The familiar expression "every mother's son of us" finds kin in the Modern High German _Muttersohn, Mutterkind_, which, with the even more significant _Muttermensch_ (human being), takes us back to the days of "mother-right." Rather different, however, is the idea called up by the corresponding Middle Low German _modersone_, which means "bastard, illegitimate child." _Lore of Motherhood_ A synonym of _Muttermensch_ is _Mutterseele_, for soul and man once meant pretty much, the same. The curious expression _mutterseelenallein_, "quite alone; alone by one's self," is given a peculiar interpretation by Lippert, who sees in it a relic of the burial of the dead (soul) beneath the hearth, threshold, or floor of the house; "wessen Mutter im Hause ruht, der kann daheim immer nur mit seiner Mutterseele selbander allein sein." Or, perhaps, it goes back to the time when, as with the Seminoles of Florida, the babe was held over the mouth of the mother, whose death resulted from its birth, in order that her departing spirit might enter the new being. In German, the "mother-feeling" makes its influence felt in the nomenclature of the lower brute creation. As contrasted with our English female donkey (she-donkey), mare, ewe, ewe-lamb, sow, doe-hare (female hare), queen-bee, etc., we find _Mutteresel_, "mother-donkey "; _Mutterpferd_, "mother-horse"; _Mutterschaf_, "mother-sheep"; _Mutterlamm_, "mother lamb"; _Mutterschwein_, "mother swine"; _Mutterhase_, "mother-hare"; _Mutterbiene_, "mother-bee." Nor is this feeling absent from the names of plants and things inanimate. We have _Mutterbirke_, "birch"; _Mutterblume_, "seed-flower"; _Mutternelke_, "carnation"; _Mutternagelein_ (our "mother-clove"); _Mutterholz_. In English we have "mother of thyme," etc. In Japan a triple arrangement in the display of the flower-vase--a floral trinity--is termed _chichi_, "father"; _haha_, "mother"; _ten_, "heaven" (189. 74). In the nursery-lore of all peoples, as we can see from the fairy-tales and child-stories in our own and other languages, this attribution of motherhood to all things animate and inanimate is common, as it is in the folk-lore and mythology of the adult members of primitive races now existing. _Mother Poet._ The arts of poetry, music, dancing, according to classic mythology, were presided over by nine goddesses, or Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, "Muse-mother," as Mrs. Browning terms her. The history of woman as a poet has yet to be written, but to her in the early ages poetry owed much of its development and its beauty. Mr. Vance has remarked that "among many of the lowest races the only love-dances in vogue are those performed by the women" (545a. 4069). And Letourneau considers that "there are good grounds for supposing that women may have especially participated in the creation of the lyric of the erotic kind." Professor Mason, in the course of his remarks upon woman's labour in the world in all ages, says (112. 12):--