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