St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-05-03
WOMAN,S ORIGIN,

DARWIN having Settled 10 the SAUSAGE
ton of the modern scientific mind the
origin of man, some speculation is now be-
ing INDUCED in to determine whence woman
originated We had a theory in the palmy
DAYS of childhood which we honestly be-
lieved. that little girls were made of ''sugar
and spice and all that's nice" but as we
grew older the illusion was dispelled and
we learned to our disappointment that they
were the product of rib. Even then in
the innocence of youth it was a mystery to
the childish mind why the crookedest bone
in the human body should have been chosen
out of which to make the loveliest object of
creation. Not even partial explanation
of this mystery was reached until reading
sermon of JEAN RAvLIN preached in the
sixteenth century in which occurs this SEN
tence: MAN, composed of clay is silent and
ponderous, but woman gives evidence of
her osseous origin by the rattle she keeps
up"
The interesting question as to the sub
stance of which woman was made is one on
which the various cosmogonies OF nations
widely differ. Probably the discoverer of
these cosmogOnieS were men, for they sell
dom give to woman a very distinguished
origin. The inhabitants of Madagascar
have a strange myth touching the origin of
woman. They say the great enemy ap-
peared to the first man in Paradise and
vainly pointed to him in glowing colOrs the
sweetness of the apple, the lusciousness of
the date, and the succulence of the orange.
But tn e father of men remembered the in
junction laid upon him by the Master.
Then the fiend assumed the appearance of
refulgent spirit and pretending to be a
messenger from heaven with command for
the man to eat and drink, cOnSummated the
fall. Shortly after a pimple appeared on
the mans leg; the spot enlarged into a
tumor which increased in size considerably
to his annoyance, until at the end of half a
year it burst, and from it emerged beauti-
full girl. The first man was perpleXed what
to do with her, whether to throw her into
the river which ran through the garden, or
whether to give her to the pigs, when a
messenger from heaven appeared and told
him to let her run about the garden until
she was of manageable age and then take
her to himself. He obeyed. He called her
Bahouna, and she became the mother of all
races of men.
There is something tender in the Greek
theory of Roman's creation. According to
the Phenician story PYGMALIoN made a
woman of marble or ivory, and APHRoDITE
in answer to his prayers endowed the
statue with life. Here is an idea of purity
in the conceptions Of the ivory origin.
HEsIoD, however, gives different account
of the creation of woman, for according to
his statement she was sent in mOckery by
ZEUs to be a scourge to man. The sturdy
old Scandinavians made woman's creation
sacred matter and fashioned her from
nObler stock than man. He was of the ash,
she was of the elm; and they called the
first woman EMLA, which means labori-
GUS female. In the old cosmic lays of the
Scandinavians the primeval women are
spoken of as good workers and model
housewives. The Provencal troubadours
caught the classic Interpretation of
woman. Massilia was a Greek colony and
Greek manners tastes and habits of thought
prevailed for long time in the southeast
of France, and while they regarded her as
an idol puppet they did not know how to
develop in her those inestimable treasures,
| the domestic virtues. In the opening of
his poems on RENARD there is fling at
EVE by PIERRE DE SAINT CLOUD. He
says that ADAM was possessor OF magic
rod with which he could create animals at
pleasure by striking the earth with it. One
day he smote the earth and there sprang