women cultivated the ground, and the
Earth was a goddess whose cult was performed by priestesses. But in
course of time new functions were bestowed on the _Matres_. Possibly
river-goddesses and others are merely mothers whose functions have
become specialised. The _Matres_ are found as guardians of individuals,
families, houses, of towns, a province, or a whole nation, as their
epithets in inscriptions show. The _Matres Domesticae_ are household
goddesses; the _Matres Treverae_, or _Gallaicae_, or _Vediantae_, are the
mothers of Treves, of the Gallaecae, of the Vediantii; the _Matres
Nemetiales_ are guardians of groves. Besides presiding over the fields
as _Matres Campestrae_ they brought prosperity to towns and people.[141]
They guarded women, especially in childbirth, as _ex votos_ prove, and
in this aspect they are akin to the _Junones_ worshipped also in Gaul
and Britain. The name thus became generic for most goddesses, but all
alike were the lineal descendants of the primitive Earth-mother.[142]

Popular superstition has preserved the memory of these goddesses in the
three _bonnes dames_, _dames blanches_, and White Women, met by
wayfarers in forests, or in the three fairies or wise women of
folk-tales, who appear at the birth of children. But sometimes they have
become hateful hags. The _Matres_ and other goddesses probably survived
in the beneficent fairies of rocks and streams, in the fairy Abonde who
brought riches to houses, or Esterelle of Provence who made women
fruitful, or Aril who watched over meadows, or in beings like Melusine,
Viviane, and others.[143] In Gallo-Roman Britain the cult of the
_Matres_ is found, but how far it was indigenous there is uncertain. A
Welsh name for fairies, _Y Mamau_, "the Mothers," and the phrase, "the
blessing of the Mothers" used of a fairy benediction, may be a
reminiscence of such goddesses.[144] The presence of similar goddesses
in Ireland will be considered later.[145] Images of the _Matres_ bearing
a child have sometimes been taken for those of the Virgin, when found
accidentally, and as they are of wood blackened with age, they are known
as _Vierges Noires_, and occupy an honoured place in Christian
sanctuaries. Many churches of Notre Dame have been built on sites where
an image of the Virgin is said to have been miraculously found--the
image probably being that of a pagan Mother. Similarly, an altar to the
_Matres_ at Vaison is now dedicated to the Virgin as the "go