THE SURVIVALS OF MOTHER-RIGHT IN FOLK-LORE, IN HEROIC LEGENDS, AND IN
FAIRY STORIES
In the preceding chapter we have found the former existence of the
maternal family, or some indication of it, in the early records of
many races, proving this by numerous survivals of customs entirely at
variance with the patriarchal conditions. Should it be thought that
this claim has not been supported by sufficient evidence, I must plead
the difficulties of such an inquiry. My survey has been very
incomplete. I am certain, however, that these survivals will be
recognised by any one who will undertake for themselves the collection
and interpretation of the facts from the records of the past.
There is a point to consider here. The absence, or rather the rarity,
of mother-right survivals in some civilisations cannot be counted as
proof that the maternal system never existed. As I have shown in the
earlier chapters of this book, the mother-age was a transitional
stage, between the very early brute-conditions of the family and the
second firmly established patriarchate. Now, it is clear that the
customs of a transitional stage are very likely to disappear; they are
also very likely to be mistaken. Bearing this in mind, the number of
survivals that do occur are, I hold, extraordinary, and, indeed,
impossible to account for if the maternal family was not a universal
stage in the development of society. Moreover, I am certain from my
own study that these survivals are of much wider occurrence than is
believed, but as yet the facts are insufficiently established.
It now remains to consider a new field of inquiry; and that is the
abundant evidence of mother-right to be found in folk-lore, in heroic
legends, and in the fairy-stories of our children. There is a special
value in these old-world stories, that date back to a time long before
written history. They belong to all countries in slightly different
forms. We have regarded them as fables, but there was never a fable
that did not arise out of truth--not, of course, the outside truth of
facts, but from that inward truth of the life and thought of a people,
which is what really matters. I cannot, then, do better than conclude
the evidence for the mother-age by referring to some few of these
myths and legends.
In order to group the great mass of material I will take first the
creation myths. One only out of many examples can be given. The Zuñi
Indians, who, it will be remembered, are a maternal people, give this
account of the beginning of the world. We read how the Sun-god,
withdrawing strength from his flesh, impregnated the great waters,
until there arose upon them, waxing wide and weighty, the "Fourfold
Mother-earth" and the "All-covering Father-sky."
"From the lying together of these twain, upon the great
world water, so vitalising, life was conceived, whence began
all beings of the earth, men and creatures, in the four-fold
womb of the world. Thereupon the Earth-mother repulsed the
Sky-father, growing big and sinking deep into the embrace of
the waters below, thus separated from the Sky-father, in the
embrace of the waters above." The story states, "Warm is the
Earth-mother and cold the Sky-father, even as woman is warm
and man is cold." Then it goes on, "'So is thy will,' said
the Sky-father, 'yet not alone shalt thou helpful be unto
our children';" and we learn how the Sky-father assisted the
Earth-mother. "Thus in other ways, many diversed, they
worked for their offspring."[230]
[230] Cushing, _Zuñi Creation Myths_.
There is one reflection only I desire to offer on this most beautiful
maternal version of the creation legend. Here we find complete
understanding of the woman's part; she is the one who gives life; she
is the active partner. The Sky-father is represented as her agent, her
helper. Why should this be? Contrast this idea with the patriarchal
creation story of the Bible.
"And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be
alone; I will make him an help meet for him.... And the Lord
God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept;
and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead
thereof: and the rib which the Lord God had taken from the
man made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And the
man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out
of Man."[231]
[231] Gen. ii, 18, 21-23.
I would again assert my strong belief that in the religious conception
of a people we find the true thoughts and the customs of the period in
which they originated. A patriarchal people could not have given
expression to a creation myth in which the female idea prevailed, and
the mother, and not the father, was dominant. For men have ever
fashioned the gods in their own human image, endowing them with their
thoughts and actions. The sharp change in the view of woman's part in
the relationship of the sexes is clearly symbolised in these creation
myths. Yes, it marks the degradation of woman; she has fallen from the
maternal conception of the feminine principle, guiding, directing, and
using the male, to that of the woman made for the man in the
patriarchal Bible story.
Another group of legends that I would notice refer to the conflict
between the right of the mother and that of the father in relation to
the children. These stories belong to a period of transition. In
ancient Greece, as we have seen, the paternal family succeeded the
maternal clan. In his _Orestia_, Æschylus puts in opposition before
Pallas Athene the right of the mother and the right of the father.
The chorus of the Eumenides, representing the people, defends the
position of the mother; Apollo pleads for the father, and ends by
declaring, in a fit of patriarchal delirium, that _the child is not of
the blood of the mother_. "It is not the mother who begets what is
called her child; she is only the nurse of the germ poured into her
womb; he who begets is the father. The woman receives the germ merely
as guardian, and when it pleases the gods, she preserves it." Plato
also brings forward this view, and states that the mother contributes
nothing to the child's being. "The mother is to the child what the
soil is to the plant; it owes its nourishment to her, but the essence
and structure of its nature are derived from the father." Again the
Orestes of Euripides takes up the same theory, when he says to
Tyndarus: "My father has begotten me, and thy daughter has given birth
to me, as the earth receives the seed that another confides to it."
Here we trace a different world of thoughts and conceptions; the
mother was so little esteemed as to be degraded into the mere
nourisher of the child. These patriarchal theories naturally
consecrated the slavery of woman.[232]
[232] McLennan, _Studies_, "Kinship in Ancient Greece";
Letourneau, _Evolution of Marriage_, pp. 336-337, and
Starcke, _The Primitive Family_, pp. 115-116.
Another point strikingly illustrated by many of these ancient legends
is the struggle for power between the two sexes--a struggle that would
seem to have been present at all stages of civilisation, but always
most active in periods of transition. One out of many examples is all
that I can give. In Hawaii, worship is given to the goddess Pele, the
personification of the volcano Kilauea, and the god Tamapua, the
personification of the sea, or rather, of the storm which lashes the
sea and hurls wave after wave upon the land. The myth tells that
Tamapua wooed Pele, who rejected his suit, whereupon he flooded the
crater with water, but Pele drank up the water and drove him back into
the sea.[233]
[233] Starcke, pp. 249-250, citing Bachofen's _Antiquarische
Briefe_, Vol. I, p. 140.
Here a brief digression into the early mythologies may be made,
although this question of the connection between mother-right and
religious ideas is one on which I have already enlarged. The most
primitive theogony is that of Mother-Earth and her son. Goddesses are
at first of greater importance than gods. The Earth-mother springs
from chaos, and in the beginning her children have no father.[234]
Traces of such a goddess are to be found in many ancient religions.
Afterwards as a modification, or rather a development, of the
Earth-mother, we have the goddesses of fertility. This idea arose with
the development of agriculture, and was closely connected in the
primitive mind with the sex functions. Demeter is of this type; and
there are many of these mother-deities who once were universally
worshipped. Virgin goddesses are a much later creation, and must be
connected with the patriarchal ideals for women. The original god-idea
symbolised as woman is the free mother; she is the source of all
fertility; she is the goddess of love. The servants of these goddesses
were priestesses, or at a later date men dressed as women. At first
the gods, in so far as they had any existence, appear in the form of
temporary lovers of the goddesses; they are very plainly the
transitory male element needful for fertilisation, and then destined
to disappear.[235] We find very early the brother as the husband and
dependent of the Mother-goddess. Thus Isis did not change or lose her
independent position after her marriage to her brother Osiris; her
importance as a deity remained always greater than his.[236] Only at a
much later stage--the patriarchal stage--was the wandering lover-god
or dependent brother-spouse raised to the position of authority of the
All-Father. We may find in the religious sexual festivals, common to
all civilisations, abundant confirmation of these facts. As one
illustration out of many that might be chosen, I will refer to the
account given by Prof. K. Pearson[237] of the festival of Sakäes, held
in Babylon in honour of the great goddess Mylitta, who was essentially
a mother-goddess of fertility. The festival lasted for five days in
the month of July. It was presided over by the priestess of the
goddess, who represented the goddess herself. She sat enthroned on a
mound which for the time was the sanctuary of the deity, with the
altar with oil and incense before her. To her came the god-lover
represented by a slave, who made homage and worshipped. From her he
received the symbols of kingly power, and she raised him to the throne
by her side. As her accepted lover and lord of the festival, he
remained for five days, during which the law of the goddess prevailed.
Afterwards on the fifth day the god-lover was sacrificed on the pyre.
The male element had performed its function.
[234] K. Pearson, _Chances of Death_, Vol. II, Essays on the
Mother-age Civilisation, etc. Many of the facts given in this
chapter are taken from these illuminative essays.
[235] K. Pearson, _Ibid._, p. 102.
[236] _The Truth about Woman_, p. 198.
[237] _Ibid._, pp. 109-110.
I cannot leave this subject without emphasising the importance of
these erotic-religious festivals, once of universal occurrence. They
afford the strongest evidence of the early privileged position of
women in the relationships between the two sexes. It is, I think,
impossible to avoid giving to this a matriarchal interpretation. For
it is by contrasting the religious-sex standpoints of the maternal and
the paternal ideals that the inferior position of women under the
later system can be demonstrated. Moreover, in much later periods, and
even to our own day, we may yet find broken survivals of the old
customs. Illustrations are not far to seek in the common festivals of
the people in Germany and elsewhere, and as I have myself witnessed
them in Spain, a land which has preserved its old customs much more
unchanged than is usual.[238] One example may be noted in England,
which would seem to have a very ancient origin; it is given by Prof.
K. Pearson.[239] "The Roman _Lupercalia_ held on February 15 was
essentially a worship of fertility, and the privileges supposed to be
attached to women in our own country during this month--especially on
February 14 and 29--are probably fossils of the same sex-freedom."
[238] See _Spain Revisited_, and _Things Seen in Spain_.
[239] _Ibid._, p. 158.
Passing again to the old legends, we find not a few that attempt to
account for both the rise and the decline of the custom of maternal
descent. I will give an example of each. Newbold relates that in
Menangkabowe, where the female line is observed, it is accounted for
by this legend--
"Perpati Sabatang built a magnificent vessel, which he
loaded with gold and precious stones so heavily that it got
aground on the sands at the foot of the fiery mountains, and
resisted the efforts of all the men to get it off. The sages
were consulted, and declared that all attempts would be in
vain until the vessel had passed over the body of a pregnant
woman. It happened that the Rajah's own daughter was in the
condition desired; she was called upon to immolate herself
for the sake of her country, but refused. At this juncture
the pregnant sister of the Rajah boldly stepped forward, and
cast herself beneath the prow of the vessel, which instantly
put itself in motion, and again floated on the waves without
injury to the princess. Whereupon the Rajah disinherited the
offspring of his disobedient daughter in favour of the child
of his sister, and caused this to be enrolled in the
records of the empire as the law of succession in time to
come."[240]
[240] Newbold, _Account of the British Settlements in the
Straits of Malacca_, Vol. II, p. 221.
The second illustration is taken from the quarrel between Pallas
Athene and Poseidon to which already I have referred. The myth tells
us--
"A double wonder sprang out of the earth at the same
time--at one place the olive tree and at another water. The
people in terror sent to Delphi to ask what should be done.
The god answered that the olive tree signified the power of
Athene, and the water that of Poseidon; and that it remained
with the burgesses to choose after which of the two they
would name their town. An assembly was called of the
burgesses, both men and women, for it was then the custom to
let the women take part in the public councils. The men
voted for Poseidon, the women for Athene; and as there were
more women than men by one, Athene conquered. Thereupon
Poseidon was enraged, and immediately the sea flowed over
all the lands of Athens. To appease the sea-god, the
burgesses found it necessary to impose a threefold
punishment on their wives. They were to lose their votes;
the children were to receive no more the mother's name, and
they themselves were no longer to be called after the
goddess."[241]
[241] McLennan, _Studies_, "Kinship in Ancient Greece," p.
235.
The origin of these myths is perfectly clear. There is no reason to
force their interpretation by regarding them as historical evidence of
a struggle taking place between the maternal and the paternal custom
of tracing descent;[242] rather they are poetical explanations,
plainly invented to account for women's predominance at a time when
such power had come to be considered as unusual. The same may be said
of many of these old myths. Man's fancy begins to weave poetic
inventions around anything he considers abnormal or is not able to
understand. The idea or custom for which an explanation is being
sought must, however, have been present for long in the common life
and thought of the people. Without realising this, all these old
stories become unintelligible. I believe they have been greatly
misinterpreted in the thought of writers bound by patriarchal ideas.
[242] This is done by Bachofen, and also, to some extent, by
McLennan.
The limitation of my space does not allow me to enter into the great
amount of evidence provided by these mythical stories of the
privileged position of women. One instance, however, may be referred
to as an illustration. We find a wide range of stories connected with
the mythical Amazons. Now, if I am right, the frequency of these
legends among so many races points to the acceptance of the Amazon
heroines as an historical fact. Fancy, without doubt, wove the details
of their stories, occurrences would be chosen or imagined to give
colour to the narratives, but such poetic inventions, with all their
repetitions, all their reproductions of what is practically one
situation, would take only definite form from conditions so impressed
on the popular mind by facts that must have had a real existence.
Bearing this in mind, special significance attaches to a discovery
recently made by Prof. d'Allosso. In the ancient necropolis of
Belmonte, dating from the iron age, are two very rich tombs of women
warriors with war chariots over their remains. Prof. d'Allosso states
that several details given by Virgil of the Amazon Camilla, who fought
and died on the field of battle, coincide with the details on these
tombs. The importance of this discovery is thus very great, as it
certainly seems to indicate what I am claiming--that the existence of
the Amazon heroines, leaders of armies and sung by the ancient poets,
is not a poetic fancy, but an historic reality.[243]
[243] See _The Truth about Woman_, p. 228.
I must turn now to the last group of evidence that I am able to bring
forward; to find this we must enter that realm of fancy--the world of
fairyland. We shall see that this land has its own customs, and its
own laws, entirely at variance with all those to which we are
accustomed. How is this to be explained? These stories are founded
really on the life of the common people, and they have come down from
generation to generation, handed on by the storytellers, from a time
long before the day when they were ever collected and written in
books. It is the popular and social character of these stories that is
so important; they are records of customs and habits long forgotten,
but once common in the daily life of the people. In them the past is
potent with life, and for this reason they claim the most careful and
patient study. I speak of the most familiar stories that we have
regarded as foolish fables. Nowhere else can we gain so clear and
vivid a picture of the childhood of civilisation, when women were the
transmitters of inheritance and the guardians of property.
Let me try to prove this. I have before me a collection of these
folk-stories, gathered from many countries. Now, the most popular
story (whose theme occurs again and again, the details varied in the
different renderings) is concerned with the gaining of a princess as a
bride by a wooer, usually of humble birth. This lover to obtain his
wife achieves some mighty deed of valour, or performs tasks set for
him by the parents of the bride; he thus inherits the kingdom through
the daughter of the king. Hans, faring forth to seek his luck; the
Dummling in the Golden Goose story; the miller's son, who gained his
bride by the wit of his cat, and Aladdin with his magic lamp are
well-known examples of this story. The Scottish and Irish legends are
particularly rich in examples of these hero lovers. Assipattle, the
dirty ash-lad, who wins the fair Gemdelovely and then reigns with her
as queen and king, is one of the most interesting. Similar stories may
be found in the folk-lore of every country. Ash-lad figures in many of
the Norwegian tales. There is a charming version in the Lapp story of
the "Silk Weaver and her husband," where we read, "Once upon a time a
poor lad wooed a princess and the girl wanted to marry him, but the
Emperor was against the match. Nevertheless she took him at last and
they were wed together."[244]
[244] K. Pearson, _The Truth about Woman_, p. 70 _note_.
This "fairy theory" of marriage is really the maternal or _beenah_
form: such a marriage as was made by Jacob and is still common among
all maternal peoples. The inheritance passes through the daughters;
the suitors gain their position by some deed of valour or by service
done for the bride's family; sometimes it is the mother who sets the
task, more often it is the father, while, in some cases, the girl
herself imposes the conditions of marriage. It is possible to trace a
development in these stories. We can see the growth of purchase-marriage
in the service demanded by the parents of the bride, this taking the
place of the earlier custom of the bridegroom proving his fitness by
some test of strength. Again, those stories in which the arrangement
of the marriage remains with the mother or with the girl, and not with
the father, must be regarded as the older versions. This change
appears also in the conditions of inheritance; in some cases the
kingdom passes at once with the bride, in others the half of the
kingdom is the marriage portion, while in the later stories the full
authority to rule comes only after the death of the king. But always
sooner or later the daughter of the king conveys the kingdom to her
husband. The sons of the king do not inherit; they are of much less
importance than the daughters; they are sent forth to seek their own
fortunes. This is the law where the inheritance passes through the
daughter.
This law of female inheritance must at one time have been universal.
We are brought, indeed, constantly back to that opinion--so amply
evidenced by these folk-relics. In the old West country ballad "The
Golden Vanity" or "The Lowland's Low," the boy who saves the ship from
the Spanish pirate galleon is promised as a reward "silver and gold,
with the skipper's pretty little daughter who lives upon the shore."
Similarly in the well-known folksong "The Farmer's Boy," the lad who
comes weary and lame to the farmer's door, seeking work, eventually
marries the farmer's daughter and inherits the farm. Again, Dick
Whittington, the poor country lad, who faithfully serves his master in
London, marries his employer's daughter. This theme is very frequently
found in ballads, romances, and dramas; in all cases the way to
fortune for the lover is through marriage--the daughter carries the
inheritance.
Let us take Assipattle of the Scottish legend as a type of these hero
wooers. He is represented always as the youngest son, held in contempt
by his brothers, and merely tolerated by his parents. He lies in the
ashes, from which he gains his name. Some emergency arises; a great
danger threatens the land or, more often, a princess has to be
delivered from a position of peril. Assipattle executes the deed, when
his brothers and all others have failed; he frees the land or rescues
the king's daughter, and is covered with honour. He marries the
princess and inherits the kingdom. Assipattle always begins in the
deepest degradation, and ends on the highest summit of glory. There is
a special interest in this story. The reader will not have failed to
notice the similarity of Assipattle with Cinderella. In both stories
the circumstances are the same, only the Ash-lad has been replaced by
the Cinder-girl. There is no doubt which version is the older:[245]
the one is the maternal form, the other the patriarchal.
[245] In this connection, see K. Pearson in the essay already
quoted, p. 85 _et seq._
The setting of these stories should be noticed. We see the simplicity
of the habits and life so vividly represented. All folk-legends deal
with country people living near to nature. So similar, indeed, are the
customs depicted throughout that these folk-records might well be
taken as a picture of the social organisation among many barbarous
tribes. I should like to wait to point out these resemblances, such,
for instance, as the tendency to personify natural objects, the
identification of human beings with animals and trees, found so often
in the stories, as well as many other things--the belief in magic and
the power of wise women. And what I want to make clear is the very
early beginning of these folk-tales; they take us back to the social
institutions of the mother-age. Thus there is nothing surprising to
find that kingdoms and riches are won by hero-lovers, and that
daughters carry the inheritance. This is really what used to happen.
It is our individual ideas and patriarchal customs that make these
things seem so strange.
I wish I had space in which to follow further these still-speaking
relics of a past, whose interest offers such rich reward. In his essay
"Ashiepattle, or Hans seeks his Luck" (_The Chances of Death_, Vol.
II, pp. 51-91), Prof. Karl Pearson has fully and beautifully shown the
evidence for mother-right to be found in these stories. To this essay
the reader, who still is in doubt, is referred. All that has been
possible to me is to suggest an inquiry that any one can pursue for
himself. It is the difficulty of treating so wide and fascinating a
subject in briefest outline that so many things that should be noticed
have to be passed over.
The witness afforded by these folk-stories for mother-right cannot be
neglected. For what interpretation are we to place on the curious
facts they record? Are we to regard this maternal marriage with
descent through the daughter, and not the son, as idle inventions of
the storytellers? Do these princesses and their peasant wooers belong
to the topsy-turvy land of fairies? No: in these stories, drawn from
so many various countries, we have echoes of a very distant past. It
is by placing the customs here represented by the side of similar
social conditions still to be found among primitive maternal peoples,
that we find their significance. We then understand that these old,
old stories of the folk really take us back to the age in which they
first took form. We have read these "fairy stories" to our children,
unknowing what they signified--a prophetic succession of witnesses,
pointing us back to the ripening of that phase of the communal family,
before the establishment of the individual patriarchal rule, when the
law was mother-right, and all inheritance was through women.
I would add to this chapter a notice I have just recently lighted
on[246] of the ancient warrior, Queen Meave of Ireland. She is
represented as tall and beautiful, terrible in her battle chariot,
when she drove full speed into the press of fighting men. Her virtues
were those of a warlike barbarian king, and she claimed the like large
liberty in morals. Her husband was Ailill, the Connaught king; their
marriage was literally a partnership wherein Meave, making her own
terms, demanded from her husband exact equality of treatment. The
three essential qualities on which she insisted were that he should be
brave, and generous, and completely devoid of jealousy.
[246] "Ancient Irish Sagas," _Century_, Jan. 1907.