"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.