But besides the Ash, the Greeks would seem to have regarded the Oak as a tree from which the human race had sprung, and to have called Oak trees the first mothers. This belief was shared by the Romans. Thus Virgil speaks
“Of nymphs and fauns, and savage men, who took
Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn Oak.”
In another passage the great Latin poet, speaking of the Æsculus, a species of Oak, sacred to Jupiter, gives to it attributes which remind us in a very striking manner of Yggdrasill, the cloud-tree of the Norsemen.
“Æsculus in primis, quæ quantum vortice ad auras
Ætherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit.”—Georg. ii.
“High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend,
So low his roots to hell’s dominion tend.”—Dryden.
In the Æneid, Book IV., speaking of the Oak as Quercus, Virgil uses the same expression with regard to the roots of Jove’s tree descending to the infernal regions. Juvenal, also, in his sixth satire, alluding to the beginning of the world, speaks of the human race as formed of clay or born of the opening Oak, which thus becomes the mystical mother-tree of mankind, and, like a mother, sustained her offspring with food she herself created. Thus Ovid tells us that the simple food of the primal race consisted largely of “Acorns dropping from the tree of Jove;” and we read in Homer and Hesiod that the Acorn was the common food of the Arcadians.
The belief of the ancient Greeks and Romans that the progenitors of mankind were born of trees was also common to the Teutons. At the present day, in many parts of both North and South Germany, a hollow tree overhanging a pool is designated as the first abode of unborn infants, and little children are taught to believe that babies are fetched by the doctor from cavernous trees or ancient stumps. “Frau Holda’s tree” is a common name in Germany for old decayed boles; and she herself, the cloud-goddess, is described in a Hessian legend as having in front the form of a beautiful woman, and behind that of a hollow tree with rugged bark.