In the palmy days of childhood we were taught in nursery jingle, and we
implicitly believed, that little girls were made of
Sugar and spice
And all that’s nice.
But, growing older, we learned to our disappointment that they were
produced from Adam’s rib; and when we asked why woman was made of that
particular bone, we were told because it was the most crooked in Adam’s
body.
“Observe the result,” preached Jean Raulin, in the beginning of the
sixteenth century: “man, composed of clay, is silent and ponderous; but
woman gives evidence of her osseous origin by the rattle she keeps up.
Move a sack of earth and it makes no noise; touch a bag of bones and you
are deafened with the clitter-clatter.”
This observation did not fall to the ground; it was repeated by Gratian de
Drusac in his _Controversies des Sexes Masculin et Féminin_, 1538. The
learned in medieval times did not spare women. Jean Nevisan, professor of
law at Turin, who died in 1540, is harder still on them in his _Sylva
Nuptialis_. Therein he audaciously asserts that woman was formed by the
Author of Good till the head had to be made, and _that_ was a production
of the great enemy of mankind. “Permisit Deus illud facere dæmonio.”
But the Rabbis are equally unsparing. They assert that when Eve had to be
drawn from the side of Adam she was not extracted by the head, lest she
should be vain; nor by the eyes, lest they should be wanton; nor by the
mouth, lest she should be given to tittle-tattle; nor by the ears, lest
she should be inquisitive; nor by the hands, lest she should be
meddlesome; nor by the feet, lest she should be a gadabout; nor by the
heart, lest she should be jealous; but she was drawn forth by the side;
yet, notwithstanding these precautions, she has every fault specially
guarded against, because, being extracted sideways, she was perverse.
Another Rabbinical gloss on the text of Moses asserts that Adam was
created double; that he and Eve were made back to back, united at the
shoulders, and that they were severed with a hatchet. Eugubinus says that
their bodies were united at the side.
Antoinette Bourignon, that extraordinary mystic of the seventeenth
century, had some strange visions of the primeval man and the birth of
Eve. The body of Adam, she says, was more pure, translucent, and
transparent than crystal, light and buoyant as air. In it were vessels and
streams of light, which entered and exuded through the pores. The vessels
were charged with liquors of various colours of intense brilliancy and
transparency; some of these fluids were water, milk, wine, fire, etc.
Every motion of Adam’s body produced ineffable harmonies. Every creature
obeyed him; nothing could resist or injure him. He was taller than men of
this time; his hair was short, curled, and approaching to black. He had a
little down on his lower lip. In his stomach was a clear fluid, like water
in a crystal bowl, in which tiny eggs developed themselves, like bubbles
in wine, as he glowed with the ardour of Divine charity; and when he
strongly desired that others should unite with him in the work of praise,
he deposited one of these eggs, which hatched, and from it emerged his
consort, Eve.
The inhabitants of Madagascar have a strange myth touching the origin of
woman. They say that the first man was created of the dust of the earth,
and was placed in a garden, where he was subject to none of the ills which
now afflict mortality; he was also free from all bodily appetites, and
though surrounded by delicious fruit and limpid streams, yet felt no
desire to taste of the fruit or quaff the water. The Creator had,
moreover, strictly forbidden him either to eat or to drink. The great
enemy, however, came to him, and painted to him in glowing colours the
sweetness of the apple, the lusciousness of the date, and the succulence
of the orange. In vain: the first man remembered the command laid upon
him by his Maker. Then the fiend assumed the appearance of an effulgent
spirit, and pretended to be a messenger from heaven commanding him to eat
and drink. The man at once obeyed. Shortly after a pimple appeared on his
leg; the spot enlarged into a tumour, which increased in size and caused
him considerable annoyance. At the end of six months it burst, and there
emerged from the limb a beautiful girl.
The father of all living turned her this way and that way, sorely
perplexed, and uncertain whether to pitch her into the water or give her
to the pigs, when a messenger from heaven appeared, and told him to let
her run about the garden till she was of a marriageable age, and then to
take her to himself as a wife. He obeyed. He called her Bahouna, and she
became the mother of all races of men.
There seems to be some uncertainty as to the size of our great mother. The
French orientalist, Henrion, member of the Academy, however, fixed it with
a precision satisfactory, at least, to himself. He gives the following
table of the relative heights of several eminent historical personages:--
Adam was precisely 123 feet 9 inches high
Eve 118 " 9.75 in. "
Noah 103 " "
Abraham 27 " "
Moses 13 " "
Hercules 10 " "
Alexander 6 " "
Julius Cæsar 5 " "
It is interesting to have the height of Eve to the decimal of an inch. It
must, however, be stated that the measures of the traditional tomb of Eve
at Jedda give her a much greater stature. “On entering the great gate of
the cemetery, one observes on the left a little wall three feet high,
forming a square of ten to twelve feet. There lies the head of our first
mother. In the middle of the cemetery is a sort of cupola, where reposes
the middle of her body, and at the other extremity, near the door of
egress, is another little wall, also three feet high, forming a
lozenge-shaped enclosure: there are her feet. In this place is a large
piece of cloth, whereon the faithful deposit their offerings, which serve
for the maintenance of a constant burning of perfumes over the midst of
her body. The distance between her head and feet is 400 feet. How we have
shrunk since the creation!”--_Lettre de H. A. D., Consul de France en
Abyssinie, 1841._
But to return to the substance of which woman was made. This is a point on
which the various cosmogonies of nations widely differ. Probably the
discoverers of these cosmogonies were men, for they seldom give to woman a
very distinguished origin. But then the poets make it up to her. Nature,
the singer of the Land of Cakes tells us,
Her ’prentice hand she tried on man,
And then she made the lasses, O.
Guillaume de Salluste du Bastas (b. 1544; d. 1590) composed a lengthy poem
on the Creation, in which he does ample justice to the ladies. His poem
was translated into Latin by Dumonin, and into German, Spanish, Italian,
and English.