In the Bengalese tale of "The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead," recorded by Day, the hero pleads: "O mother Ocean, please make way for me, or else I die" (426. 250), and passes on in safety. The poet Swinburne calls the sea "fair, white mother," "green-girdled mother," "great, sweet mother, mother and lover of men, the sea."
According to Russian legend "the Dnieper, Volga, and Dvina used once to be living people. The Dnieper was a boy, and the Volga and Dvina his sisters." The Russians call their great river "Mother Volga," and it is said that, in the seventeenth century, a chief of the Don Cossacks, inflamed with wine, sacrificed to the mighty stream a Persian princess, accompanying his action with these words: "O Mother Volga, thou great River! much hast thou given me of gold and of silver, and of all good things; thou hast nursed me and nourished me, and covered me with glory and honor. But I have in no way shown thee my gratitude. Here is somewhat for thee; take it!" (520. 217-220).
In the Mahábhárata, the great Sanskrit epic, King Sántanu is said to have walked by the side of the river one day, where "he met and fell in love with a beautiful girl, who told him that she was the river Ganges, and could only marry him on condition he never questioned her conduct. To this he, with a truly royal gallantry, agreed; and she bore him several children, all of whom she threw into the river as soon as they were born. At last she bore him a boy, Bhíshma; and her husband begged her to spare his life, whereupon she instantly changed into the river Ganges and flowed away" (258. 317). Similar folk-tales are to be met with in other parts of the world, and the list of water-sprites and river-goddesses is almost endless. Greater than "Mother Volga," is "Mother Ganges," to whom countless sacrifices have been made. In the language of the Caddo Indians, the Mississippi is called _báhat sássin_, "mother of rivers."
The ancient Peruvians had their "Mother Maize," _Mama Cora_, which they worshipped with a sort of harvest-home having, as Andrew Lang points out, something in common with the children's last sheaf, in the north-country (English and Scotch) "kernaby," as well as with the "Demeter of the threshing-floor," of whom Theocritus speaks (484. 18).