meet the Umbrian Cubra Mater and the Roman Mater Matuta, Mater
Mursina, Luna Mater, Stata Mater, Iuno Mater, etc.^73 Celtic and Germanic
Matres, Matrae, or Matronae, as individuals or groups (especially groups of
three), are extremely common.^74 Many of the names attached to them are
non-Indo-European.
In the Baltic lands too, especially in Latvia, we find many Mothers, but here
they are Sondergöttinnen, individuals each presiding over a specific area or
function. In the Latvian folk-songs they proliferate: there is the Mother of
wind, the Mother of fog, of forest, of flowers, of death, of the tomb, of the sea,
of silver, of bees, and so on. It is evident that this was a secondary, local
development. Usener notes that where the Lithuanians have Lau ̃ kpatis
‘Master of the Fields’ and Ve ̇jopatis ‘Master of the Wind’, adhering to the
old Indo-European *poti- formula, the Latvians have Lauka ma ̄te and Ve ̄ja
ma ̄te.^75
We must conclude that there was a scarcity of divine Mothers in the Indo-
European pantheon. Perhaps Mother Earth was the only one.
SOME INDIVIDUALSHow many individual members of that pantheon can we identify? Certainly
not as many as some savants have claimed.^76 The clearest cases are the cosmic
and elemental deities: the Sky-god, his partner Earth, and his twin sons; the
Sun, the Sun Maiden, and the Dawn; gods of storm, wind, water, fire; and
terrestrial presences such as the Rivers, spring and forest nymphs, and a god
of the wild who guards roads and herds. All these will be investigated in the
next four chapters. Here we will try to round up a few other suspects.
(^73) Umbrian inscr. 83 Buck; Campanile (1977), 72.
(^74) F. Heichelheim, RE xiv. 2213–50, xvi. 946–78; Vendryès (1948), 275–8; Duval (1957), 52–5;
de Vries (1956), ii. 288–302; id. (1961), 120–3; Campanile (1981), 75–82; M. Green (1986),
74–91, 165 f.; colloquium volume Matronen und verwandte Gottheiten (Bonner Jahrbücher
Beiheft 44, Köln 1987); Davidson (1988), 108–11; W. Meid, JIES 17 (1989), 305 f.; id. (1991), 41;
Olmsted (1994), 287–96, 414–25; E. Campanile in E. C. Polomé (ed.) (as n. 65), 74–6; Polomé,
ibid. 132–4; F. Battaglia in Dexter–Polomé (1997), 48–82.
(^75) Paul Einhorn, Wiederlegunge der Abgötterey (1627) in Mannhardt (1936), 464 f.; id.,
Reformatio gentis Lettiae (1636) in Mannhardt, 472; Usener (1896), 106–8, 115; Jonval (1929),
15–18 and nos. 464–741; Biezais–Balys (1973), 384 f., 423. The land of the dead is ruled by
Ve l ̧u ma ̄te, the Mother of Ghosts (ibid. 448 f.).
(^76) K. T. Witczak and I. Kaczor, ‘Linguistic evidence for the Indo-European pantheon’,
in J. Rybowska–K. T. Witczak (edd.), In honorem Annae Mariae Komornicka (Collectanea
Philologica ii, Łódz ́ 1995), 267–77, list fifty-one items, but few of them stand up to scrutiny.
- Gods and Goddesses 141