Of these various forms of the conditions of woman, woman as maiden, bride, mother and grandmother, the last, grandmother, comes little into prominence; it only lends a name to Maia, the mother of Hermes. Nymphs we have everywhere, but the two cardinal conditions are obviously to a primitive society Mother[689] and Maiden. When these conditions crystallized into the goddess forms of Demeter and Kore, they appear as Mother and _Daughter_, but primarily the conditions expressed are Mother and Maid, woman mature and woman before maturity, and of these two forms the Mother-form as more characteristic is, in early days, the more prominent; Kore _as daughter_ rather than maiden is the product of mythology. When we come to the religion of Dionysos, it will be seen that the Mother-goddess has for her attribute of motherhood a son rather than a daughter. THE EARTH-MOTHER AS KARPOPHOROS OR LADY OF THE WILD THINGS. The Mother-goddess was almost necessarily envisaged as the Earth. The ancient Dove-priestesses at Dodona[690] were the first to chant the Litany: ‘Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus shall be, O great Zeus. Earth sends up fruits, so praise we Earth the Mother.’ The two lines have no necessary connection; it may be that their order is inverted and that long before the Dove-priestesses sang the praises of Zeus they had chanted their hymn to the Mother. It was fitting that women priestesses should sing to a woman goddess, to Ga who was also Ma. Mother-Earth bore not only fruits but the race of man. As the poet Asius[691] said: ‘Divine Pelasgos on the wood-clad hills Black Earth brought forth, that mortal man might be.’ Pelasgos claimed no father, but he, the first father, had a mother. And here it must be noted that the local mother must necessarily have preceded Gaia the abstract and universal. Primitive man does not tend to deal in abstractions. Each local hero claimed descent from a local earth-nymph or mother[692]. Salamis, Aegina and ‘dear mother Ida’ are not late geographical abstractions; each is a local mother, a real parent, and all are later merged in the great All-Mother Ge. [Illustration: FIG. 60.] The Earth-Mother and each and every local nymph was mother not only of man but of all creatures that live; she is the ‘Lady of the Wild Things’ (πότνια θηρῶν). Art brings her figure very clearly before us. On an early stamped Boeotian amphora[693] in the National Museum at Athens (figs. 60 and 61) she is vividly presented. The Great Mother stands with uplifted hands exactly in the attitude of the still earlier figures recently discovered in the Mycenaean shrine at Cnossos. To either side of her is a lion, heraldically posed like the lions of the Gate at Mycenae; below her is a frieze of deer. The figure is supported or rather encircled by two women figures, one at either side. These seem to be part of a ring of encircling worshippers[694]. [Illustration: FIG. 61.] [Illustration: FIG. 62.]