I’m not sure what the Three Kings were doing on the day after Epiphany, but, the shepherds, if they were like English farmworkers, would still be on holiday until next Monday, which is Plough Monday. By contrast, the women, according to folk customs, went back to work on the 7th, St. Distaff’s Day, the day after Epiphany.
A distaff is ‘a stick or spindle on to which wool or flax is wound for spinning’ and because of its importance in the medieval and early modern economy it became a synecdoche for women. St Distaff is a ‘canonisation’ of this use of the word. So, a day to celebrate women.
Robert Herrick (1591–1674), born in Cheapside, a Goldsmith, priest, Royalist and Poet wrote in ‘Hesperides’
Partly work and partly play
You must on St. Distaff’s Day:
From the plough, soon free your team;
Then come home and fother them;
If the maids a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maids bewash the men.
Give St. Distaff all the right;
Then bid Christmas sport good night,
And next morrow every one
To his own vocation.
In London, the Fraternity of St Anne and St Agnes used to meet at the Church in London with that name. It is near to the (now closed) Museum of London on the junction of Gresham Street and Noble Street, by a corner of the Roman Wall. St Agnes is the patron saint of young girls, abused women and Girl Scouts. St Anne is the mother of the mother of the Son of God, and, thereby, the three generations of women are represented: maidens, mothers, and grandmothers.
Archaeologists discovered the sculpture while investigating the Roman Wall at Blackfriars, City of London. Scholars believe it depicts the Celtic Three Mother Goddesses, worshipped in Roman London. The fourth person is a mystery, maybe the patron of the temple(?) where the relief sculpture was displayed before it was used as rubble and became part of the defences of London.
The idea of triple goddesses is a common one. In Folklore and History they have been referred to as Maiden, Mother, and Crone, or even Maiden, Mother and Hag. They come in Roman, Greek, Celtic, Irish, and Germanic forms with names like the Norns, the Three Fates, the Weird Sisters, the Mórrígan and many more. The Three Fates, the Goddess Book of Days says, were celebrated during the Gamelia, the Greco/Roman January Festival to the marriage of Zeus and Juno. The Festival also gives its name to the Athenian month of January.
There was a theory widely held that the original Deities, dating before the spread of farming, were mother goddesses (perhaps as depicted by the Venus of Willendorf) who were overthrown by the coming of farmers who worshipped the male gods which destroyed the ancient Matriarchy and replaced it with the current Patriarchy. Jane Ellen Harrison proposed an ancient matriarchal civilization. Robert Graves wrote some interesting, but no longer thought to be very scientific studies, on the idea. Neopaganism has taken these ideas forward.
Whatever the truth of the origins of the Three Mother Goddesses, the use of the terms Hag and Crone for the third is a great disservice to the Grandmother figure. These Goddesses represent the importance of the female for human society. The three phases of womanhood are equally as important in the continuation of the species, providing love, support, and experience through the generations. Compare these three generations of supportive deities with Ouranos (Uranus), Cronus (Saturn) and Zeus (Jupiter). Saturn castrated and deposed his father, Uranus. Later, he tried to eat his son, Jupiter. And then Jupiter is nobody’s idea of an ideal father.
Recent work on human evolution has suggested that the role of the Grandmother might be crucial to our species’ ability to live beyond the age of fertility. Because, in evolutionary terms, once an individual cannot procreate their usefulness for the survival of the genes is finished. So what’s the point of putting resources into their survival? The theory is that, particularly with women, the Grandmother has such an impact on the survival of the next generation, that longevity beyond fertility makes evolutionary sense, and is selected for.
Have a look at this site for more information.
More information on St Agnes in this post below:
Yesterday was dedicated to Joan of Arc, and today is the anniversary of the breaking of the fabulous Portland Vase in 1845 by a drunken visitor to the British Museum. It looks immaculate despite being smashed into myriad pieces, a wonder of the conservator’s art. To see the vase and read its story, go to the BM web site here:
In the orthodox church, дед Мороз (Ded Moroz= father of frost), accompanied by Cнегурочка (Snieguroshka= fairy of the snow) brings gifts on New year’s eve, (which is on January 7th). He travels with a horse drawn troika.
First Published in 2022, and revised in January 2024
Your perspective is fascinating. I’m of the mind that the Venuses were fertility Goddesses, but your thoughts about the vitality of grandmothers is stirring. You know, they say the word Edda came from the O.N. Grandmother. So, it strikes me that the grandma archetype is as a living landbridge to the ancestors, a breathing symbol of the liminial suffusion of living and dead, past and future.
thank you! Now, I think it about it perhaps quite a lot of my motive for embarking on this project was looking into the history of the 4 mother goddesses from the Museum of London and reading statements that called the oldest one ‘crone’ or ‘hag’. To me they seemed to fit in with a society which gave women agency as evidence by Queen Boudica and Queen Cartimandua who are leading protagonists in the Roman occupation of Britain. In contrast to the Romans who described Boudica as ‘uncommonly intelligent for a woman.’
But I really do think those three are the spine of humankind. Girl, mother, and grandmother much more than father, son and grandfather.
Women are often warm, squishy and fluffy. A soft place to land. Without the feminine influence there’d be little respite for masculine energy, which I believe serves to defend and protect the feminine. It’s interesting how rustic cultures naturally gravitate toward women’s welfare, as opposed to imperialist cultures which seem to become naturally misogynistic. I was always told this was because of inherent egalitarianism prior to Imperialism but I think that’s utopian thinking. What I do think is Imperialism is relatively far from nature, whereas rusticism does not afford you the luxury of abstracted insulation. If that makes any sense.
That makes a lot of sense. Quite a lot of imperialism seems to be job creation for the elite and perhaps more for the level just below the elite. And therefore, very male (originally)