THE CHILD'S TRIBUTE 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 makes us free.--_Carlyle_.
To you your father should be as a god.--_Shakespeare_.
Our Father, who art in Heaven.--_Jesus_.
Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.--_Pope_.
_Names of the Father._
_Father_, like _mother_, is a very old word, and goes back,
with the cognate terms in Italic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Celtic, Slavonic,
and Indo-Aryan speech, to the primitive Indo-European language, and,
like _mother_, it is of uncertain etymology.
An English preacher of the twelfth century sought to derive the word
from the Anglo-Saxon _fédan_, "to feed," making the "father" to be
the "feeder" or "nourisher," and some more modern attempts at
explanation are hardly better. This etymology, however incorrect, as it
certainly is, in English, does find analogies in the tongues of
primitive peoples. In the language of the Klamath Indians, of Oregon,
the word for "father" is _t'shishap_ (in the Modoc dialect,
_p'tishap_), meaning "feeder, nourisher," from a radical
_tshi_, which signifies "to give somebody liquid food (as milk,
water)." Whether there is any real connection between our word
_pap_,--with its cognates in other languages,--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, 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
_father_, 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 radical _pâ_, "to protect, to
guard,"--the father having been originally looked upon as the
"protector," or "guarder." Max Müller, who offers the same derivation,
remarks: "The father, as begetter, was called in Sanskrit
_ganitár_, as protector and supporter of his posterity, however,
_pitár_. For this reason, in the Veda both names together are used
in order to give the complete idea of 'father.' In like manner,
_mâtar_, 'mother,' is joined with _ganit_, 'genetrix,' and
this shows that the word _mâtar_ must have soon lost its
etymological signification and come to be a term, of respect and caress.
With the oldest Indo-Europeans, _mâtar_ meant 'maker,' from
_mâ_, 'to form.'"
Kluge, however, seems to reject the interpretation "protector,
defender," and to see in the word a derivative from the "nature-sound"
_pa_. So also Westermarck (166. 86-94). In Gothic, presumably the
oldest of the Teutonic dialects, the most common word for "father" is
_atta_, still seen in the name of the far-famed leader of the Huns,
_Attila_, i.e. "little father," and in the _ätti_ of modern
Swiss dialects. To the same root attach themselves Sanskrit _atta_,
"mother, elder sister"; Ossetic _ädda_, "little father
(Väterchen)"; Greek _årra_, Latin _atta_, "father"; Old
Slavonic _otí-ci_, "little father"; Old Irish _aite_,
"foster-father." _Atta_ belongs to the category of "nature-words"
or "nursery-words" of which our _dad_ (_daddy_) is also a
member.
Another member is the widespread _papa, pa._ Our word _papa_,
Skeat thinks, is borrowed, through the French, from Latin _papa_,
found as a Roman cognomen. This goes back in all probability to ancient
Greek, for, in the Odyssey (vi. 57), Nausicaa addresses her father as
[Greek: pappa phile], "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" signifies
"maker," and the same thing occurs elsewhere among primitive people
(166. 91).
As with "mother," so with "father"; in many languages a man (or a boy)
does not employ the same term as a woman (or a girl). In the Haida,
Okanak'en, and Kootenay, all Indian languages of British Columbia, the
words used by males and by females are, respectively: _kun, qat;
lEe'u, mistm; tito, so._
In many languages the word for "father," as is also the case with
"mother," is different when the parent is addressed from that used when
he is spoken of or referred to. In the Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Nootka,
Ntlakyapamuq, four Indian languages of British Columbia, the words for
"father" when addressed, are respectively _a'bo, ats, no'we, pap,_
and for "father" in other cases, _nEgua'at, au'mp, nuwe'k'so,
ska'tsa._ Here, again, it will be noticed that the words used in
address seem shorter and more primitive in character.
In the Chinantee language of Mexico, _nuh_ signifies at the same
time "father" and "man." In Gothic _aba_ means both "father" and
"husband" (492. 33). Here belongs also perhaps the familiar "father"
with which the New England housewife was wont to address her husband.
With many peoples the name "father" is applied to others than the male
parent of the child. The following remarks of McLennan, regarding the
Tamil and Telugu of India, will stand for not a few other primitive
tribes: "All the brothers of a father are usually called fathers, but,
in strictness, those who are older than the father are 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 to distant relations." In Japan, the
paternal uncle is called "little father" and the maternal uncle "second
little father" (100. 389, 391).
A lengthy discussion of these terms, with a wealth of illustration from
many primitive languages, will be found in Westermarck (166. 86-94).
_Father-Right_.
Of the Roman family it has been said: "It was a community comprising men
and things. The members were maintained by adoption as well as by
consanguinity. The father was before all things the chief, the general
administrator. He was called father even when he had no son; paternity
was a question of law, not one of persons. The heir is no more than the
continuing line of the deceased person; he was heir in spite of himself
for the honour of the defunct, for the lares, the hearth, the manes, and
the hereditary sepulchre" (100. 423). In ancient Rome the
_paterfamilias_ and the _patina 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 represented
the family in their domestic worship; and when, after his death, he was
laid by the side of his ancestors in the common tomb, he was deified,
and helped to swell the number of the household gods" (100. 433).
Post thus defines the system of "father-right":--
"In the system of 'father-right' the child is related only to the father
and to the persons connected with him through the male line, but not
with his mother and the persons connected with him through the female
line. The narrowest group organized according to father-right consists
of the father and his children. The mother, for the most part, appears
in the condition of a slave to the husband. To the patriarchal family in
the wider sense belong the children of the sons of the father, but not
the children of his daughters; the brothers and sisters of the same
father, but not those merely related to the same mother; the children of
the brother of the same father, but not the children of the sisters of
the same father, etc. With every wife the relationship ceases every
time" (127. I. 24).
The system of father-right is found scattered over the whole globe. It
is found among the Indo-European peoples (Aryans of Asia, Germans,
Slavs, Celts, Romans), the Mongol-Tartar tribes, Chinese, Japanese, and
some of the Semitic nations; in northern Africa and scattered through
the western part of the continent, among the Kaffirs and Hottentots;
among some tribes in Australia and Polynesia and the two Americas (the
culture races).
The position of the father among those peoples with whom strict
mother-right prevails is thus sketched by Zmigrodski (174.206):--
"The only certain thing was motherhood and the maternal side of the
family,--mother, daughter, granddaughter, that was the fixed stem
continuing with certainty. Father, son, grandson, were only the leaves,
which existed only until the autumnal wind of death tore them away, to
hurl them into the abyss of oblivion. In that epoch no one said, 'I am
the son of such a father and the grandson of such a grandfather,' but 'I
am the son of such a mother and the grandson of such a grandmother.' The
inheritance went not to the son and grandson, but to the daughter and to
the granddaughter, and the sons received a dowry as do the daughters in
our society of to-day. In marriage the woman did not assume the name of
the man, but _vice versa._ The husband of a woman, although the
father of her children, was considered not so near a relative of them as
the wife's brother, their uncle."
Dr. Brinton says, concerning mother-right among the Indians of 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 allowing his father to suffer for
food. 'Let him go to his own people,' replied the Kolosch, 'they should
look after him.' He did not regard a man as in any way related or bound
to his paternal parent."
In a certain Polynesian mythological tale, the hero is a young man, "the
name of whose father had never been told by his mother," and this has
many modern parallels (115. 97). On the Gold Coast of West Africa there
is a proverb, "Wise is the son that knows his own father" (127.1. 24), a
saying found elsewhere in the world,--indeed, we have it also in
English, and Shakespeare presents but another view of it when he tells
us: "It is a wise father that knows his own child."
In many myths and folk-and fairy-tales of all peoples the discovery by
the child of its parent forms the climax, or at least one of the chief
features of the plot; and we have also those stories which tell how
parents have been killed unwittingly by their own children, or children
have been slain unawares by their parents.
_Father-King_.
In his interesting study of "Royalty and Divinity" (75), Dr. von Held
has pointed out many resemblances between the primitive concepts "King"
and "God." Both, it would seem, stand in close connection with "Father."
To quote from Dr. von Held: "Fathership (Vaterschaft,
_patriarcha_), lordship (Herrentum), and kingship (Konigtum) are,
therefore (like _rex_ and [Greek: _Basileus_]), ideas not only
linguistically, but, to even a greater degree really, cognate, having
altogether very close relationship to the word and idea 'God.' Of
necessity they involve the existence and idea of a people, and therefore
are related not only to the world of faith, but also to that of
intellect and of material things."
The Emperor of China is the "father and mother of the empire," his
millions of subjects being his "children"; and the ancient Romans had no
nobler title for their emperor than _pater patrice_, the "father of
his country," an appellation bestowed in these later days upon the
immortal first President of the United States.
In the Yajnavalkya, one of the old Sanskrit law-books, the king is
bidden to be "towards servants and subjects as a father" (75. 122), and
even Mirabeau and Gregoire, in the first months of the States-General,
termed the king "le pere de tous les Franqais," while Louis XII. and
Henry IV. of France, as well as Christian III. of Denmark, had given to
them the title "father of the people." The name _pater patrice_ was
not borne by the Caesars alone, for the Roman Senate conferred the title
upon Cicero, and offered it to Marius, who refused to accept it. "Father
of his Country" was the appellation of Cosmo de' Medici, and the Genoese
inscribed the same title upon the base of the statue erected to Andrea
Doria. One of the later Byzantine Emperors, Andronicus Palæologus, even
went so far as to assume this honoured title. Nor has the name "Father
of the People" been confined to kings, for it has been given also to
Gabriel du Pineau, a French lawyer of the seventeenth century.
The "divinity that doth hedge a king" and the fatherhood of the
sovereign reach their acme in Peru, where the Inca was king, father,
even god, and the halo of "divine right" has not ceased even yet to
encircle the brows of the absolute monarchs of Europe and the East.
_Landesvater_ (Vater des Volkes) is the proudest designation of the
German Kaiser. "Little Father" is alike the literal meaning of
_Attila_, the name of the far-famed leader of the "Huns," in the
dark ages of Europe, and of _batyushka_, the affectionate term by
which the peasant of Russia speaks of the Czar.
_Nana_, "Grandfather," is the title of the king of Ashanti in
Africa, and "Sire" was long in France and England a respectful form of
address to the monarch.
Some of the aboriginal tribes of America have conferred upon the
President of the United States the name of the "Great Father at
Washington," the "Great White Father," and "Father" was a term they were
wont to apply to governors, generals, and other great men of the whites
with whom they came into contact.
The father as head of the family is the basis of the idea of
"father-king." This is seen among the Matchlapis, a Kaffir tribe, where
"those who own a sufficient number of cattle to maintain a family have
the right to the title of chief"; this resembles the institution of the
_pater familias_ in ancient Latium (100. 459,533).
Dr. von Held thus expresses himself upon this point: "The first, and one
may say also the last, naturally necessary society of man is the family
in the manifold forms out of which it has been historically developed.
Its beginning and its apex are, under given culture-conditions, the man
who founds it, the father. What first brought man experientially to
creation as a work of love was fatherhood. This view is not altered by
the fact that the father, in order to preserve, or, what is the same, to
continue to produce, to bring up, must command, force, punish. If the
family depends on no higher right, it yet appears as the first state,
and then the father appears not only as father, but also as king" (75.
119).
The occurrence to-day of "King" as a surname takes us back to a time
when the head of the family enjoyed the proud title, which the Romans
conferred upon Cæsar Augustus, _Pater et Princeps_, the natural
development from Ovid's _virque paterque gregis_.
The Romans called their senators _patres_, and we now speak of the
"city fathers," aldermen, _elder_men, in older English, and the
"fathers" of many a primitive people are its rulers and legislators. The
term "father" we apply also to those who were monarchs and chiefs in
realms of human activity other than that of politics. Following in the
footsteps of the Latins, who spoke of Zeno as _Pater stoicorum_, of
Herodotus as _Pater historioe_, and even of the host of an inn as
_Pater cenoe_, we speak of "fathering" an idea, a plot, and the
like, and denominate "father," the pioneer scientists, inventors, sages,
poets, chroniclers of the race.
From _pater_ the Romans derived _patrimonium_, patrimony,
"what was inherited from the father," an interesting contrast to
_matrimonium_; _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 responsibility than mine can be.
Your priesthood is from God's own hands." The priesthood of the father
is widespread. Mr. Gomme tells us: "Certainly among the Hindus, the
Greeks, the Romans, and, so late down as Tacitus, the Germans, the
house-father was priest and judge in his own clan" (461.104). Max Müller
speaks to the same effect: "If we trace religion back to the family, the
father or head of the family is _ipso facto_ the priest. When
families grew into clans, and clans into tribes and confederacies, a
necessity would arise of delegating to some heads of families the
performance of duties which, from having been the spontaneous acts of
individuals, had become the traditional acts of families and clans"
(510.183). Africa, Asia, America, furnish us abundant evidence of this.
Our own language testifies to it also. We speak of the "Fathers of the
Church,"--_patres_, as they were called,--and the term "Father" is
applied to an ecclesiastic of the Roman Catholic Church, just as in the
Romance languages of Europe the descendants of the Latin _pater_
(French _pere_, Spanish _padre_, Italian _padre_, etc.)
are used to denote the same personage. In Russian an endearing term for
"priest" is _batyushka_, "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 Rome, 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
_papa_ 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 addresses 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,"
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, Rameses II., of Egypt, abandoned by his
soldiers, as a last appeal, exclaimed: "I will call upon thee, O 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 _alom_ 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'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. The divine monarch or father, however, might still
be no more than the first among his peers. For the supreme god to become
the Only God, he 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 Robertson 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 Moabites 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.
41-43).
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 Aramæan we find names like
_Barlâhâ_, 'son of God,' _Barba'shmîn_, 'son of the Lord of
Heaven,' _Barate_, 'son of Ate,' etc." We have also that passage in
Genesis which tells how the "sons of God saw the daughters 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
languages, 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 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 kindness 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 Müller is of
interest: "How religious ideas could spring from the perception of
something infinite or immortal in our parents, grandparents, and
ancestors, we can see even at the present day. Among the Zulus, for
instance, _Unkulunkulu_ or _Ukulukulu_, which means the
great-great-grandfather, has become the name of God. It is true that
each family has its own _Unkulunkulu,_ and that his name varies
accordingly. But there is also an _Unkulunkulu_ of all men
(_unkulunladu wabantu bonke_), and he comes very near to being a
father of all men. Here also we can watch a very natural process of
reasoning. A son would look upon his father as his progenitor; 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,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,"
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 Nimrod, 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
Du Vair, "Nous devons tenir nos pères 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 disciples, 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 embraces 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 Rangi. Ushas, Max
Muller tells us, "has two parents, heaven and earth, whose lap she fills
with light" (510. 431). From 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 Pitâr_, Greek _Zeus Patær_,
Latin _Jupiter_, all of which names signify "sky father." Dyaus is
also called _janitâr_, "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 invocations 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 _divus_
(god); the dark sombre vault of heaven is Varuna, the Greek [Greek:
_Ouranós_], 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 Christianity has
added to the native pantheon, is called _Nana Nyankupon_,
"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 Müller has summed up the facts of our inheritance in brief terms:--
"Remember that this _Dyaush Pitar_ is the same as the Greek [Greek:
_Zeus Patær_], and the Latin _Jupiter_, and you will see how
this one word shows us the easy, the natural, the almost inevitable
transition 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 Æschylus 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."
_Father-Sea._
Montesinos tells us that Viracocha, "sea-foam," the Peruvian god of the
sea, was regarded as the source of all life and the origin of all
things,--world-tiller, world-animator, he was called (509. 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 aequoreus_.
_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 whom 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 mischievous
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 preserved something of the ancient grimness.
We speak commonly of the "Frost-King," whose fetters bind the earth in
winter.
In Russia the frost is called "Father Frost," and is personified as a
white old man, or "a mighty smith who forges strong chains 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 window, 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,' _Tota_, as it was believed that from him all things were
derived." He was supposed "to govern the generative 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 Nagualists 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: "Nor 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
creature." It appears also that the Indians who followed this strange
cult were wont to speak of "what the Fire said and how the Fire wept"
(413. 45-46).
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 during 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 especially, where children were
made to pass through or leap over the fire.
To Moloch ("King"), their god of fire, the Phoenicians used to sacrifice
the first-born of their noblest families. A later development 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 (509. 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 betrothal,
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). Rademacher (130a) 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
Russians, 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
ceremonies, after they have been elevated upon a cask, as "Prince" and
"Princess," the guests, with the wedding cake and two tapers in their
hands, 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 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 between 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 Müller 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 expression 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 affirmation 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 newborn 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 worship "; they were also instructed by the sun in all
the needful 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 children, 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 regarded 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 consideration 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!
Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe!
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."
_Father-Earth_.
Though, in nearly every portion of the globe the apotheosis of earth is
as a woman, we find 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-God, 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 nechitla
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 yikal nohoch
tat_, "Here comes the mighty wind of the Great Father." As Dr.
Brinton points out, this belief has analogues 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 attributed to, _tat acmo_, 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 Lenæus_; Janus, the "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 harvests to "Tamoï, 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 "Grandfather" 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 _Hbalamob,_ or _balams,_ are
sometimes "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 addressing, or speaking of, their great male divinities (411.
176).
In his acute exposition of the philosophy of the Zuñi Indians, Mr.
Gushing tells us (424. 11) that "all beings, whether deistic and
supernatural, or animistic and mortal, are regarded as belonging 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 (Á-tä-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
Medicine," 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 earth
('daily bread') and the 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 Pó-shai-an-k'ia, "the God (Father) of the Medicine Societies, or
sacred esoteric orders of the Zuñis," 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 Zuñi, Taos, Oraibi,
and Coçonino Indians their agricultural and other arts; their systems of
worship by means of plumed and painted prayer-sticks; to have organized
their medicine societies, and then to have disappeared toward his home
in Shi-pä-pu-li-ma (from _shi-pa-a_ = mist, vapour; _u-lin_,
surrounding; and _i-mo-na_ = 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-pä-pu-li-ma, and of the lesser gods of the medicine orders, the
principal 'Finisher of the Paths of our 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.