There is a point to consider here. The absence, or rather the rarity, of mother-right survivals in some civilisations cannot be counted as 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 Zuñi 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 it goes on, "'So is thy will,' said the Sky-father, 'yet not alone shalt thou helpful be unto our children';" and we learn how the Sky-father assisted the Earth-mother. "Thus in other ways, many diversed, they worked for their offspring."[230]