nt thee
Acres a-waxing, upwards a-growing
Pregnant [with corn] and plenteous in strength;
Hosts of [grain] shafts and of glittering plants!
Of broad barley the blossoms
And of white wheat ears waxing,
Of the whole earth the harvest!
Let be guarded the grain against all the ills
That are sown o'er the land by the sorcery men,
Nor let cunning women change it nor a crafty man."

And that other ancient verse:--

"Hail be thou, Earth, Mother of men!
In the lap of the God be thou a-growing!
Be filled with fodder for fare-need of men!"

It is of these two invocations that Stopford Brooke (whose
translations I have used) writes: "These are very old heathen
invocations used, I daresay, from century to century and from far
prehistoric times by all the Teutonic farmers. Who 'Erce' is remains
obscure. But the Mother of Earth seems to be here meant, and she is a
person who greatly kindles our curiosity. To touch her is like
touching empty space, so far away is she. At any rate some Godhead or
other seems here set forth under her proper name. In the Northern
Cosmogony, Night is the Mother of Earth. But Erce cannot be Night. She
is (if Erce be a proper name) bound up with agriculture. Grimm
suggests Eorce, connected with the Old High German 'erchan' = simplex.
He also makes a bold guess that she may be the same as a divine dame
in Low Saxon districts called Herke or Harke, who dispenses earthly
goods in abundance, and acts in the same way as Berhta and Holda--an
earth-goddess, the lady of the plougher and sower and reaper. In the
Mark she is called Frau Harke. Montanus draws attention to the
appearance of this charm in a convent at Corvei, in which this line
begins--'Eostar, Eostar, eordhan modor.' ... The name remains
mysterious. The song breathes the pleasure and worship of ancient
tillers of the soil in the labours of the earth and in the goods the
mother gave. It has grown, it seems, out of the breast of earth
herself; earth is here the Mother of Men. The surface of earth is the
lap of the Goddess; in her womb let all growth be plentiful. Food is
in her for the needs of men. 'Hail be thou, Earth!' I daresay this
hymn was sung ten thousand years ago by the early Aryans on the Baltic
coast."

Even in a twelfth-century herbal we find a prayer to Earth, and it is
so beautiful that I close this chapter with it:--

"