SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 199 



culture, and the tilth, becomes the symbol of sexual union. 1 

 Demeter and Freyja are of this type, and a fossil is to be 

 found in the Kornmutter or Roggenmutter of German 

 peasant tradition. This corresponds to a period in which 

 the mother is the titular head of the group, and during 

 which mother-son dual deities, as well as the Matrae 

 and other goddesses of hearth and home, appear. Such 

 a period only could originate the ideas expressed in 

 mutter spr ache, mutterwitz, and mutterland, /^r/wTroXt?, 

 and ^rjrpoKw^ia. As the Sanskrit mdtar, denoting not only 

 mother, but mythologically the Earth, is characteristic 

 of the earlier period, so mdtdputrdu in Sanskrit and 

 moed'gin 2 in Old Norse used to denote the pair, mother 

 and son, is characteristic of the latter stage. From the 

 first stage we may note such a word as Latin materia, 

 English matter, the substance, probably looked upon 

 as Mother Earth, from which all things were made. 

 In much the same sense we have moder in M.L.G. for 

 slime, and in various dialects mott, mode, mudde, till 

 we reach English mud and its extension mudder, mother, 

 sediment. It is singular that in English, Dutch, Scandi- 

 navian, 3 and German, the cognates of moder, dirt, slime, 

 have all been confused with the corresponding cognates 

 of mutter; and it is difficult to believe that this is a 

 mere chance coincidence, and that there is no root- 

 connection between the two series as there is between 



1 Compare Sanskrit ulva, womb, and urvdrd (for ulvdra), tilth. The sym- 

 bolism remained through the Middle Ages ; for example, the queen in the 

 Marchen, Das Eselein, says : "Ich bin wie ein Acker, auf dem nichts wachst," 

 to mark her barrenness. See first footnote p. 122, and quotation p. 207. 



2 Also moed'gna denotes mother and daughter. 



3 In Landsmaal mor is mother, and not slime, but stuff, material, as in a 

 mass of stone. 



