In this essay, I am going to discuss the much neglected issue of the Anglo-Saxon earth mother goddess, who is referred to only once in the extant Old English literature, namely in the Æcerbot , a metrical charm recorded in the 11th century, which in fact was a day-long ritual, still performed in the centuries following the Christianisation of the English people, underlying its importance to our ancestors.
The only surviving manuscript copy is the British Library Cotton Caligula A.v. It is part of a collection of ecclesiastical homilies, penitentials, pastoral instructions for priests, medical and healing recipes, liturgical material and other Old English Charms, such as the Nine Herbs Charm. Despite the heathen elements of these charms, they were clearly considered by the Church to still be of practical use, especially the former, hence their survival to this day.
(from Cockayne, Leechdoms, Vol. III, pp. 296–302)
Erce, Erce, Erce, eorþan modor, geunne þe se alwalda, ece drihten, æcres wæstmas and eac eorþan tilþ, growende gærst and godes blæd, and halig heofones ræn and eorþan wæstmas.
Beo þu gesund, eorþe, on eorðan fæder, in godes fæder, modor, and suna, and in þæs halgan gastes naman beo þu gebletsod and geboren.
Ic hate þec, eorþe, and eall þin wæstmbærnes, growe and blowe and bringe forth wæstmas to þam folce þe on þe libbað.
Hal wes þu, folde, fira modor, beo þu grene and growe on godes fultume, fodre gefylled, folcum to nytte.
An AI Produced Translation (my Old English is somewhat rusty!)
Erce, Erce, Erce, mother of Earth, may the Almighty, the eternal Lord, grant you fields that flourish and the growing of the land, sprouting plants and the abundance of God, and holy rain from heaven and the fruits of the earth.
Be whole, Earth, mother of men, in the embrace of God the Father, in the arms of the Son, and in the shelter of the Holy Spirit. Be blessed and filled with growth.
I call upon you, Earth, and all your increase: grow and flourish and bring forth fruits for the people who live upon you.
Hail to you, Earth, mother of men! Be green and growing by God’s grace, filled with food, a blessing to all folk.
It should be noted that the full charm is quite long, so I have only reproduced the invocation part, which is relevant to my discussion. The thricefold invocation of 'Erce' is clearly ritualistic and thus the name indicative of a deity being addressed. 'Erce' does not otherwise exist in the surviving Old English corpus, so we should assume that it is a personal name, and furthermore, the name of a deity, because of the invocatory opening of the charm.
'Erce' is nowhere else mentioned in the remainder of the charm, only in the vocative case in the opening stanza. After this She is referred to as 'eorþan modor' ('mother of earth'). 'eorþan' is in the genitive case, the nominative being 'eorþe' so She is the mother of earth, not 'earth mother', an important distinction to make. This distinction indicates that She is not the earth itself, but a deity who is distinct from it and presides over it. Many Indo-European traditions have a cosmic mother deity who is above the earth itself, examples being the Greek Gaia (Earth)/Eurynome (cosmic mother), the Vedic Prithvi (Earth)/Aditi (mother of the gods and cosmos), the Baltic Zemyna (Earth)/Leima (fate-mother) and the Germanic Jörð (Earth)/Nótt (Night)/Audhumla (primaeval cow). Eorþe is thus the land and soil (in its divine aspect), while Erce is a higher maternal deity who is invoked in order to bless the earth.
Initially, Erce is invoked three times in order to increase the intensity of the ritual act. Thereafter, it is Eorþe who is addressed directly. Erce is the mother of Eorþe but it is Eorþe who is the mother of man, as is made clear in the term 'fira modor', 'mother of men'. 'Folde' is another term for 'earth'.
And what are the origins of Erce's name? It could be a borrowing from the Old High German noun, erchan, meaning 'holy, sacred, genuine, excellent', which could make it a ritual name, rather than a proper name. In this case, Erce would mean 'Oh sacred one', an invocatory name. There are, it should be noted, no Old Norse or Old English cognates, so we can only speculate on this. There is a linguistic connection, albeit a weak one, between Erce and the Old High German, Erda, but Erda relates more to Eorþe in a functional sense. It may be that Erce is an archaic form of the same root as Eorþe, Erda and the Old Norse, jörð. This would indicate that behind these names-jörð, Erda, the Gothic airþa, Eorþe and even Erce is an ancient Proto-Germanic Earth-Mother and Her reconstructed name would be *Erþō / *Erþan‑.
The Æcerbot provides us with a window into the ancient pre-Christian Germanic and Indo-European cosmology. One can discern a tripartite structure within the cosmology, which I delineate as follows:
. Level 1. The Primordial Mother above the earth.
In the Anglo-Saxon cosmology this is Erce, the eorþan modor. The Vedic Aditi, the Greek Eurynome and the Norse Nótt, who is mother of Jörð, fall within this highest category.
. Level 2. The Earth Goddess.
The earth Herself is also a goddess as is made clear in the Æcerbot, and Eorþe is the divine personification of the earth. The Baltic Zemyna, the Slavic Mat Zemlya, the Greek Demeter and the Norse Jörð all function at this level.
. Level 3. The earth as soil and field as the physical manifestation of the earth goddess.
No comments:
Post a Comment