It is of these two invocations that Stopford Brooke (whose translations I have used) writes: "These are very old heathen invocations used, I daresay, from century to century and from far prehistoric times by all the Teutonic farmers. Who 'Erce' is remains obscure. But the Mother of Earth seems to be here meant, and she is a person who greatly kindles our curiosity. To touch her is like touching empty space, so far away is she. At any rate some Godhead or other seems here set forth under her proper name. In the Northern Cosmogony, Night is the Mother of Earth. But Erce cannot be Night. She is (if Erce be a proper name) bound up with agriculture. Grimm suggests Eorce, connected with the Old High German 'erchan' = simplex. He also makes a bold guess that she may be the same as a divine dame in Low Saxon districts called Herke or Harke, who dispenses earthly goods in abundance, and acts in the same way as Berhta and Holda--an earth-goddess, the lady of the plougher and sower and reaper. In the Mark she is called Frau Harke. Montanus draws attention to the appearance of this charm in a convent at Corvei, in which this line begins--'Eostar, Eostar, eordhan modor.' ... The name remains mysterious. The song breathes the pleasure and worship of ancient tillers of the soil in the labours of the earth and in the goods the mother gave. It has grown, it seems, out of the breast of earth herself; earth is here the Mother of Men. The surface of earth is the lap of the Goddess; in her womb let all growth be plentiful. Food is in her for the needs of men. 'Hail be thou, Earth!' I daresay this hymn was sung ten thousand years ago by the early Aryans on the Baltic coast." Even in a twelfth-century herbal we find a prayer to Earth, and it is so beautiful that I close this chapter with it:--