Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/466

 the Nile. Souls of Pharaohs were fed on milk provided by, among other goddesses, the vultures of Upper and Lower Egypt “with long hair and hanging breasts” who were the female counterparts of Hapi, the Nile god. “Water of life” was not ordinary water. It contained “life-substance.” “The water of King Unis is wine like (that of) Ra.” Nut with “long hair and pendant breasts” provided celestial milk—the milk of “the Milky Way.” Hathor, who poured out the “water of life” from her sycamore, provided, apparently, sycamore-fig “milk” or water impregnated with fig milk. Siret has recently called attention to the fact that the Tiber was anciently called “Rumon,” a name derived from ruma (milk) like rumen (teat). Figs were sometimes called “teats.” The ancient Romans who revered the goddess of the sky and of the ruminal fig tree connected her with the Tiber, which they believed was impregnated with “terrestial milk” from the “Milky Way” (“Milk of Juno”) and with the “milk” nourished the earth. Deva Rumina was one of the names of the All-nursing mother goddess. We meet, in Hindu mythology, with the “Sea of Milk” and, as in Celtic, with rivers of wine, mead, etc. In Greece “fig milk” was an elixir and was given to newly-born children.

The Scottish “milk tree” was the hazel, which was connected with the sky and the sacred well and river. The