Through the long centuries Nature has been the mother, nurse, and teacher of man.
Other Mother-Goddesses.
Among other "mother-goddesses" of ancient Italy we find Maia Mater, Flora Mater, both deities of growth and reproduction; Lua Mater, "the loosing mother," a goddess of death; Acca Larentia, the mother of the Lares (Acca perhaps = Atta, a child-word for mother, as Lippert suggests); Mater matuta, "mother of the dawn," a goddess of child-birth, worshipped especially by married women, and to whom there was erected a temple at Cære.
The mother-goddesses of Germany are quite numerous. Among those minor ones cited by Grimm and Simrock, are: Haulemutter, Mutter Holle, the Klagemütter or Klagemuhmen, Pudelmutter (a name applied to the goddess Berchta), Etelmutter, Kornmutter, Roggenmutter, Mutterkorn, and the interesting Buschgroszmutter, "bush grandmother," as the "Queen of the Wood-Folk" is called. Here the mother-feeling has been so strong as to grant to even the devil a mother and a grandmother, who figure in many proverbs and folk-locutions. When the question is asked a Mecklenburger, concerning a social gathering: "Who was there?" he may answer: "The devil and his mother (möm)"; when a whirlwind occurs, the saying is: "The Devil is dancing with his grandmother."
In China the position of woman is very low, and, as Mr. Douglas points out: "It is only when a woman becomes a mother that she receives the respect which is by right due to her, and then the inferiority of her sex disappears before the requirements of filial love, which is the crown and glory of China" (434. 125).
In Chinese cosmogony and mythology motherhood finds recognition. Besides the great Earth-Mother, we meet with Se-wang-moo, the "Western Royal Mother," a goddess of fairy-land, and the "Mother of Lightning," thunder being considered the "father and teacher of all living beings." Lieh-tze, a philosopher of the fifth century B.C., taught: "My body is not my own; I am merely an inhabitant of it for the time being, and shall resign it when I return to the 'Abyss Mother'" (434. 222, 225, 277).
In the Flowery Kingdom there is also a sect "who worship the goddess
Pity, in the form of a woman holding a child in her arms."
Among the deities and semi-deities of the Andaman Islanders are chän·a·ê·lewadi, the "mother of the race,"—Mother E·lewadi; chän·a·erep, chän·a·châ·riâ, chän·a·te·liu, chän·a·li·mi, chän·a·jär·a·ngûd, all inventors and discoverers of foods and the arts. In the religious system of the Andaman Islanders, Pû·luga-, the Supreme Being, by whom were created "the world and all objects, animate and inanimate, excepting only the powers of evil," and of whom it is said, "though his appearance is like fire, yet he is (nowadays) invisible," is "believed to live in a large stone house in the sky with a wife whom he created for himself; she is green in appearance, and has two names, chän·a·àu·lola (Mother Freshwater Shrimp) and chän·a·pâ·lak-—(Mother Eel); by her he has a large family, all except the eldest being girls; these last, known as mô·ro-win— (sky-spirits or angels), are said to be black in appearance, and, with their mother, amuse themselves from time to time by throwing fish and prawns into the streams and sea for the use of the inhabitants of the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman was chän·a·ê·lewadi (Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after her ê·lewadi" (498. 96):
Quite frequently we find that primitive peoples have ascribed the origin of the arts or of the good things of life to women whom they have canonized as saints or apotheosized into deities.
We may close our consideration of motherhood and what it has given the world with the apt words of Zmigrodzki:—