s
proof that the maternal system never existed. As I have shown in the
earlier chapters of this book, the mother-age was a transitional
stage, between the very early brute-conditions of the family and the
second firmly established patriarchate. Now, it is clear that the
customs of a transitional stage are very likely to disappear; they are
also very likely to be mistaken. Bearing this in mind, the number of
survivals that do occur are, I hold, extraordinary, and, indeed,
impossible to account for if the maternal family was not a universal
stage in the development of society. Moreover, I am certain from my
own study that these survivals are of much wider occurrence than is
believed, but as yet the facts are insufficiently established.

It now remains to consider a new field of inquiry; and that is the
abundant evidence of mother-right to be found in folk-lore, in heroic
legends, and in the fairy-stories of our children. There is a special
value in these old-world stories, that date back to a time long before
written history. They belong to all countries in slightly different
forms. We have regarded them as fables, but there was never a fable
that did not arise out of truth--not, of course, the outside truth of
facts, but from that inward truth of the life and thought of a people,
which is what really matters. I cannot, then, do better than conclude
the evidence for the mother-age by referring to some few of these
myths and legends.

In order to group the great mass of material I will take first the
creation myths. One only out of many examples can be given. The Zuni
Indians, who, it will be remembered, are a maternal people, give this
account of the beginning of the world. We read how the Sun-god,
withdrawing strength from his flesh, impregnated the great waters,
until there arose upon them, waxing wide and weighty, the "Fourfold
Mother-earth" and the "All-covering Father-sky."

"From the lying together of these twain, upon the great
world water, so vitalising, life was conceived, whence began
all beings of the earth, men and creatures, in the four-fold
womb of the world. Thereupon the Earth-mother repulsed the
Sky-father, growing big and sinking deep into the embrace of
the waters below, thus separated from the Sky-father, in the
embrace of the waters above." The story states, "Warm is the
Earth-mother and cold the Sky-father, even as woman is warm
and man is cold." Then