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).