Earth is suggested by the name of a pair of hills east of Killarney, Dá Chích
Anann, ‘the Two Breasts of Ana’.^49
In Slavonic lore too Mother Earth is a well-established concept. I have
referred above to her standing title of ‘Mother Moist Earth’. It may be added
that peasants of Volhynia and the forests of Belarus held it sinful to dig before
25 March, because at that period the earth is pregnant. She ‘gives birth’ to the
trees and plants that grow on her.^50
According to a Latvian song (LD 1224 = Jonval no. 835),
vienas ma ̄tes me ̄s be ̄rnin ̧i,
ne visiem viena laime.
Of one mother we are (all) the children;
not for all is there one fortune.This strikingly recalls Pindar (Nem. 6. 1): ‘The race of men is one, and of
gods one; from one mother we both draw breath; but we are divided by totally
differentiated ability’. The common mother is of course Earth. ‘Mother Earth’
does not appear as such in the Latvian material. In accord with the preference
for the ‘Mother-of ’ title (above, p. 141), we find instead the ‘Mother of Earth’,
Zemes ma ̄te. Her principal roles are controlling the fertility of the fields and
presiding over the dead.^51
Attributes of EarthThe commonest epithet applied to the earth in Indo-European poetic tradi-
tions is ‘broad’.^52 The Homeric ε1ρε4α χθ.νfinds its etymological counter-
part in RV 6. 17. 7 ks
̇
a ̄ ́m... urvı ̄ ́m, while at 1. 67. 5 and 10. 31. 9 we have ks
̇a ̄ ́m
... pr
̇
th(i)vı ̄ ́m, with the adjective that is related to Greek πλατ3. This is
exactly paralleled in Avestan za ̨m pərəθβı ̄m (Y. 10. 4, Yt. 13. 9, cf. Vd. 9. 2),
and presumably reflects an old Indo-Iranian formula. As we have seen, pr
̇
thivı ̄ ́
orpr
̇
thvı ̄ ́, used as a feminine substantive, is the commonest Vedic word for
the earth or the Earth-goddess, and a cognate kenning appears in Greek
Platai(w)a, Old Norse fo ̨ld, Old English folde, and perhaps Gaulish Litavi-.
Analogous expressions with different vocabulary occur in Germanic verse.
In the Old High German Muspilli (58) we finddaz preita wasal, ‘the broad
(^49) Cf. de Vries (1961), 119 f.
(^50) Gimbutas (1971), 169; U. Dukova, Orpheus 4 (1994), 10.
(^51) LD 27340, 27406, 27519–21, 27699 = Jonval no. 1205–10; Usener (1896), 108; Biezais–Balys
(1973), 453.
(^52) Durante (1962), 29 = (1976), 92 f.; Schmitt (1967), 181–3. It is also formulaic in Akkadian:
West (1997), 221.
178 4. Sky and Earth