of a "family of speech," and does not appear as
the equivalent of _Muttersprache_. The equivalents of the latter
are: French, _langue maternelle_; Spanish, _lengua materna_;
Italian, _lingua materna_, etc., all of which are modifications or
imitations of a Low Latin _lingua materna_, or _lingua
maternalis_. The Latin of the classic period seems not to have
possessed this term, the locutions in use being _sermo noster, patrius
sermo_, etc. The Greek had [Greek: _ae egchorios glossa ae idia
glossa,_] etc. Direct translations are met with in the _moderlike
sprake_ of Daniel von Soest, of Westphalia (sixteenth century), and
the _muoterliche spraach_ of Maaler (1561). It is from an Italian-
Latin source that Dr. Lübben supposes that the German prototypes of
_modersprak_ and _Muttersprache_ arose. In the _Bôk der
Byen_, a semi-Low German translation (fifteenth century) of the
_Liber Apium_ of Thomas of Chantimpré, occurs the word
_modertale_ in the passage "Christus sede to er [the Samaritan
woman] mit sachte stemme in erre modertale." A municipal book of
Treuenbrietzen informs us that in the year 1361 it was resolved to write
in the _ydeoma maternale_--what the equivalent of this was in the
common speech is not stated--and in the _Relatio_ of Hesso, we find
the term _materna lingua_ (105 a).
The various dialects have some variants of _Muttersprache_, and in
Göttingen we meet with _moimen spraken_, where _moime_
(cognate with Modern High German _Muhme_, "aunt"), signifies
"mother," and is a child-word.
From the _mother-tongue_ to the _mother-land_ is but a step.
As the speech she taught her babe bears the mother's name, so does also
the land her toil won from the wilderness.
_Mother-Land._
As we say in English most commonly "native city," so also we say "native
land." Even Byron sings:--
"Adieu, adieu I my native shore
Fades o'er the waters blue;
* * * * *
My native land--good night!"
and Fitz-Greene Halleck, in his patriotic poem "Marco Bozzaris," bids
strike "For God, and your native land."
Scott's far-famed lines:--
"Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land!"
and Smith's national hymn, "My country,'tis of thee," know no
_mother-land_.
In the great _Century Dictionary_, the only illustration cited of
the use of the word _mother-land_ is a very recent one, from the
_Century Magazine_ (vol. xxix. p. 507).
Shakespeare, however, comes very near it, when, in _King John_
(V. ii.), he makes the Bastard speak of "your dear Mother-England,"
--but this is not quite "mother-land."
In German, though, through the sterner influences which surrounded the
Empire in its birth and reorganization, _Vaterland_ is now the
word, _Mutterland_ was used by Kant, Wieland, Goethe, Herder,
Uhland, etc. Lippert suggests an ingenious explanation of the origin of
the terms _Mutterland_, _Vaterland_, as well as for the
predominance of the latter and younger word. If, in primitive times, man
alone could hold property,--women even and children were his
chattels,--yet the development of agriculture and horticulture at the
hands of woman created, as it were, a new species of property, property
in land, the result of woman's toil and labour; and this new property,
in days when "mother-right" prevailed, came to be called
_Mutterland_, as it was essentially "mothers' land." But when men
began to go forth to war, and to conquer and acquire land that was not
"mothers' land," a new species of landed property,--the "land of the
conquering father,"--came into existence (and with it a new theory of
succession, "father-right"), and from that time forward "Vaterland" has
extended its signification, until it has attained the meaning which it
possesses in the German speech of to-day (492. 33, 36).
The inhabitants of the British colonies scattered all over the world
speak of Britain as the "mother country," "Mother England"; and R. H.
Stoddard, the American poet, calls her "our Mother's Mother." The French
of Canada term France over-sea "la mère patrie" (mother fatherland).
Even Livy, the Roman historian, wrote _terra quam matrem
appellamus_,--"the land we call mother,"--and Virgil speaks of
Apollo's native Delos as _Delum maternum_. But for all this, the
proud Roman called his native land, not after his mother, but after his
father, _patria_; so also in corresponding terms the Greek, [Greek:
_patris_], etc. But the latter remembered his mother also, as the
word _metropolis_, which we have inherited, shows. [Greek:
_Maetropolis_] had the meanings: "mother-state" (whence
daughter-colonies went forth); "a chief city, a capital, metropolis;
one's mother-city, or mother-country." In English, _metropolis_ has
been associated with "mother-church," for a _metropolis_ or a
_metropolitan_ city, was long one which was the seat of a
bishopric.
Among the ancient Greeks the Cretans were remarkable for saying not
[Greek: _patris_] (father-land), but [Greek: _maetris_]
(mother-land), by which name also the Messenians called their native
land. Some light upon the loss of "mother-words" in ancient Greece may
be shed from the legend which tells that when the question came whether
the new town was to be named after Athene or Poseidon, all the women
voted for the former, carrying the day by a single vote, whereupon
Poseidon, in anger, sent a flood, and the men, determining to punish
their wives, deprived them of the power of voting, and decided that
thereafter children were not to be named after their mothers (115. 235).
In Gothic, we meet with a curious term for "native land, home,"
_gabaurths_ (from _gabairan_ "to bear"), which signifies also
"birth." As an exemplification of the idea in the Sophoclean phrase
"all-nourishing earth," we find that at an earlier stage in the history
of our own English tongue _erd_ (cognate with our _earth_)
signified "native land," a remembrance of that view of savage and
uncivilized peoples in which _earth, land_ are "native country,"
for these are, in the true sense of the term, _Landesleute,
homines_.
In the language of the Hervey Islands, in the South Pacific, "the place
in which the placenta of an infant is buried is called the
_ipukarea_, or _native soil_" (459. 26).
Our English language seems still to prefer "native city, native town,
native village," as well as "native land," "mother-city" usually
signifying an older town from which younger ones have come forth. In
German, though _Vaterstadt_ in analogy with _Vaterland_ seems
to be the favorite, _Mutterstadt_ is not unknown.
Besides _Mutterland_ and _Mutterstadt_, we find in German the
following:--
_Mutterboden_, "mother-land." Used by the poet Uhland.
_Muttergefilde_, "the fields of mother-earth." Used by Schlegel.
_Muttergrund_, "the earth," as productive of all things. Used by
Goethe.
_Mutterhimmel_, "the sky above one's native land." Used by the
poet Herder.
_Mutterluft_, "the air of one's native land."
_Mutterhaus_, "the source, origin of anything." Uhland even has:--
"Hier ist des Stromes Mutterhaus,
Ich trink ihn frisch vom Stein heraus."
More far-reaching, diviner than "mother-land," is "mother-earth."